I Wear The Mask

Today I shall share with you a high school English project my sixteen year old self made. I believe the criteria was to create and decorate a mask and write a sort of poem or prose inspired by "We Wear The Mask" by Paul Laurence Dunbar. I remember having the most outlandish/"crazy" project when presenting to the class - I exposed myself and my contention with a sort of dual personality I seemed to assimilate. I also had a way with words at that point in my life, and am kinda proud of those works (some are forgotten, others barely remembered). I knew but didn't actually know at the time that I was bipolar. The mask wasn't trying to represent this though; the words and their mirrors were more depicting how I was perceived versus the subtruth underneath.

I wear the mask that spawns and steals
identity, that tricks and deceives, that assumes
personality and masquerades contrasting façades.
With the amalgamation of time and artful manipulation,
the primordial guise triumphed in its coup d'etat.

In assorted colors, written plainly are the
contusions of pretense. Juxtapose Bruce
and it, athwart a mirror wherein Majora gazes,
the previously inverted epitaphs and the manifestation
of the being Ecurb are linked to expose subtruth.
I wear the mask.

About-face reveals no face at all. A collection of cryptic arcana
appears translucently against a dusty, nebulous backdrop.
Upon layering acoustics, self ascends along an empyrean,
surreal road, flying parallel to a familiar stranger for
a solitary moment, when at the fork of reality
they split, and I wake from hypnagogia.
I wear the mask.