38 responses to “My false mirror”

1. Beautiful sonnet, specially the ending couplet. I admire the acceptance of faults, even to admitting one is not a saint. And balancing this with striving to make amends.

   • Thank you… I didn’t intend it to be a sonnet, but it’s funny, as soon as I start rhyming it always end up being a sonnet.

2. a confessional sonnet beautifully packed in lines that resonate like

   “tiny lies discolouring my heart

   • Thank you…. I think we all carry those lies trying to hide them… but they do hurt.

3. I love some of your metaphors in this, Björn, especially “blue-sky smile” and “probing-dagger gaze.”

   • Thank you… having Swedish as my first language, the use of compound nouns is something I love to use.

4. I enjoyed that the painted façade is the better “me”

   • Or maybe it really is not.

5. Great work, Bjorn. I posted a rhymer today, too, that i didn’t realize when I wrote it (almost 50 years ago) that, given the right line breaks it not only had some cool rhymes but was structurally (syllabically) formal as well.

   Thanks for sharing your gem.

   • Once you get that rhyming bug, it is actually hard to break out.

6. I felt it when you wrote “Your probing dagger-gaze, relentless pain” – maybe it’s the guilt in me?

   • It is hard to face those eyes when you are trying to conceal things.

7. Bjorn that’s an excellent and insightful bit of honest writing. 

   Like the saying, “God will never give you more than you are able to bear,” which kept me going more than a few times, perhaps that false mirror hides what’s behind it as a measure of self-protection. Perhaps if we saw what is really there, we’d wouldn’t have the strength to recover from it.

   • The self protection is really needed, and it works until it really starts to eat you I think

8. A true mirror, not a false one to reflect our image, flaws and all.

   • The true mirror is hard to face sometimes.

     • Very true.

9. Who doesn’t feel false engaging in the fictions and subversions and untruths of human interaction? As your fine final couplet suggests, we become true with truths. That’s the amends both to ourselves and the world.

   • Indeed we need to include forgiveness to our selves.

10. A very existential sonnet Björn, who are we behind the façade that others see… Thank goodness for self-acceptance!

    • Self acceptance starts with ourselves…

11. I absolutely love this probing gaze turned inwards! Excellent sonnet, beautifully composed.

    • Thank you… it was fun to switch the theme from blossoms to self.

12. The last line feels like one is out of a dungeon, breathing free.

    Accepting darkness is to comprehend
    and compensate with light to make amends.

    

13. Good to look deeper. If matter is 99% empty space maybe we are floating clouds. Here and gone.

    • A bit like sieving gold from sand maybe

14. A piercing introspection, Björn. Especially loved

    My blue-sky smile is all in vain, a painful
    bursting scab — a scar I have to pick.

    • Thank you… it is painful trying to hide our true selves.

15. A wonderful poem Bjorn. I especailly love

    “Your probing dagger-gaze, relentless pain
    of slicing smiles, untruths that turn me sick”

    • Yes.. it hurts to lie

16. So very relatable, Bjorn. What an insightful write! Bravo!

    • Thank you… it was a good and painful exercise.

17. I liked this very much, Bjorn. A wonderful interpretation of the prompt.

    • Thank you… love that you enjoyed to read it.

      • I did

18. Wow! Powerful, Bjorn. I so loved these lines,

    “I have to understand — I’m no saint.
    Accepting darkness is to comprehend
    and compensate with light to make amends.”

    And I liked your use of rhymes too. 🙂

    • Sometimes the rhymes just leads you right.

19. Lovely poem, Bjorn, a vulnerability and honesty to it…JIM

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