We Wear the Mask

from The Buggy Jive Mixtape by Buggy Jive

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lyrics

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!

When the wing is bruised and the bosom sore,
We beat the bars to get some free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer from the heart’s deep core.
It's a prayer from the heart's deep core
It's a prayer from the heart's deep core
It's a prayer from the heart's deep core
It's a prayer from the heart's deep core

credits

from The Buggy Jive Mixtape, released May 11, 2018
Lyrics are based on the poems "We Wear the Mask" and "Sympathy" by Paul Laurence Dunbar, in the public domain. Music by Buggy Jive.

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about

Buggy Jive Albany, New York

BUGGY JIVE is a soul rock singer-songwriter quietly uploading music from a basement somewhere in Upstate New York.

Equal parts Zeppelin and D’Angelo and Prince and Joni in sound and sensibility, his lyrics often mine the literature of the past to make sense of the present – from Ellison to Morrison to Eliot to Didion.

“Literary Kravitz,” as some say. ... more

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