When you look in the mirror
What do you see?
Asking, you look in the mirror
What do you see?
Is it what you really are
Or the figment of an inherited error?
From your store-bought hair
To your store-bought head
Haba, from your store-bought hair
To your store-bought head
And all those long-hanging, attachments
That weigh you down like phony, imported lead
Does your blackness make you blush
What do you seek in the hide behind your shame?
Asking, does your blackness make you blush
What do you seek in the hide behind your shame?
So many conspicuous blotches
On the umbrella of your fame
Those scouring soaps, those dissembling powders
Those histrionic hassles, those expensive masks
Hun, those scouring soaps, those dissembling powders
Those histrionic hassles, those expensive masks
These frantic flights from the truth of the Self
The squandered energies from these de-meaning tasks
When you look in the mirror
What do you see?
Asking, when you look in the mirror
What do you see?
A pathetic parody, a pallid grotesquerie
A funny phantom and its unspeakable horror?