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Izan Almira Jul 19
I also know why the caged bird sings.
He does so because the bars were forged in hatred,
and the whole world has turned into a simple room,
as when your eyesight only reaches the horizon,
and you can’t walk past it anymore, you forget
there was anything ahead of it. The caged bird sings
because he thinks he chirps the truth, yet they are lies,
propaganda repeated from who first captured him.
The caged bird sings because blindly repeating
what he once heard like a mindless parrot
gives him a fake sense of freedom,
even when his only prison is his own mind.
I (obviously) took inspiration from Maya Angelou's marvelous, gorgeous, wonderous, beautiful poem "I know why the caged bird sings" about racism. I decided to use that image to talk about the people who blindly follow some ideas (homophobia, racism, sexism...) because they can't even see past them. They are just as trapped- if not more- than who they oppress.

At least we have the ability to think more freely than they do, don't we? We may feel caged but that's because we are growing out of our restrains.
Jeremy Betts May 27
How does one break free of the cage that they themselves are?
When do you become something other than the accumulation of yet another scar?
I am me, but who am I,
Not to the world but simply to myself?
Why is everyone else's
Description of who I am just a laundry list
Of obvious and subconscious
Cracks in my mental health?
What could I tell a younger me
That would change the reality of his destiny?
He would have to see all I had to see
But without tragedy would I even recognize me?

©2025
Quantum Poet Apr 27
whispers in the winds breathing,
Never is it screaming.
The wisp of wind Is Calling us,
Yet hides its own true meaning.

Bound to the silence of forever,
Flowing without fail.
A sacred truth buried in what?
Truth is, it cannot tell.

Mountains stand as structures so strong,
These relics deemed eternal.
Layers form masses. Time gently passes.
That stand as nature’s journal.

The bitterest truth is etched in stone,
Carved deeply into they’re being,
Yet bound to a fate, that nothing awaits.
They’re cursed with never leaving.

Like the ocean’s forceful,
Mighty sway, that never truly moves.
Seeming to be as boundless as me,
Yet made to traverse in set grooves.

The waves that crash, display a mask,
For it only expands to recoil,
An infinite realm of life within,
To never feel the soil.

The sun will rise, then set, then rise.
The fate that has no fate at all.
It treads a path consistent to last,
But will not and can never fall.

It soars as if it stands for freedom,
A slave to this deception,
For in its path, it’s truly shackled
To this haunting misconception.

The grand clock's perpetual winding,
That never is fully wound.
Delaying or pausing, just not an option.
And no filter quiets the sound.

The hands of time that hold the scroll,
Unable to write the plot,
Emotion within its aching sound,
Expressing a purpose wrought.

The metaphysical body walks,
It thinks, it feels, it reacts.
Emotions wide open, truths unspoken.
My mind expands but to retract.

My conscious subdued by truths untrue.
This lie that's so deeply instilled.
We exist to consume from cradle to tomb,
In this cage that we've named "free will".
Lynn Apr 27
How is the bird to go home
When all it knows is the cold
The rainy and the harsh
The curses and the shots
When it tries to run away
The darkness coerces it to stay
So even if the bird is free
It will never truly be
The night hums softly, the world is still,
yet my mind runs where my heart won’t heal.
Streetlights flicker, the moon just stares,
but shadows whisper that no one cares.

I scroll through faces I used to know,
wonder if they miss me—probably no.
Messages typed but left unsent,
words too heavy, feelings bent.

The silence isn’t really mute,
it sings of dreams I can’t pursue.
Of doors that closed, of roads not walked,
of battles lost, of love uncaught.

And though the dawn is hours away,
I wonder if I’d beg it to stay.
Because another day just means one more—
where I still ache behind this door.
I trace the cracks along my walls,
dreams caught in spiderweb stalls.
The world outside, a distant call,
but here I stay, behind it all.

Suitcase packed inside my mind,
yet doors won’t open, fate unkind.
Every step just turns to stone,
a bird still grounded, all alone.

Windows show the sky so wide,
but I can’t chase the changing tide.
Voices say, "someday, you'll go,"
but "someday" always whispers "no."

Nights stretch long, and walls close tight,
the moon my only guide through night.
I dream of roads I've never seen,
but wake to find I’m where I’ve been.

One day, maybe, doors will break,
chains will rust and hands won’t take.
But until then, I sit and sigh—
a caged heart longing for the sky.
Despair clouds my mind
As I desperately search for escape I fear I will
Never find.
Can't you see I'm drowning in the
Emptiness of reality?

Inside my mind, I am free and there is
Not a cage in the world that can hold me.

Though, as hard as I try, I cannot seem to figure out
How to stay there
Eternally.

Gracefully, I leap and spin, a bird flying in the dark as
I mourn for the place I belong, home, that I
Long for every second, and every
Day. I wonder if I can survive this long without it. At the
End of the day I ask myself "Who am I?", and
Dread the answer that haunts my mind like a phantom.

Crimson stains spread through my soul as I fall into the
Abyss of madness.
Gasping for breath as I wake up to another day of
Endlessly dancing in my gilded cage.
I haven't seen a single acrostic yet so here we are.
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