there was a raccoon,
who wore a mask.
not because he needed to hide,
but because the mask
helped him see.

his mask wasn’t made of cloth
or leather,
but of his own eyes—
two dark, gleaming windows
that could look at the world
and become whatever he needed.

he didn’t wear it out of shame,
no—
he wore it because
it gave him permission
to be more
than he’d ever been told he could be.
it let him try on
every shape,
every name,
every possibility
he’d never dared to touch.

the raccoon was a thief, yes,
but he stole only what was already his.
his happiness,
his strength,
his soft little victories
the raccoon’s mask was not a disguise,
but a gift—
a gift he gave himself
every day
and wore like a crown.

because the raccoon knew:
you don’t have to fit
into what the world says you should be.
sometimes,
you have to steal your joy—
and wear it like a mask
that lets you dance
in the light
of your own making.

and when the mask came off at night,
he was still him.
and that was enough.

Broken thoughts.  
A cracked terrain in my brain.  
Where a desolate highway stretches to  
a familiar nowhere.  
Where dreams have died,  
from thirsting too long to be alive.  
Dehydrated and depleted of happiness,
I stumble along, obsessing where I went wrong.  
There is a bird in the bramble of desire  
that entangles my heart.
Who sings oblivious joy.  
It's our ability to think,  
that is the root of our suffering.  
Mend your thoughts, change your world.

There’s thousands of words published
On this site
Ev’ry day
None of us are Shakespeare
As we’re all great
In our own ways

The “thumbs up”s and “heart”s aren’t a
Reflection
Of who you are
So, keep writing Hello Poetry!
And fill our small world
With more stars

Who am I …
the awakening perception scratches at me,
it's the splinter that hides beneath skin,
the melody that returns when it's quiet,
a mirror that only reflects in fragments;
scattered and shattered.
I am the curve of my father's chin,
my mother's discerning eyes.
I exist as a collection of meaningless comparisons,
yesterday's frustrations stitched into today's ambition.
Milieu named me "as expected,"
folded me neatly into a box labelled convention.
Murmuring voices pressed into me like a blanket,
coercive in reasoning, yet silently limiting.
I bent to the familiar until I no longer asked …
Who am I …
Growth is a kind of breaking,
expanding ideas form subtle questions,
like shedding old skin that has grown too tight,
tearing up roots that have withered in difficult soil.
I planted myself somewhere new and foreign;
I sprouted tender and green in the dew of awareness,
basked in the sunlight of small victories.
Who am I …
I am not the answer; I am the question.
I am the canvas unfinished.
I am not who I was, nor yet who I will be.
I am an earthquake
whose rumbling reshapes the world around it.
I am both the seeker and the treasure,
both the map and the journey.

Forgive the failings of the parent, the flaws of our design.
Only if we accept our nature can we enjoy what's left of our time.

The poison left in our blood, corrosion of the self,
pain accepted as a norm, obligations on no one else.
They say the mind is the strongest prison,
walls of darkness and chasms within them,
and a fear that pain came first because pain comes always,
and as we peep out into the empty hallways
we see in their endless doors
an infinite capacity for more
and why would any weary traveller
step out into such foreboding
places to explore?

At first the poison seems for life. It runs in our blood and rains from the heights.
But nothing is without cost and the lie must be maintained.
We follow the orders held with us from the day we got our name.
But the thicker the poison and the hotter it burns, the stronger the antidote and the more we can learn.

Pain becomes progress,
a diabolical fuel,
a tool heavy to swing,
but one that will bring
greater transformation
and let's turn bad memories
into useful information.

Hope is for the hopeful
pain is for the hurt
fear is for the child inside
sweat is for the work
song is for the listener
and voices for the listened
Home is for where love resides
only found inside.
In the images we create,
we ****** a part away from fate.

In each act we are alive
and in between our quiet minds
will find some reason we are silent
thoughts turned dark, thoughts turned violent.

Prayer for the faithful
soaring for the soul
how can we bestow these gifts
isn't that the goal?
Not to ask the bird to fly,
the wolf to bear its claws,
but to ask the kind to fight
and the killer to know remorse.

To change one mind might seem so modest
of a billion minds on the planet,
But even to change a single mind
would improve the world that we inhabit.

Something to love
Something to believe in
Something to cry
Something to mean it
It makes life
Feel like living