On the surface, Hello Poetry is a haven: a digital campfire where voices gather to warm each other against the cold expanse of the internet. A place where the line between confession and creation often blurs, and where the act of writing is not performance, but survival.

But lately, the fire has grown too bright—artificially bright.

They call them suns—badges of appreciation, visible tokens of endorsement. A nice idea, right? Support a poet. Shine a spotlight. But as with all systems that monetize visibility, the spotlight becomes a searchlight—and it stops illuminating truth. It blinds us instead.

The Distortion of the Feed
Let’s be clear: this is not about sour grapes or petty envy. It’s about who gets seen, and why.

When you pay $15 for five suns, or receive them via subscription, you can choose to boost any work. Once sunned, this poem trends. And if you sun multiple works, the system staggers their rise—today, tomorrow, the next. It’s orderly. Predictable.

And utterly devastating to the organic ecosystem of the front page.

On days when these sunned poems stack high, young writers—often screaming silently through metaphors—are buried. Their work no longer rides the wave of genuine engagement. It gets eclipsed by well-polished pieces with patrons, not peers.

I scrolled today through endless sunshine, only to discover—way down below—the voices of kids trying to survive abuse. Strangers admitting they're scared to wake up. Teens reaching out through enjambment because they have no one else. And they were hidden. Flattened beneath an algorithm that rewards polish over pulse, polish over pain.

HePo Isn’t 911—But It’s a Lifeline
We can’t pretend that Hello Poetry is a substitute for emergency services. It’s not. But we also can’t pretend that this space doesn’t carry immense emotional gravity. For many—especially the young and unseen—it is the only place they’ve ever received an honest comment. An echo. A sign that their words matter.

When a trending system sidelines vulnerability in favor of vanity, it commits a subtle violence. It reinforces that unless your work is sunworthy, it isn’t worthy at all.

Let’s Not Confuse Curation with Censorship
This is not a call to cancel the sun system. This is a call to recalibrate it.

Let paid support elevate—but not suffocate. Let sunned poems shine—but not dominate. Let the front page reflect what it always claimed to: the soul of the community, not the size of its wallet.

We can love poetry and refuse to commodify visibility. We can cherish the bright voices without dimming the urgent ones.

Conclusion: A Platform of Conscience
Hello Poetry, if you are listening, understand this:

You’ve built something precious. Don’t let it rot under the weight of your own reward system. Make room for the cries. Make room for the wild, imperfect, confessional, gasping work. Because if we let only the sunned poems rise, we are choosing applause over advocacy.

And some of these poets?
They don’t need praise.
They need an ear to be heard.


Thank you for reading.

Re-post if you agree ❤️

The Past is a learning curve
Don't dwell in what was
Time to enjoy
What that is up to you but do it
Regrets are useless
No need to embellish
We have all been there
Sometimes with frierds and loved ones.
Sometimes on your own
Happiness,Joy.The Very Best of Everything Always
Going Forward

When I was the age of a landscape
I used to write letters
And that changed all the noise of solitude

A breeze coming from the sea was still a piece of childhood

Later,
there were so many winters followed by so many silences
I had thousands of days with fever and heat

an impenetrable black light — full of varicose veins —
fell upon my solid shoulders like a raw and symbolic pain,
a call to the sacred, to the memory of a more carnal time, full of guilt,
more imperfect, where breathing was an authentic act,
a formula of instinct, of abandonment or return, perhaps.

I dreamed — a change of scene — I took off my best suit, folded it over my knees,
and entered the forest like an animal inventing itself.

,                 like a lantern;
She had no answer for
You.           I understand
the glowbugs & fireflies
,they fill the fields around
Your home,        but You
are crystal clear to Me.

My hands are cracked,dry
for a gift. hold Them & see
there is nothing beneath
Us at all.   there is no push
or permission to fall;
You step,              & hope,
             & I will be there,

swimming in the creek of
all We are yet to happen.
     I raised a Prayer,untied
& spoken,     to a balloon;
She will drift into power
lines,She will
             buckle your day.

I was starving in
Pennsylvania.
One night, I had
enough.
Done with it all.
The poverty and
sickness.
The drunken mad
nights
and dog-fight days.
Brutality for breakfast.
Served sunny side up
runny yolks with
butterflies trapped in
the yellow sunshine.
Spiders built webs in
my soul.

I stood on the torn-up
couch in my living room and
yelled at the walls.

Listen, you devil.
You want me, you better be
ready for a fight.
I paced the floor like a
washed-up heavyweight champ,
eyeing the ceiling like a
drunken sparrow in a cat's mouth.

God answers the prayers
I don’t remember praying.
My prayers are just stepping
stones to a better reality.
If I die this year I’d feel that
way about my last prayer.
My bitterness will stop injecting
itself into my fantasies.
My butterflies grow obese
because of the magic.
I’ll keep trying to grow
past all of this tragic.
I’ll stop living everyday as if
it’s  already the future.
It makes my Time Machine
into a ready guillotine.
My depression and happiness
hug for the first time.
They have not been intimate
long enough it seems.