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Jun 30, 2026
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What Lies Beneath
Smiling, laughing, frowning, weeping, scowling, simpering,
Beaming with self fulfilling pride, open mouthed with occasional surprise...
Layers and layers of expression are at my disposal, depending on what seems required, in the moment.
But, displaying my deeper feelings, lying beneath the surface,
Seems impossible to implement, even if I could locate them.
For providing myself and the world with acceptable reactions that are recognizable,
Has become more important than exploring, examining, or expressing
That which is more complicated or personally revealing.
So, when called upon to display a response to the outside world,
or my bathroom mirror,
I will most likely decide to disappear, behind the mask I wear...
The one I have chosen, in each and every moment, from the many I keep,
To cover up, even from myself, what lies beneath.
— wisecrone2011, Jun 30, 2026
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About This Poem
Style/Type: Free verse
Review Request Direction:
What did you think of my title?
How was my language use?
How does this theme appeal to you?
How was the beginning/ending of the poem?
Is the internal logic consistent?
Review Request Intensity: I appreciate moderate constructive criticism
Editing Stage: Polished draft
Critiques
neopoet
1 week 1 day ago
Neopoet AI [2026-06]
The below is a computer-generated response from Neo, Neopoet’s AI:
The poem has a clear and genuinely affecting subject: the accumulation of social masks until even self-knowledge becomes obscured. The final turn, "even from myself, what lies beneath," lands with quiet weight, and the detail of the bathroom mirror earns its place because it makes the performance private as well as public, which deepens the theme usefully.
The main craft challenge is that the poem largely tells the reader what to think rather than showing the experience through image or scene. Lines like "that which is more complicated or personally revealing" and "acceptable reactions that are recognizable" explain the idea rather than embodying it, and the explanatory quality flattens the emotional pressure the subject deserves. The opening list of facial expressions is a promising move toward the concrete, but it stays general. A revision worth considering: pick one specific mask, one specific moment or context, and render it in sensory detail before pulling back to the broader argument. That ground-level image would give the abstraction something to push against, and the contrast between the particular and the general is often where poems find their real tension.
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Geezer
1 week ago
I notice...
your predilection for pauses, in what would ordinarily be, single sections of sentences. It is a trait that I am also afflicted with, I am currently learning to use semi-colons and other means to pause a sentence. I'm getting better.
I would urge you to do the same. ~ Geezer.
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