Buddy Wakefield
The future gets no say in who we are.Collection: Future
Pretend – inside your skin – you've got a friend, who's willing to give you everything you ever wanted in exchange for all you've ever been.Collection: Giving
Stop inviting walls into wide open spaces.Collection: Wall
I should have told You before talking in terms of Forever that any given day wears me out and works me sour, that there are nights when the sky is so clear I stand obnoxious underneath it begging for the stars to shoot at me just so I can feel at Home.Collection: Stars
Hearts don't break, y'all. They bruise and get better.Collection: Heart
You are the home I point to that lives in my chest.Collection: Home
I am standing like shoe polish on an overstocked shelf hoping that one day someone will pick me to make things better.Collection: Shoes
Jordan tattoos the words "forgive me" in thick black letters down the inside of his arm so that when he looks at his wrist he will remember not to hate himself so much. What he keeps forgetting is that there is life after survival.Collection: Survival
You can call me an angry ghost when I'm gone, or laugh into my disposition. But my mom will still see me as her wide-eyed wanderer out behind the garage inventing ways to fend off dog attacks that will probably never happen.Collection: Mom
I choose to politely ask myself to step aside if I am in my own way. If I do not get out of my way, I choose to call a friend who will have me removed.Collection: Way
If I didn't have so much of this life all wrong I would have gotten it right by now.Collection: This Life
Make love to me like you know I am better than the worst thing I ever did.Collection: Making Love
If you've never been rocked back by the presence of purpose this poem is too soon for you. Return to your mediocrity, plug it into an amplifier and rethink yourself.Collection: Purpose
I'm ready to kill something. I'll probably only get as far as my brain cells, but I am going to kill them.Collection: Cells
The first time my town saw the sky it sucker-punched us in the throat, left us breathless, said, I'm gonna keep you awake some nights without touching you. You'll make it up, the pain, you always do.Collection: Pain
How honest is it that we drink until we are dehydrated?Collection: Honest
You're not the only piece of patchwork birds can pull worms from.Collection: Bird
Even good hearts know how to turn bad touch and genocide into clichés just to make room for more comfort.Collection: Heart
Stop congregating in the valley just because an echo sounds good when it agrees with itself.Collection: Echoes
But I still show up for gentleman practice in the company of lead dancers, hoping their grace will get stuck in my shoes.Collection: Practice
There is a point when tears don't work to wash things away anymore. Grabbing for breath has now broken my fingers.Collection: Broken
I would fall in love with you if you would beat these people out of me.Collection: Falling In Love
If we really do get what we give then I give up, so I can get up.Collection: Giving Up
The best songs are the ones about Georgia, even though I've never been there. It's the only place I still believe in Jesus.Collection: Song
I don't care to be good, Sheriff. I care to be whole.Collection: Care
Everybody knows that smiling is for little girls, the gays and certain kinds of fish who are smiling by accident.Collection: Girl
Knowing me is easy. You can still twist your hair and feel silly. Look up the word tacky and have a salad. But when we're together you pull bread apart with your fingers into bites sometimes so small I gotta remind you, Peach, it is okay to be hungry.Collection: Silly
We were never tragedies. We were emergencies. You go ahead, call 9-1-1. Tell them I'm havin' a fantastic time.Collection: Tragedy
If we were created in God’s image, then when God was a child he smushed fire ants with his fingertips and avoided tough questions.Collection: Children
We both spend our money on things that break too easily like… people.Collection: People
Love makes no mistakes.Collection: Mistake
Forte is French… for blanket fort.Collection: Forts
You're a free-standing landing pad held together by choir claps.Collection: Together
...all these kids you can't seem to make sense of would stop holding you so far off the edge of your seats if you'd start holding yourselves to the promises you make. We know you're not perfect, because we're not. And I know I'm not perfect, but I believe I was meant to be.Collection: Believe
We can stick anything into the fog and make it look like a ghost.Collection: Fog
There was a typewriter buried alive in that horse, the one I road to get out of the flood.Collection: Horse
...others, with halos shaped like rollercoasters you'd stand in line to ride twice.Collection: Halos