1.
The future gets no say in who we are.
Buddy Wakefield
2.
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.
Buddy Wakefield
3.
Stop inviting walls into wide open spaces.
Buddy Wakefield
4.
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.
Buddy Wakefield
5.
The truth is that this universe is gassy and unpredictable.
It still has not said excuse me for The Big Bang.
Sometimes we expect too much instead of practicing enough
or receiving in us just the right answer.
You, the Staggering Answer
Buddy Wakefield
6.
What paper planes and empty seats most have in common
is that they are best made by children still learning how to ride things out.
Buddy Wakefield
7.
A trajectory of misery – at this point – seems intentional.
We have all the information we need to see clearly.
We are no longer unaware toddlers on the landscape of consciousness.
It is no longer cute to crap ourselves.
Buddy Wakefield
8.
Hearts don't break, y'all. They bruise and get better.
Buddy Wakefield
9.
I am standing like shoe polish on an overstocked shelf hoping that one day someone will pick me to make things better.
Buddy Wakefield
10.
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.
Buddy Wakefield
11.
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.
Buddy Wakefield
12.
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.
Buddy Wakefield
13.
If I didn't have so much of this life all wrong I would have gotten it right by now.
Buddy Wakefield
14.
You are the home I point to that lives in my chest.
Buddy Wakefield
15.
I'm ready to kill something. I'll probably only get as far as my brain cells, but I am going to kill them.
Buddy Wakefield
16.
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.
Buddy Wakefield
17.
You're not the only piece of patchwork birds can pull worms from.
Buddy Wakefield
18.
Everything is out there. That's why they call it everything.
Buddy Wakefield
19.
Make love to me like you know I am better than the worst thing I ever did.
Buddy Wakefield
20.
I would fall in love with you if you would beat these people out of me.
Buddy Wakefield
21.
Even good hearts know how to turn bad touch and genocide into clichés just to make room for more comfort.
Buddy Wakefield
22.
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.
Buddy Wakefield
23.
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.
Buddy Wakefield
24.
Stop congregating in the valley just because an echo sounds good when it agrees with itself.
Buddy Wakefield
25.
How honest is it that we drink until we are dehydrated?
Buddy Wakefield
26.
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.
Buddy Wakefield
27.
If we really do get what we give then I give up, so I can get up.
Buddy Wakefield
28.
Everybody knows that smiling is for little girls, the gays and certain kinds of fish who are smiling by accident.
Buddy Wakefield
29.
But I still show up for gentleman practice in the company of lead dancers, hoping their grace will get stuck in my shoes.
Buddy Wakefield
30.
There is a point when tears don't work to wash things away anymore. Grabbing for breath has now broken my fingers.
Buddy Wakefield
31.
I don't care to be good, Sheriff. I care to be whole.
Buddy Wakefield
32.
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.
Buddy Wakefield
33.
What children
and the landing of a plane
most have in common
is that they are best made
by a line drive of pilot lights guided
through a single tambourine
across the day we met
in a field of wet metal hands on The Gospel of Lightning.
Buddy Wakefield
34.
We both spend our money on things that break too easily like… people.
Buddy Wakefield
35.
We were never tragedies. We were emergencies. You go ahead, call 9-1-1. Tell them I'm havin' a fantastic time.
Buddy Wakefield
36.
...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.
Buddy Wakefield
37.
Love makes no mistakes.
Buddy Wakefield
38.
We can stick anything into the fog and make it look like a ghost.
Buddy Wakefield
39.
Every moment is a brand new baby, Baby.
Every vow is a brave new voice.
Buddy Wakefield
40.
Forte is French… for blanket fort.
Buddy Wakefield
41.
You're a free-standing landing pad held together by choir claps.
Buddy Wakefield
42.
There was a typewriter buried alive in that horse, the one I road to get out of the flood.
Buddy Wakefield
43.
...others, with halos shaped like rollercoasters you'd stand in line to ride twice.
Buddy Wakefield
