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Best Poems Written by Ollie Ward

Below are the all-time best Ollie Ward poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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Junebug

I don't mean to make this anyone else's fault
I don't mean to go back there
but the bumblebee with the crooked wing in the parking lot
roasting on the asphalt and I looked away
you kept it in a takeout box with a leaf as shelter
we opened a jar of honey from the cellar
heard it pop, threatening the hot June air
it melted and stuck to your bumblebee's legs
I saw a monarch with its wings torn off stumbling towards the door
my father pulled me toward the car and my mother said a prayer
and i watched it through the rearview window 

the forsythia started blooming the day the bumblebee died
we placed blossoms at its grave in the sandbox but I was
relieved to be free of the pity
we pulled apart dandelions and watched maggots swimming in the fluff
we tossed them into piles that we threw into the air until someone told us 
to knock that off and go back inside

that only left enough time for you to pick up a fat green caterpillar and
gently place him in your pocket

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On the Bus Ride Home

on the bus ride home
i dream of my parents
i pass by my grade school
i make enemies with the boy sitting across from me
i contemplate the bag of pills in my backpack
i contemplate starting over
i make friends with the girl in front of me
i watch her get off and walk to the variety store
i start a book
i call my mom
i make plans for the weekend
i plan to cancel them
i watch the trees go by
i think of the trees i used to climb
i could climb so high before i got so scared
i haven't left the ground in years
i think if i tried 
i might find my feet rooted in place

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The Price of Living

Medicine doesn't heal
She stays in between
There is no heart left to beat,
she scooped it out and
ate it for breakfast
She hollowed out her bones,
savouring the last of the marrow
Sometimes, when it's dark
she wishes she had a heart 
she could hear,
skin she could feel,
fat and muscle that didn't
pinch and twist and lock her in
this body
But when she wakes up
to do it all over again
She is almost positive
she is happier suffering like this

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Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen

In a wireframe dress on a drooping pedestal
She is pretty and pink and easy to digest
He calls her sadness art
Smooths out all the sharpness of her
She is easy to look at
He grabs her wrists, nail bitten fingers
lacing up satin shoes
in the back of a grey room
In front of the mirror, 
on the subway
He says, I will make you immortal,
don't you want to live forever,
aged fourteen?
Stay here, before your chest expands inside the corset and the
wires dig into your hips
The world cannot take this away
In these halls
she walks silently
Clutching a crumpled skirt
Laces the fading shoes in front of a mirror
She holds his gaze like a rope at the back of the theatre
He shakes his head, cases her in amber
Toe pointed forward, dust swirling around her
Forever waiting to jump

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An Acid and Bitter Taste

All of us here where we will never return
I stay in this moment,
I can't get out
But I will never return again
My mother and her sister sit at the table
Trading stories I'll never know
I'm on the ceiling, watching the spiders build
homes in the cracks of their cups
There's a light down the street
There's a faith we don't speak
This house is a church in the middle of the night
When I worship the quiet,
so soft and serene I could just 
slip away

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Untitled

Take down the photos
of rivers run dry
Throw out the offerings
to the gods of luck and time
Claw for the right words
Spit them out on the pavement
Carve this life into a home
Know you'll never want for comfort
Know you'll always be alone

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Old dog

I'm tired of pacing like an old dog
Waiting for you to come home
Aching brittle bones
Someone I love is out there in the snow
And I wait. And I wait.

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Hearing Voices Again?

Someday we'll be gone but you won't ever leave
Try as you might but this house will remain
Forget the fields, forget the barns
with the broken windows
and the dogs that howl,
their corpses in the ditch

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City Love Song

I want to forget all my prayers,
throw out the cigarettes
the medication and your name
Forget the summer stained memories of
basements and bridges
Make way for city light
I want to close my eyes and breathe deep
Like I'm a kid again
and you're just down the street

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This is the first good day of the year

This is the first good day of the year.
The sun shines loud through the siren landscape
and no one speaks to me but you.
It's cold,
cold this time around
Everything I need is so far away
I lost it all:
the syntax, the beat
the car wheels spinning on our pothole roads
Oh backstreet melancholy,
I've ever missed anything more
than the sun on the trees and my old rotting heart
But city Septembers--they find a way to break you.
The words drift to the ground from this fifth floor window
and I'm ashamed to admit that
I want to go home
I want to go home but
home left and we went our separate ways
So this city September won't break me.
I will not repent for the dreams or the smoke.
I will not sit by this window forever,
waiting for something to start.