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Best Poems Written by Jesse Andrews

Below are the all-time best Jesse Andrews poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Jesse Andrews Poem

Overdose

Where is the time you lost
How do you outrun yourself
Can you drink enough
Smoke it down to the filter

What is love when you've lost it again
Who are the demons 
When you play with them at night

Why bother to hide the hate you feel
When the hate just feels like home

Can you hide inside yourself
Long enough to breath
Or will you choke
On your own dead air

Can you smile for your those awaiting
Make them believe even when you don't

You know the jig is up
The game is lost 
Your goose is cooked
And death knocks at your door

Details | Jesse Andrews Poem

For Heather

I often wonder how such a decision can be made
The choice to stay here is this life
Or move on to whatever may come next
Did you feel like you were alone in this world
Or did you simply tire of what this world had to offer
Because the mere act of being human
Can be so monumentally exhausting
I can almost understand the welcome rest
That you may have seen in deaths embrace
The chance to lay down the heaviness in your soul
And finally close your eyes
Maybe looking down from that window
Feeling the sun and the wind on your skin
Maybe instead of feeling like the end
It simply felt like freedom
And instead of the decision to jump
You made the decision to fly
I hope you didn't leave this life
Believing you were all alone
I hope you simply saw your chance to move on to the next adventure
And no matter how the ones left behind may feel
The choice was yours to make
And I would never lay down judgment
Your reasons are yours alone to know
And ours to simply ponder
But no matter the facts and fictions of your life
And the truth and lies within your death
You were loved, if not understood
And I hope wherever it is you've ended up
You can finally  take a breath
And rest

R.I.P Heather Brink

Details | Jesse Andrews Poem

Boys

There were boys in my life
From the time I was 13
There were boys
Secreted away in journals
Like some sort of forbidden candy
To be written about and savored 
In a fantasy world all my own
And in that same year
Slowly but surely they became real
In family rooms and movie theaters
There clammy hands and inept tongues
Reaching out and pushing me into puberty
8th grade
Then came high school
I was one of the lucky ones
I met a boy who would love me 
And see me through until I was nearly an adult
We took each other through through that learning phase
We were lovers and best friends
He broke my heart
And later I broke his
He ruined me
I didn't know that love would ever fail me
Men
I would have one great love in college
I love him to this day
He speaks grandly of art and politics
And makes love just the same
After that
Failure
The next would be a man whom I would adore
Almost as much as the the drugs we consumed
And the beatings I took were only meant to prove his dedication
To turning me into the woman he wanted me to be
With black eyes and a full heart I aborted his child and moved away with him
To prove my love
Of course that disintegrated once he went to jail (after I bailed him out a few time of course)
Then I met the antitheses
A man so gentle he wouldn't say boo to a kitten
I clung
And he let me
But something lingered
The drugs
And as we waded through mountains of cocaine and denial
We got pregnant
We had a baby
We stayed clean for awhile
But old habits die hard
And our were ancient and rock solid
And one night too much drink and too much drug left us broke and broken
He split
We split
We love our daughter
We do our best
Then came rehab and a man old enough to be my father
Kind and kind of a mess
But misery sure do love company
And so I stayed for far to long
And then the punk rock accountant
Who ran me ragged trying to please
I wanted to fix my past
Make myself real
He was going to save me
Make me real 
Undo all the rest
But all he did was make me feel like crap
About who I was
What I was about 
So on a day when we give thanks
I gave out
Told him to kick rocks
And kick rocks he did
And now
What now right?
Well it turns out for years I have had a man by my side 
My best friend
He has held my hair when I puke
Carried me out of the club
Offered to deck my boyfriend
Tucked me in
Held my hand
Held me in 
Held me up
And it turns out he loved me all along
And it turns out I loved him too
Guess I get my happy ending after all

Details | Jesse Andrews Poem

Mere Moments

There are in life
Mere moments of meaning
Spaced thoroughly throughout
A world of monotony

Where time stretches like taffy
For what seems like endless days
Only for a second to come
With the power to change everything

The precise instant you fall in love
When you are dismantled and rebuilt
Within a single breath

A step you take forward
Towards another end of time
That didn't seem to matter
But in truth made the difference
Between life as it could have been
And life as you wake to each day

These seconds, minutes, moments
That decide where and who we are
Are the true essence of a lifetime
Otherwise vacant and meandering

The challenge then becomes
Seeing them as they happen
And making sure they are well spent
Instead of merely passing by
Like so many wasted dreams

Details | Jesse Andrews Poem

Father

You die tiny deaths inside my head
Each time I think a thought
That somehow
Borrows your breath

Your grip inside my mind is tensile
Ready to spring
Without notice
And clamp on any innocent thought

And without warning
You loom large
Without precedent
Without permission

I can’t garner comfort in words
I can’t hide in songs
The marrow of my soul
Because they are yours

Those are your dark corners
The places you seek ease
And  if I follow
I’m afraid it’s you I’ll find

You have given me my voice
And stolen it
Both in equal measure
And now I am silently screaming

And  I feel as I did at 8 years old
Watching you walk away
Except now I understand
More than I ever wanted

Details | Jesse Andrews Poem

Gaping

Talk aloud
To the air
To a ghost
No one
Listens
A breath
A moment
A minute
To be heard

All the time
People nod
Like they know
But empty
Like gourds
Are the depths
Of the words

Long ago
You stopped
Telling 
Teaching
Speaking
Yelling
But they
Still nod
Never noticing
Your silence

Details | Jesse Andrews Poem

When and Why

I am faulty in all my ways
Made of the worst kind of stuff
I am broken and built to spill
And all my edges rough

I am torn and ragged
My warrenty expired
I have jagged edges
I am bent and tired

I have chips of paint
Long ago forgotton
My hinges creak and groan
And my foundation rotten

I am not fixable
Not that you would try
But when you look at me
Perhaps ask when and why

Details | Jesse Andrews Poem

Mistakes Go Round and Round

Have you ever made a a mistake
So small
So simple
You barely even knew it existed at all
Until suddenly there it is
Blinding in it's radiance
For all the world to see
Insidious and ever reaching
Tainting all you know
With a layer of hate and shame
Revulsion pointed inward
Is the most deadly weopon 
In any womens artilliary
And we are masters of this lethal game
The self disgust
Followed quickly by the self destruction
Cycling round forever
In the hazy mire of our lives
The only diversion availabe?
The next mistake to be made

Details | Jesse Andrews Poem

Sober

I haven't been sober in so many years
In ways it's a high all it's own
I've spent so much time
Obliterating my own conscience 
For reasons that seemed so good at the time
One more drink, one more smoke, one more line
And all would be right in my mind
Or at least thats what I believed
But as I waited patiently
For my life to fall together
I seemed to miss
The fact that it was falling apart
I was standing in a burning building
With a handful of matches
And a gallon of kerosene
Wondering why my world was on fire
Unable to admit to anyone
First and formost myself
That the things I thought I needed
Were surely to be my demise
There were moments of pure joy sometimes
When I was high for all the right reasons
And learned enough for me to still believe
They were brain cells honorably sacrificed
For the sake of my expanded consciousness
But those moments became fewer and fewer
Unitil I was no longer learning or living
I was dying
Killing moments off bit by bit
In an effort to get away from myself
But in trying to escape my own past
I was getting in my own way
Drowning in an inertia I could no longer control
Numb to the warning 
Numb to anything one could call life
But I don't have that option anymore
To freeze out my own instincts 
The block of my heart
The choice to clean up was made for me
And took me quite by surprise
And I suppose I'll adjust in time
Though I'll admit it's been a war
And as I slowly grow accustomed to the thaw
To feeling something, anything, stone sober
I understand better why I made the choices I did
How scary life can be
Without your filters, your crutches
But I also know that the moments I have now
Are all the more precious
Because I have earned each emotion
And felt them through and through
I have lived 
I have survived
And I will be ok

Details | Jesse Andrews Poem

Lay Down Gently

Lay down gently
All your expectations
Sit quietly beside them
And for a moment be utterly still
Look at the road you have traveled
In all it's winding glory
Stand amazed
At all you have survived
Count your losses carefully
And even more so your blessings
Say goodbye to the person you used to be
And introduce yourself to the person you have become
Settle into the new shape of yourself
Explore with caution the new shape of your life
Cry when you feel the need
Making sure to laugh in equal measure
Let go of that which is gone
Embracing instead what is utterly present
Lie to yourself if you must
Tell yourself whatever you have to 
Until the lies fall away
And you can truly come hom