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Best Poems Written by Zoe Johns

Below are the all-time best Zoe Johns poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Zoe Johns Poem

Last Words

What did the wind feel like--
Blowing against your back
Riddled with whispers
You heard or imagined or both?
Was it cold,
The ground?
Did it scrape your knees
on the way down?
Or could you even notice through the noise?

I want to know
Was it hard to live in a world
that wanted you dead?
Is that why you couldn’t do it?
Tell me, please
I need to know
Was it all too much for you in the end
Or worse,
Did it never feel like enough?

Details | Zoe Johns Poem

Bus Stop

“I’m so glad you’re alive”
I told you this, maybe a little too soon
With Nyx painting shadows on our faces
it was a little too dark
But you’re eyes were transfixed completely on mine
And I was completely aware
That it was a little too beautiful for just the second day

I met you a little too late
I wish you could’ve known my 10 year old secrets and friends
And I could’ve known yours
Maybe I could’ve wiped your 10 year old tears
or traced your 10 year old scars with the same worrisome frown I have now
And maybe then it would have mattered

I told you on the day after we first spoke
After hearing what you could only tell a stranger
“I’m so glad you’re alive”
And this was entirely true, but you replied with 
a nervous laugh, your eyes exposing the lie in the curl of your lips
“Why?” You asked
I really didn’t know
I guess it was just a little too soon

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if the sea ran dry

if the sea ran dry
every soul would know it
die; then be noticed

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creature

below the world I sit in silence
an animal among machines

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A Poem For My Truest Love

I had a dream last night that I was as tired as tired could get,
And my legs were aching, and my hands shook viciously,
and my tongue fell from its hinges,
But still I saw you driving and followed your car
down the long and winded path.

You travelled to where a hurricane was stirring,
and the water was a raging mass,
and the sand was violent on my eyes,
But still, I lied down with you
and I found peace in the sandy bed.

I realize now I would have lied my corpse there,
The horseflies slowly eating away at me until I was no more than a memory,
if only it meant I could rot in your presence.

This is what I mean when I tell you I love you.

It is not wicked. It is not vulgar.
It is the finest platonic love one can have,
and how beautiful it is.
What a lovely idea?
That I get to have you forever
and not rely on some internal passion to keep our flame?

I can’t wait to see you grow
I find myself teary eyes when I think about it
I can’t wait to see your family,
Watching a man so understandably falling in love with you
Your children so happy to see their mom
Little feet
Running around on floorboards carefully chosen
By you and the one you love
I imagine this more than I imagine my own,
Because every time you give me an echo of a smile
I see all the good you have the potential to bring to the world
Your future is so blessed,
and they walk around not even knowing,
But I know
I know
And I will remind you of your magic as long as I have breath
And I will trace your smile lines spreading one day,
And I will notice when your babies have your eyes,
And I will always follow you
into every hurricane onto every stormy beach I have the opportunity to follow you into
And if God graces me with the opportunity
I will die with you one day
And I will do it happily,
Peacefully,
And most importantly
in love
I hope I dream of you again tonight, and before I do,
I will thank God
I got to know you

Details | Zoe Johns Poem

Purple At Best

I can only hope to find something so deeply hidden inside myself
that it is beautiful enough and terrible enough
to strike your interest,
scribbling it out in a fiery passion
for you to shriek back at your own life’s claws
But I fear I cannot do that today
For that would be red, you see
And I feel something purple at best

I suppose I could be blue, and sit in my corner,
maybe take a sip of the sky, stare at the clouds in the water,
dripping into the earth like the shade does down my back
and crawl into it like a grave,
But I think you know it would take too much of me
For to go outside is to allow the golden sun to kiss my skin,
and if I did that again,
I would be nothing but a bare white
But I don’t want to be neutralized, no, this state is best felt fully
For it feeds something different than most

I can still eat and drink,
I can still hold a smile,
I can still walk and run and think of lovely things,
but it must be done mechanically
Because the color of love is the color of blood,
and it is not mine, but it is in me,

for I am something much finer, much more elegant,
secondary,
a cousin of both season’s leaves,
a rich man’s robes and seat but never his skin,
a midnight sky if you’re lucky enough,
a simple and scary and complicated, radiant, pure,
pathetic something
And at least for now I’ll stay that way
I’m nothing at worst,
But I’m something at least,
And I feel something purple at best