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Best Poems Written by Erin Cowart

Below are the all-time best Erin Cowart poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Erin Cowart Poem

Spaciousness

Pay attention to the silence
The pause right before words are spoken
The future exists in that holy space

Pay attention to the pause
The second of stillness before you draw your next breath
Your life exists in the gratitude of that moment

Pay attention to the spaces
The brief breaks between action and non-action
Your soul hangs in the balance of that time

Do not be like the crowd
Running from one moment to the next  
Without silence
Without pause
Without space
And missing the whole point of existence

Honor the silence
Praise the pause
Celebrate the space

They are your life

Details | Erin Cowart Poem

Fragility

Did you ever need to just be held
Gently, like a baby bird or fragile leaf
That when touched harshly
Crumbles to dust in the hand

You who are bound together so tightly
With the thinnest of twine
Who cannot move one way or another
Without breaking in to a million pieces

If someone would just hold you
Honestly and in stillness
You might find the strength to stay bound
Or at least the desire to

What it must be like to float
In and through the soft hands of one who loves you
To find a soft place to land and scream
When the twine finally breaks

The problem is that you look sturdy
You look like the weight of the world
Could rest easily upon your shoulders
You do not look like some fragile thing

Unless someone cares to look in your eyes
They would never know
Only your eyes know the secret
And you never look anyone in the eyes

But there may come a day
When you look up
And hope that someone will see
And hope that they will hold you

And let you breathe for a while
And hold the weight for a while
And let you scream for a while
Until you can laugh again for a while

Gentle seer and holder of lost souls
This is my wish
To be held
To be weightless
To breathe
To be
Hold me

Details | Erin Cowart Poem

The Smolder

I have a safe life
We all want safe
Get a little job
Pay a little bill
With just a little paycheck
That will never be enough to buy
Freedom

We play at freedom
Convinced that we have no chains
Only to find in the quiet moments
That life is chains
And that is the secret
We can never speak

If we utter the truth
It would break us
So we live little lives
And teach our children to be little
When the whole point was to be big

The whole point was
There was no point
The answer to life is
To be life
To be so big that there is no room for anything else

Not many people can do that
People are content to be small
Content with just enough
Being just enough
Doing just enough
So that they do not have to see or be seen

The most dangerous man
Realizes this
And sets fire to his life
Walks away while the ashes
Of what was his life
Are still smoldering

We should all smolder 
Once in our lives
I haven't had a good smolder 
In years
Maybe ever

Somedays I am brave enough
To pick up the matches
Strike them
And wonder what
Would happen if I just
Let them fall

Other days
I cannot find a fire
Or desire
And even a flamethrower
Could not set my world ablaze

Perhaps one day
I will stop being weak
And burn the whole thing down
Quietly walk away
And be big in a small world

But today I sit
At my little job
To collect a little paycheck
To pay a little bill
And dream of freedom

Details | Erin Cowart Poem

To My Religion: Good-Bye Thoughts and Wishes

I was done
Packed my bags
Ran from the grasp
Of Liars and Cons

Considered myself lucky
To know the truth
And walk away
Mostly intact

No damage
No harm
No foul

It’s funny the lies we tell
To mitigate pain

Only now as I unravel
Myself from the knots that were tied
Does the insidious truth
Raise its sneaky head

Were my choices even mine?
Was every thought under your control?
To make me like you
To do what you say
To believe as you believe

And to have been placed
At your mercy
By those who were supposed to protect
Is a bitter pill to swallow

They did not know
But I ask myself how did they not know
When it was so plain to me
Once I looked

They were trained not to look
And I guess they were better at not looking than me
I guess I failed at not looking

I like to think walking away was easy
I do not give it a second thought
On most days…

Other days I realize
That walking away was the easy part
Living away
Separate from the thing
Is a much harder task

Unwrapping everything I am
Outside of what I was told to be
Dissecting my actions and thoughts
To eviscerate any trace of things that are not me

Weeping when the letting go seems endless
Rejoicing when it is freeing
Running when it is overwhelming
Cowering in fear when letting go means losing

Losing family
Losing promises
Losing community

Yet here I find myself decidedly unlost
I am found
In the deep places you never wanted me to know existed
This joy is what you are afraid of
If anyone felt this
They would never settle for your imitation

So today I will let go
Of fear
Of shame
Of guilt
Of the things you told me I would feel
If I strayed from your path

I stand
With my feet on solid ground
Built by my true heart and hands
A foundation on which I can safely build
The life I will design

Some days I may look over my shoulder
But not with regret for lost things
With hope for a time that you will find yourself
A horrid memory of the past
A reminder of the worst parts of humanity
That gradually faded in to the recesses of time
Where you cannot hurt anyone ever again.

I will smile
I will play with my children
The ones who will not be bound to you
The ones who will be good without you
The ones who will rise uncaged

I will thank the tears
And Doubts
And Fears
That led me away
That opened the cage
And set me free.

Details | Erin Cowart Poem

Start Again

Here is how we start
Breathe in and then out
Eyes open, then closed, then open again
Place your feet on the floor
And rise to greet the day

This day will not come again
And thank whatever gods there are
For that small mercy
This day I put you under grass
And say a final goodbye

Here is how it starts
She was brave and lovely until the end
What courage and grace
Words and words and more words
Then we will sing a song

Here is how it ends
Take a handful of dirt
And throw it on her coffin
A fort to keep out the worms
To preserve flesh and bone for a while longer

Here is how we cry
Numb and in the bottom of a bottle
Shoving leftovers in our mouths to fill the hole in our bellies
Digging through the remains of a life
Dividing them up like consolation prizes
A small consolation

Here is how we sleep
In sweat drenched sheets
With nightmare memories
That never seem to end
And only serve to remind of what was lost

What was lost will never be again
The arrangement of swirling matter and stardust that was her
Cannot find its way back to the same form
Cannot create the same smell, or touch or taste
And a copy is never as good as the original anyway

Here is how we live
In waking moments of little deaths
The book she never finished reading
The toothbrush left on the sink
The pillow that still holds the scent

And then one day, unexpectedly life will resume
The swirling dance of action will carry on
The music will play
And we will move in time with all the dancers

Here is how we start again
Breathe in and then out
Eyes open, then closed, then open again
Place your feet on the floor
And rise to greet the day

Details | Erin Cowart Poem

Treading Water

I have been treading the water of the universe
For 15,845 days
Head slightly above the water
Arms and legs in a frantic dance for survival

You can tell yourself that at some point you will stop
There must be a stopping point, right?
The time to float seems like a luxury you have earned
But for today, day 15,845 you will keep treading

If you feel the water begin to creep up
If the universe seems bound to rise against you
You may want to flail about like a fish on the sand
But believe me, it will be useless

Better to sink into the water
Let the blackholes devour you
And come to find that what you always needed
Was the sinking

Sink in to the deep
Fall in to the vastness of the void
Stare with terror at the tide of destruction
Embrace your fate

And then

Emerge to find that what you thought was an ending
Is really a beginning
That the strange new shore upon which you find yourself
Is a paradise for the aching limbs that struggled for so long

You can float here
In the undulating waves
Of the new world
In a universe you found in your destruction

Details | Erin Cowart Poem

The Lies We Tell

Being a good person will take you far
Like one wheeled bicycles and dead battery cars

If you do your best things will turn out fine
Like gas on fires and bread with no yeast

Those jeans still fit
Like my hand in yours and yoga pants on a fat girl

Falling in love is fabulous
Like smelly garbage trucks and moldy fruit

Falling out of love is easy
Like rocket science and scaling cliffs

If you love someone they will love you back
Like cats love dogs and gay men love straight women

Like you love me….

Details | Erin Cowart Poem

Darkness Made Light

Some may say
Look on the bright side
Life is not all doom and gloom
There is beauty to be seen and appreciated

I appreciate all the beauties of this life
Yet there is a call in me
To examine the horrors
The dark places where men’s minds do not care to wander

If one can shine a light on the dark
If the hidden and unspeakable
Are seen and spoken
Then can they not become beautiful in their darkness?

If the sorrows and horrors of the world
Can come raging from my soul
And spill on to the page
Arranged in words both beautiful and true

Then sorrow has become beauty
Dark horror has become light
And they no longer belong to the dark
But are held, softly and reverently in the palm of my hand

I will not let them fall

Details | Erin Cowart Poem

Floating

There is a wind that runs through your life
It will carry you 
Lift you
Cool you
And comfort you
As it guides to the place you were meant to be

Allow yourself to be carried
Even when the wind seems like it will rip you apart
Even when it lays your life to ruin
There is rebirth in destruction


There is a tide that runs through your life
It will shape you
Change you
Bathe you
And be constant
As it pulls you to your dreams

Allow yourself to be shaped, changed
Even when you cannot see your new form
Even when it requires you to abandon all that you were
There is beauty in rebirth


There is a current that runs through your life
It will charge you
Power you
Excite you
And be electric
As you near the people and gifts that are yours

Allow yourself to be powerful
Even in your weakness
Even if it means walking away from those who lessen you
There is happiness waiting in you

Details | Erin Cowart Poem

Cigarette Runs and Traffic Lights

It is night
2 am
I am driving to the store for cigarettes
A short trip

Or it would be
Except the light turns red
The minute I reach it
I slow my car to a crawl

Hoping that I can inch my way forward
That if I just take my time
It will turn green and signal
My departure

It doesn’t turn green
And so I sit
At a red light
With not another car in sight

I sit tight
Just like I was trained to do
A good citizen
A willing slave

Even when it is clear I could move
Even when not a soul would be harmed
By pushing on the gas
And blowing the light

I sit in the dark
At the light
A quiet symbol of control
And wonder what it means to be free

And this is quite possibly
The greatest argument
For not buying cigarettes
At 2 am

If more people sat
In the dark
At lights at 2am
Then the makers of lights and rules
Might tremble