If you love poetry that really makes you feel something, then you need look no further. Andrea Gibson, an award-winning poet and activist, covers subjects including sexuality, heartbreak, depression, love and social reform. You can find each of these poems (and more) recorded in spoken-word on YouTube and Spotify. They are even more powerful recited aloud. The following are excerpts from just a handful of poems written by the ingenious Andrea Gibson. Prepare yourself for all of the feels.
1. "Do we really believe our need for Prozac has nothing to do with Baghdad, with Kabul, with the Mexican border, with the thousands of U.S. school kids bleeding through budget cuts that will never heal, to fuel war tanks? Thank God for denial. Thank God we can afford the makeup to pile upon the face of it all. Look at the pretty world. Look at all the smiling people and the sky with a missile between her teeth and a steeple through her heart and not a single star left to hold her. And the voices of a thousand broken nations saying "wake me, wake me, when the American dream is over." - When the Bough Breaks
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2. "Tell her there's a tambourine in my chest, and yes, she still shakes me. Too bad love is an Etch-A-Sketch. Good thing love is an Etch-A-Sketch. If you see her, tell her I've been running towards my life like Laura Ingels running down that hill in her flower dress." - Glider Plane
3. "So let me tell you, I know there are days it looks like the whole world is dancing in the streets while you break down like the doors of their looted buildings. You are not alone and wondering who will be convicted of the crime of insisting you keep loading your grief into the chamber of your shame. You are not weak just because your heart feels so heavy." - The Nutritionist
4. "I wrote you too many poems in a language I did not yet know how to speak." - Maybe I Need You
5. "You told me years ago I should start writing the poems I was terrified to write. Well, here you go. It's not that I'm not terrified you're going to break my heart in half, but when you do I want to have written your name as my emergency contact. I want God to call you and say that the door frame that saves you from the earthquake is part of love's rib cage. The falling roof of your fear is a lost lung pulling you closer towards the truce, that final truce where even your terror becomes an open field." - Emergency Contact
6. "I'm a moody star, but if you said 'glow,' I'd cut my soul into a million little pieces to form constellations just to light your way home." - Slip Your Mind
7. "I'm not looking for someone who can save me. Life rafts might keep you afloat but they rarely get you anywhere, and I've got places I want to go. So break me in two, peel back my rib cage and cover every page of my heart with love poems you will burn some day." - Wasabi
8. "I wonder if Beethoven held his breath the first time his fingers touched the keys the same way a soldier holds his breath the first time his finger clicks the trigger. We all have different reasons for forgetting to breathe." - Birthday
9. "I know our wounds are as deep as the Atlantic. But every ocean has a shoreline and every shoreline has a tide that is constantly returning to wake the songbirds in our hands, to wake the music in our bones." - Pole Dancing to Gospel Hymns
10. "Forests may be gorgeous, but there is nothing more alive than a tree that learns how to grow in a cemetery." - Titanic
11. "Autumn is the hardest season. The leaves are all falling like they're falling in love with the ground. And the trees are naked and lonely. I keep trying to tell them new leaves will come around in the spring, but you can't tell trees those things. They're like me, they just stand there and don't listen." - Photograph
12. "I never meant to fire, you know. I know you never meant to fire, lover. I know we never meant to hurt each other. Now the sky clicks from black to blue and dusk looks like a bruise. I've been wrapping one night stands around my body like wedding bands, and none of them fit in the morning. They just slip off my fingers and slip out the door and all that lingers is a scent of you." - Photograph
13. "I can't live here. In my body, I mean. I can't live in my body all the time, it feels too much. So if I ever feel far away know I am not gone. I am just underneath my grief, adjusting the dial on my radio faith so I can take this life with all of its love and all of its loss." - Royal Heart
14. "When they ask why we stayed together for so long, I say, I don't know. I just know that we cried at the exact same time in every movie. I know we blushed every day for the first two years. I know I always stole the covers and she never woke me up." - Prism
15. "That night when you kissed me, I left a poem in your mouth, and you can hear some of the lines every time you breathe out." - Yarn
