Joshua Walker

I have a pool. It has a hole and bleeds,
but I keep pouring in water,
watching it vanish like everything else
they try to steal from me.

A tree leans over, a vine crawls its fingers in,
but I skim the surface anyway,
ritual after ritual, daring it to win.

I have a wood fence; it splintered, demanded labor,
even now it moans in the wind,
cracks gaping like open wounds—
a sieve of light they’ll never patch.

I’ve worked my life for a pool that refuses to hold,
bled for a fence that bends and breaks.
Every day they take, claw, demand more—
but I keep the leaking water,
the warped wood, the defiance.

They try to break us, but here I sit,
cigarette burning, exposed, untamed.
The water drips, the fence groans,
and in their imperfections, I rise.

Joshua Walker is The Last Bard, an independent poet with over 310,000 followers across platforms. His work has appeared in Potomac Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, Solarpunk Magazine, and more. Drawing from life with schizoaffective disorder, he writes in a voice both raw and defiant, finding resilience in imperfection. Refusing institutional ties, Walker stands as a fully freelance poet, carrying forward a tradition of truth-telling, survival, and resistance through poetry.

This poem appeared in What We Hold On To: Poems of Coping, Connection, and Carrying On — Winter 2026, published by The Chaos Section Poetry Project. We’ll be featuring each poem from the collection individually in the weeks ahead. You can read the full collection or download a free PDF of the chapbook here.