Joshua Walker

Storm after storm,
I place buckets under the drips.
The ceiling peels, the floor stains,
but still—I catch the rain.

Some nights I dance in the leak,
bare feet slapping water,
like I’m mocking the sky itself:
is this all you’ve got?

The roof will cave someday—
fine.
Until then, my buckets are thrones,
and I sit crowned by persistence.

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.