Joshua Walker

I stub out one more cigarette,
line it among the others like a row of soldiers—
burned, blackened, but still proof
that I stood here, breathing smoke instead of silence.

The world keeps breaking windows,
keeps hammering nails into my wrists,
but I light, I drag, I exhale,
and in that small cloud I build a barricade.

They call it weakness—
I call it ritual.
Even poison can become a prayer
if it keeps your hands from shaking.

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.