Poetry: Ode to Jogging, A Spotify Playlist & All My Friends Who Can’t Greet the Dawn With Ease by J.B. Stone
“Lately,” JB Stone writes, joy “can be a chore to maintain.” Stone’s new poem meets us all where we are today, an Ode to the precipice of an unexpected reality and our anxious struggle to jog the new path.
Ode to Jogging, A Spotify Playlist & All My Friends Who Can’t Greet the Dawn With Ease
Lately, the sun has felt like a friend rather than a vampire. Lately,
smiles have felt genuine rather than draining. Whenever I see the sunrise
it’s a reminder that mornings still exist. & the warehouse submerged
inside the rustbelt of my bones is slowly blossoming into a garden worth
the labor. The rubble silted heavily underneath the baggy gravel of my
eyes erode. Existential lunchbreaks; time well spent embraced in the caress
of a wind gust. The emptied street corner, tucked into the neighborhood
of my anatomy: now a raised fist finding a fighting chance at revival rather
than self-destruction. To my friends who simply can’t greet the dawn with
ease; there is no calendar notification / no tally on a daily planner / marked
for this. For as worthy as joy is to pursue, it can be a chore to maintain. Yet
there are spaces where we build a coalition inside our only moments of peace /
and our happiness becomes an act of defiance
JB Stone
J.B. Stone is a neurodivergent/autistic slam poet, writer and reviewer residing in Buffalo, NY. He is the author of A Place Between Expired Dreams And Renewed Nightmares (Ghost City Press 2018) and INHUMAN ELEGIES (Ghost City Press 2020). He is also the Editor-In-Chief/Reviews Editor at Variety Pack. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Moon Park Review, Atticus Review, [PANK], Empty Mirror, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Peach Mag, and elsewhere.
