Sad Birds Still Sing

by Faraway

Overview

Sad Birds Still Sing is a highly anticipated book of poetry from anonymous author Faraway. In less than a year, he has become one of the most recognizable figures on the platform he writes: Instagram (@farawaypoetry). In this book of selected poems and writings, Faraway takes the reader on a journey of discovery, with a message of hope running as the main artery through the pages. Sad Birds Still Sing fearlessly dives into the depths of the human condition, tackling topics such as new and old love, heartbreak, loss, anxiety, self-love, dreaming, and much more. With an emphasis on short-form poetry, worlds and ideas, emotions and thoughts are woven together on the pages.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781771681841
Publisher:	Central Avenue Publishing
Publication date:	10/15/2019
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	192
File size:	922 KB

About the Author

Faraway is an anonymous poet based in California who developed a massive online following in less than a year. Stay connected @farawaypoetry

At 26 years old, penning down his first book was something of necessity. Words were pouring out and being placed online for hundreds of thousands to read, and while seeing the highs and lows expressed in pixels was a step toward closure, holding those moments on paper gently in the palms of his hands was what he truly needed to move on from his past. Heartbreaks, let-downs, memories had but unwanted, thoughts about the world and fellow humans around him, it all coalesced into a carefully crafted book of poetry, Sad Birds Still Sing.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

sad bird sings

Society tells us to break in silence,
as if the cries of our hearts don't deserve to be heard.

Well,
I'll smile when I want to;
I'll break when I need to.

I will show this world that it is still beautiful when sad birds sing.

When I feel most alive,
I take a moment to take it all in,
to reflect on how low I've been and how far away from it all I am in that moment.

Those are the good days,
the highlights, the times that have filled me with hope,
the ones that will bring me peace when it is my turn to leave this world behind.

How poetic,
the power of the heart,
to continue its beating on the nights that we wish it would stop.
Someday,
I will have shed my skin so many times,
it will be as if you never even touched me.

— born again I still slept on the nights I thought I'd never sleep again.

And every time,
I woke up with the ground still below my feet.

What more could I have asked for than another chance to try again?

— train wrecks don't end the world See,
my parents did the best thing for me:
they showed me the harshness of the real world,
but they never invalidated my wildest dreams.

— raising dreamers My most valuable lessons were not learned in a classroom.

I walked this world with violent footsteps and learned through earthquakes and heartache.

I have shaken the world,
and it has shaken me.
Quiet moments,
when words are worlds away,
when not a sound is being made but so very much is being said —
I live for those.

— eye contact As a kid,
I'd chase the sun and laugh as she'd run.

I've since grown up,
but I still play with the idea that chasing sunsets and chasing dreams are kind of the same thing.

It's less about holding the sun in your hands,
and more about enjoying the chase.

— playing with ideas There was no longer laughter;
this was how I knew it was over.

The loneliness I felt with you taught me to never underestimate the power of simply having someone to talk to.

— how was your day?
Do not tell me there is no light where there is dark — that just because we might break,
we should not fall.

I've lit matches in the dark,
and I have bones that are stronger only because they've cracked.

— the healing process On late nights,
I can't help but wonder,
wander barefoot in my thoughts.

And I always arrive at the same destination,
the very same thought:

"Better things must await me."
There are worlds inside of me that I have yet to discover.
There are lessons from my past that I have yet to unearth.
I am still so young with so much exploring left to do.

— looking in is looking up I write because I have things to say to people who will not listen.
If happiness can wander off,
it assuredly can come back home.

— oh, and it will All of this confusion will make sense someday.

"Why?" will become an answered question, and the fog that clouds your mind will leave your body with the ease of an exhale.

— breathing again You can't force positivity into a mind stuffed with negative ways of thinking; some thoughts have to go before there can be room for something new.

— spilling your guts is really just making room Sometimes,
all the goodness in your heart is all you have.

Oh, but how incredibly far away from nothing that is.

— infinity in your chest I crave a scene between us so well written,
it bleeds through pages.

So much so that at the end of the story,
after all is said and done,
all I can think about is that one scene and how it changed everything.
Laughter: it can alter the ambience of even the unhappiest of moments.

— medicine for moments If you find hope,
run toward it;
run toward this unfamiliar light and never look back.

— first sign of light I said it the day we met;
years later, it is still a pleasure to have met you.

— "nice to meet you"
Because of you,
peace is a place I go;
it has lips, eyes, a soul wrapped in skin, and arms that restore me whenever I have grown too tired.
Find a lover who makes the world feel both bigger and smaller all at once.

— hemispheres in my hands You loved me as though my heart were the world and the world needed more of it.

— p.s. it did You are a human,
not a rest stop;
do not let them come back when they are in need.

— self-respect Do you feel it, too?

Tell me that I am not all alone in this.

Because there is no greater fear than being all alone in something that could last forever.

— and I am not alone There were words waiting for you in my pocket no more than a moment ago.

I wrote them last night,
rehearsed them until daylight broke and my voice was cracking.

It's funny,
the way words leave us the moment we need them the most.

— misplaced words I used to believe I was born on the wrong continent,
at the wrong time, in the wrong body with imbalanced chemicals that made me incapable of love.

— this was before you We fell, together,
from the summits of young love,
madly convinced that falling was the first step to flying.

— young love My only comfort when I'm wide awake is that we're still in love when I'm in deep sleep.
If only we had met later in life. Maybe then,
now, we would have been mature enough for feelings as deep and real as ours were.

— young heartache I still associate your calm embrace with some of the most chaotic days of my life.

— the calm and the chaotic Beauty is one thing,
but a pure heart, that is beautiful.
Who's to say you cannot start over?
Who's to say you weren't meant for something else?
Tell me, when did it become your place to tell me that I am not meant for something better than what I have now?

— I'll dream bigger if I so wish I hope you realize this someday soon:
true happiness isn't sexually transmitted.
Never again will I bow to my fears so religiously; there's no god to be found in apprehension.

— forgetting fear This heart of mine,
it doesn't break with every beat like it used to; my heartbeat is no longer a metronome of misery. I take chances now,
knowing damn well that I just might fall apart,
understanding that allowing heartache to deter you from love is no life at all.

My heart sings a different song these days.
Can you hear that?
It is my soul swooning over who I have become.

— the song my soul sings lately A dream is a very real thing.
I'd know: I've felt it.
I've lived it. I taste it on my lips every time you kiss me goodnight.

— the taste of dreams I owe my life to close calls, the way all of the knives in my back have missed my heart by centimeters.

— you missed If the stars are not aligned,
I've always found it best to tug them into place.

— why wait?
What an odd statement to make,
but maybe, just maybe,
if I repeat it enough,
it will become a part of me.

— "I am enough"
I can't explain why I feel so much when not a word between us is exchanged.

— silence, I swear, it moves mountains If love can fade,
then so can pain.
The best place to get lost is in the eyes of someone you've missed.

— lost yet home One hello can take away the pain of a thousand goodbyes.
Your lips make me forgetful;
they meet mine, and I can never quite remember what I was so upset about.

— suddenly amnesic There is no space between us,
even when there is space between us.

Isn't that something utterly remarkable?

It's as if this world could never tear us apart.

— knotted at the soul There's no hiding from your soul mate:
they will find you,
you will fall,
and they will stay.
Don't go thinking it wasn't real;
we don't dedicate ourselves to things we don't believe in,
and at one point, we belonged entirely unto each other.

— it was beautiful, and I regret nothing You are not wrong for wanting better for yourself, but you are wrong if that means destroying someone else.

— there's enough sunlight for us all If I die alone,
build my tomb for two,
just in case my soul mate is born in a different time than I.

— separated by centuries I no longer long for the worlds I've left behind.
I am no longer dinner for the things that've been eating me alive.

— maybe this is what closure feels like

CHAPTER 2

the bad days

Loneliness —
it goes as unnoticed as a heart murmur.

Until one day,
you begin to question,
"What is that sound?"
You hear it for a while;
it begins to be a bother.

Your heart skips and you sink a bit when you finally understand it:

It's your heart crying out,
"I am alone, and I am lonely."
Lately,
my soul has been suffering.
I used to move mountains;
these days, I can hardly move my own body weight.

I once believed in myself,
but times have never been harder.

This, right here,
is the part that hurts:
the fact that I let the world seep into me and drench my spirit in negativity.

— I guess the world got to me The universe shrinks on the bad days,
when depression is at its worst —
sometimes, down to the size of just this bedroom.

— the shrinking universe Of all the people I've hurt,
I've hurt myself the most; I owe myself an apology.
It's as if my lungs forget how to breathe,
my legs forget how to walk,
my heart forgets a few beats,
when my mind forgets whose side it is on.

— Ativan adventures Look at it this way:
you tried; you truly gave something your everything,
and that's not something to be disappointed about.
There are things holding onto you.
Kick them from off of your ankles,
those ghosts you're better without.

And when they squeeze tightly,
hold on for very dear life, you kick and kick and kick until they let go.

They will give up — they always do.
You just have to keep pushing them out of your life for long enough.

Your happiness today is far more important than the happiness you have had in the past.
We hurt together, always,
taking turns crying on the other's shoulder, failing to realize that the drowning can't save the drowning.
They can only pull each other a little bit further under water.

— going down together To forgive and forget,
how perfect would that be?

If I stopped believing in ghosts,
would the hauntings go away?

There are so many things I am dying to unlive and unlearn,

but how could I possibly forget what I still feel in my bones?

I swear,
some memories have a way of forever feeling like they happened today.
I'm feeling so little today.
It's not that I'm feeling small;
it's that I'm hardly feeling anything at all.

— little human Some nights,
I go out and drive at twice the speed limit,
attempting to feel half as alive as you used to make me feel.

— yet my heart hardly races The worst part about being an open book is the people who turn your pages and find nothing beautiful worth sticking around for.

— in their eyes I lost you, and the world mourned with me: the birds stopped singing, the flowers in the cracks of concrete all withered away, and the sunlight couldn't reach the ground through the cloud cover all summer long.
I am a world.

My heart is the most problematic part of it.

It clashes with everyone,
threatens to drop bombs if it does not get what it desires.

And I know far too well that those threats are the furthest thing from empty.
It kills me to know that you're out there searching for somebody else when I've been here all along.

— a friend who's dying to be your lover Don't tell me it was painful to leave when you've never lived through the winter that is abandonment; this is a cold your soul has never endured.

— untouched I keep this thing,
this picture of you,
the last one ever taken,
from the day you died.

I take it with me everywhere I go,
to remind myself that if I can live on after the greatest loss of my life,

I can survive today, too.

— I'm convinced you'd agree Fight for me,
as I am fighting for you.
This love runs too deep to be left up to fate.

— stars on our knuckles It's selfish of me to think I'm the only one in pain here.
Your lungs must hurt from all of the screaming you've done.

My heart must have sunk a hundred times by now.

A child shouldn't take pills to fall asleep early, just to avoid the summer storms that rage nightly in the back bedroom.

My heart must have sunk a thousand times by now.

Maybe if you understood more about the chemicals in your head,
I wouldn't have to grow up feeling like mine are the ones that are imbalanced.

I don't think my heart could possibly sink any further.

A deep sigh isn't deep enough to exhale the ache that I feel inside of me this morning.

— pardon my sadness I'm getting better about it,
but it will always be there,
the dull ache of being
"happy for you."
Truly falling asleep alone isn't when there is no one by your side;
it's when you feel like you're not even near yourself.

— I slept in an empty bed last night That night,
the years I had known you disappeared, and I no longer knew the person that was lying beside me.
You're a bridge that connects who I am to who I used to be.

I cannot go near you anymore.

Because I cannot touch you without falling into ancient mindsets.

If I ever want to be a better person,
I must take this gasoline, pour it on what I used to love the most, and let the light cast a shadow in front of me as I finally walk away.

- a burning bridge and a lone shadow Do you still fall apart when you think of me, too?

— tell me you do You say you've got nothing left to live for,
as if I'm not standing right here beside you.

— love is reason enough I don't think you fully understand the gravity of the situation.

If you stopped your heart tonight,
mine would be soon to follow.

— suicide kills We don't ask each other how we've been;
I'd lie to you,
and you'd lie to me.

We'd continue on with painted smiles until we'd run out of paint and break down in the arms of our mothers —

separately, of course.
It's always separately.

— two kids in love This thing you created,
this life, this human,
you were supposed to love it more than you ever did.

So don't pretend to feel destroyed when the creation begins to act like the creator doesn't exist.

— raise your children, not your voice Every morning,
I wake up next to the fact that you fell asleep with someone else last night.

— right where you used to sleep
"I hope you find someone you deserve."

How painful kind words can be,
when spoken by the wrong person.

— you used to be that someone It's astounding,
how someone can go from taking away your breath to taking away your will to breathe.

— at least I'm breathing Peace has always felt a lot like bottle art, something I can see and appreciate but never quite feel for myself.

— through the glass I was half your age the first time you made me feel half your worth.

I still carry that scar on my body from the first time you stopped seeing me as a human and more as a soft place to strike.

I didn't have it in me to return fire back then,
but I promised myself that I would hit you someday,
where it'd hurt the most:

in the spirit,
in the gut,
in everything you are.

I'd strike you back by living my life being happy,
in spite of the fact that you happened.
In the end,
it's the love you give each other on the bad days that matters the most.
The spin of the earth makes my soul dizzy.
It didn't used to.

Falling asleep feels more like running away.
It didn't used to.

Kissing your lips makes me sick to my stomach.
It didn't used to.

Saying goodnight feels more like saying goodbye.
Oh, it didn't used to.

- why does everything feel so different?
I have a bad habit of searching for beauty in beasts and forever in temporary people.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Sad Birds Still Sing"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Faraway.
Excerpted by permission of Central Avenue Marketing Ltd..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

sections,
sad bird sings,
the bad days,
autumn evenings,
unfinished business,