This Can't Be All There Is

By David J. Lovato

You're navigating the wilderness we call a society. Your family or your church turned their back on you. Or your car broke down. Or your guitar did. Everyone witnesses storms, everyone splits. Time flies by. Seasons grow and change, and then they die. Along a long-forgotten highway, tires drift. You haven't seen your partner because they're picking up extra shifts. You dream about another world because this one doesn't fit. When it's your turn, will you sigh or cry or shout into the sky: This can't be all there is. 27 poems, 27 narrators. It's a big world, and this is what they saw in it. What will you see?

• Language: English
• Publisher: David J. Lovato
• Release date: Nov 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463894354

David J. Lovato

I live in Kansas City, where I spend most of my time reading, writing, or reading and writing.

Book preview

This Can’t Be All There Is

by

David J. Lovato

Copyright © 2019 David J. Lovato

Cover images copyright © 2019 David J. Lovato

All rights reserved.

Contents:

Wilderness

The House You Built for Me

We Were

Someday Will Eventually Come

Still

Storms

Graveyard Shift

All My Favorite Songs

Come Back

Variables

At the End of All Things

Take Me Away

When I Went to Bed

This Can’t Be All There Is

Nowhere Road

Worry

I Live Here

I Need You, Summer

Shapes and Spaces

A Long Night’s Conversation

You Harbor

Worth

KALEIDOSCOPE

Noise

Just Passing Through

Hey Sunburn

My Forever

Afterword

Introduction

I finished the first draft of this collection back in 2016. I had hoped to release it as both a book and a recorded, spoken-word album. All of the songs were demoed, and many of them were completely finished except for the vocals. I never did get my voice to a place I could stand. Maybe someday.

This collection isn’t a direct story like my past three poetry collections were. While it has a few common themes running throughout, the idea was more to contrast different emotions or even just words, to leave some lines or entire poems ambiguous in their meaning or whether they’re happy or sad. I’ll let you decide for yourself.

David J. Lovato

October 2019

Wilderness

I can’t believe anyone would spend so many years

Being here.

It’s not so much a wilderness

As it is a bad experience,

Wildlife clawing its way to the top

Of a mountain of people who got in the way.

And those of us on the bottom are told this is our place,

And maybe we’ll claw our own way out someday.

…That isn’t a price I’m willing to pay,

This isn’t a game I’m going to play.

There has to be more.

This can’t be all there is.

The House You Built for Me

You built for me a house,

And then you locked me out.

Hoping I would stand in the snow