Original Poetry about anything and everything.
Punish me brutally
Lock me up in shackles
Give me what I deserve.
All these years I’ve begged
Just to get what I’m owed
Only to realize
There is nothing worse.
Now learning my earnings
Are what you’ve saved me from
I’ll swear my allegiance
To your promise
That doesn’t fit on paper.
Who else has threatened death
With life
And won?
– Vagabond Prophet
Sloth, as defined by the poets dictioary.
Definition: To have one’s soul trapped in half set concrete. Wanting to move and able to move but the effort is beyond conception and eventually desire is too. Conforming to whatever mold you happen to find yourself in out of ease. Especially pernicious as being the most comfortable of the sins. Every tragedy, every dream, every ambition can be safely ignored with nothing more than a blanket and a pillow.
Other definitions include: Laziness.
A lack of interest in living.
To have had your blood swapped with a thick thick roux.
Some slip into it for a brief reprieve from calamity, and find themselves so sluggish that they can’t ever leave.
Antonyms: Vitality, energetic, productivity.
Slothfulness only seeks to ruin hearts by stagnation. To still the waters of your mind until they can nourish nothing at all and never feel another ripple at all no matter how one seeks to disturb them.
– Vagabond Prophet
Midnight snacks and joints that crack
The consequence of needs not flaunted.
Dreaming is hard when what you desire
Is beyond imagination.
In the meantime I keep
A dead bird in my pocket
Robin red breasted
Dressed to impress,
Imbue me with your majesty
So I can pretend at confidence
Until it’s not pretend.
Don’t be a mute canary
In the coalmine
Silent when we need your shrill chirp.
In death give me your sense for emergency
And a voice to match.
All these things and more I’ll do
Until I wake up by surprise
To find a new sunrise
Finding a world, no longer in disguise.
– Vagabond Prophet
– Thanks @josy57 for the prompt “a dead bird in my pocket”
Always have song present
The melodies of beauty to usher you
Through the monotony of life,
Crescendos to hold you through lows,
Melancholy sounds to remind you
In joy, that this is not yet home.
Music has lulled me
Invigorated this spirit,
Fortified my bones
When milk no longer could.
Harmonies even curlier than my hair
Have spun my heartbreak into epiphany.
Reminding that he speaks through all
If you only have ears to hear.
Always have song present
To comfort you when bothered
To bother you when comfortable.
The most beautiful sounds making sadness
Pulling tears from your eyes
To stretch into harp strings.
Always have song present
When you’ve canoes with no oars
And tusks with no boars
Rhythms yet unknown
Will guide your feet to safety.
– Vagabond Prophet
Dearest Elizabeth June 18 2017
I hope you and the children are well. I miss you guys so much it’s painful. I still cannot believe I’m in prison. Convict, inmate, incarcerated, prisoner, criminal. I never ever thought that these words could be used to describe me.
It all sounds so fruitless to tell you now but it’s just like I said in court. I had been laid off from my job, more workers than they could afford once some of the investors pulled out of the contract. I didn’t want to come home from work early to tell you I had to look for work again, not again.
It was raining that day so I took the bus. When I was at the bus stop I was talking to a guy about how he hasn’t seen me at this time of day before because I just got fired. He was a big guy, broad shoulders, shaved head. He told me he owned a business and was actually looking for able bodied men who take directions well.
“I can do it! I’m your man, let me see it’s Friday today so I’ll get you a resume and references and meet you on Monday? Does that work for you?” I said to him.
“ That won’t be necessary, I trust your word. If you tell me you’re solid I’ll believe you. Just don’t let me down.” He replied.
That bastard! He was so friendly, so kind. You always said I was too trusting of people and I should have listened to you. What was I thinking! Getting hired at a bus stop without any kind of interview or anything. I should have smelled the bull shit right away but I couldn’t, all I could think was how I wouldn’t have to tell you I’d lost my job.
I was so happy. I’d been saved. After one day “working” with this man I find myself slammed in jail, the court, and now here. All so fast.
Day one he just told me that we were just picking up some cash from somebody who owed him on the way to the work site. So we pulled up to the back of this building and he told me to wait by the door with a bag. I just stood there waiting, totally oblivious they were robbing the place until alarms started ringing and cops showed up to cuff me. The bag I was holding had a gun in it I didn’t know about, the other guys had bolted out a different exit.
Now I have to listen to the people here drone on and on about things I really can’t care about. They keep talking about programs that they offer here. Education, skills training, that sort of thing. So many guys here haven’t even finished high school. For me though it all sounds so pointless. They keep reminding us to take our programs seriously as they prepare us for rehabilitation into society. I know how to live in society! I was real good at it too. I had a job, I paid taxes, I got educated. I was a construction worker for goodness sake I was the damn poster boy for responsible citizen. Working hard to support a family, rain or shine. Exercise in the evenings, cycling to work to reduce my carbon footprint. All the stuff these programs are supposed to prepare me for. Now I’m stuck here for five long years.
I can’t even pretend to care about how any of that matters. Right now all I can think of is how today is Father’s Day and I’m in prison. I’m going to end this letter now and go to the visiting area in case you guys decide to surprise me with a visit. It’s the only thought that’s gotten me through the day.
Sincerely,
Your Husband
I finished this a while ago. Would love to know what people think of it, if you like what you read in this first chapter search the tag “solitary refinement” on my page and you’ll find the rest.
Thanks everybody.
– Vagabond Prophet
Stardust and comets tails
Solar winds fill heavens sails.
Blowing me
Across celestial sea.
The seven seas cast
Exactly upwards
To wet the fires
Of stars long gone cold.
Gentle hands so strong and pure
Kindling fires that must endure
To live long enough and die well enough
To inspire the likes of me.
Stardust and comets tails
Burning up so hot
Wearing destruction as a cape
Hurtling through infinite black
In search of an audience
For illumination.
I’m in the nosebleed seats,
Can’t bare to get any closer
But I’ll applaud loudly
And hope it carries as your light
Even in my death
Even as I burn up
Crossing forbidden barriers
To reach your heavenly ears.
– Vagabond Prophet
Ice coffee and gasoline
Two things I need tonight.
Locomotive power for a paralyzed mind.
Electrically sweet and combustible both
Give me strength to carry this yolk.If you see smoke in the distance
It’s likely me with pen and pad
Burning the candle at both ends
To have a double portion of wax
To use on a waning portion of myself.
Vagabond Prophet
Vapour falls so heavily
Starting streams of its own
Leaving trails on the rock
Carving stone over time.
Nobody knows if trails
Join back up
Or branch out on their own
Without following each one
To its greatest length.
Water most immeasurable
And beyond capacity
Both of comprehension
And containment.
– Vagabond Prophet
Nooks and crags
Hard and rough to the touch,
Stories hidden deep within
Somewhere between
The rings and the sap.
Hardest foundations
For the tenderest of shoots,
Finest green needles
Homes for nomads of the forest.
Towering over all
The only witness of history
And with tightest lips
You perform interpretive dance
With your roots underground,
Accomplices in beauty
Can’t help but join the show.
– Vagabond Prophet
Rushing in and out,
Twice a day everyday.
Highs and lows
In lofty throws.
Leaving lines on the rocks
Of past embraces
Felt a thousand times before,
Too be felt a thousand times more.
Predictably relentless,
Like taxes or red lights,
But much more real
With much more zeal.
No easy thing to resist
To shift your weight
From bottom to top
Full speed and full stop.
I’ll give my all to fight this squall
Resist a sea that plucks
Whenever it pleases
Tossing whitecap teases.
That’s just how it feels
Living here and believing
In stories great and true
Though some may say askew.
A world in love with authenticity
That’s somehow always fiction
It can feel so hollow
And unsated with each swallow.
This rhythmic pulsing of humanity
Blood pressure from disease untreated,
I know this cure
It’s simple and it’s pure.
I’ve never done drugs
Yet know what addiction is
I’ve been the man in sin
I’ve been lost in swamps within.
I have battled my own blood
Wrestled my own current
Distraught with its intent
To assimilate to a soul bent.
I have fought to untangle
My dreams from nightmares
To realize in deepest chagrin
The differences are thin.
If you want to walk against the tide
Of your broken nature clawing
I’ll show you the path
But first get rid of wrath.
When water starts rising
Up and past your navel
Find the one rivulet
Rebellious and immaculate.
The one teaspoon in an ocean
That when tide rushes up
It rushes down
With upside down frown.
Follow it abandoning all
Strip all that drags you down
Be cleansed by drowning the part
Of you that was dead from the start.
– Vagabond Prophet
Thanks @josy57 for the prompt “Against the Tide”
Vagabond Prophet 