Prompt Day 20

Daddy’s home yay!

They cry from the top of the stairs

Wearing dresses and suits

From dancing with each other.

“Daddy, want to watch us dance?”

They spin and spin

Just like the vinyl on the turntable.

“Daddy want to see my super jump?”

“Daddy you need to shave,

Your cheeks are all scratchy.”

These are the things I live for,

Not praise but simply speech

From sweetest voices

Wanting nothing but my attention.

So I’ll watch them orbit the living room,

I’ll keep my cheeks all smooth,

For I am their daddy, and they my children

And they love me, it’s terrifying but it’s true.

They really love me.

– Vagabond Prophet

Lightning Rod


Through tempest spurned

And fury turned

On a meadow swathed in white.

Lightning rods attracting

The wrath of heaven acting

Shot forth onto dry grass.

Kindlings always destined

To burn up, never questioned

No dreams of an unscorched future.

To smoulder away

Paving the way

For those that will burn brighter.

– Vagabond Prophet

Prompt Day 19


If ink onto paper isn’t enough

If your black blood onto the sheet

Won’t suffice

You ink your skin.

I did, family crest

For a family spread the world over.

Related by blood

Black to crimson and back again.

Families change

Families grow

Families explode into a hundred pieces.

Brothers and I stitched a picture

Had it fixed upon our skin

A reminder of a past together

Where everything was safer

And we could explore forests in the dark.

The only fires worried about

Was the one that burnt our camp food,

Not the one that started in the shadows

To render home into ashes.

So no matter how we scatter

To make home for ourselves,

We’ll always find a safe place

In each other, in arms

In eyes commonly blue

And in backs commonly emblazoned

With lions and spears and shields.

And grace, most important of all.

Grace for ourselves and each other,

For how we’ve hurt one another,

And for our dad, gone under the pen now too.

Grace for him especially.

He’s hurt us all so deeply

But he still gave us our ink,

And ink is thicker than water.

– Vagabond Prophet

Soul Mates

I used to believe

In true love and soulmates,

Now I know it false.

It’s true she’s my mate

And that she has my soul

But I chose her

And she chose me.

No accident no ‘falling in’

Like slipping in mud

Or slowly going mad.

Providence played a part

To be sure

But our choices are

What define us.

No smoky bar

Or mystic circumstance

Just she and me

Opposite sides of a dirty couch.

A choice we still

Make every day

When life is lovely

When life is ghastly.

Our couch is still stained

A reminder of our promises.

– Vagabond Prophet

How quickly I became bankrupt
In the absence of yourself,
I didn’t know until I left you forlorn
Abandoned in the far reaches of the echo
That I’d been living cup to cup
For a love now gone cold.

When I return let there yet be
Some faint embers left in which
We can partake.

Vagabond Prophet

– This is what happens when a guy like me forgets his coffee at home before work starts.