Tag: april prompts

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

Prompt Day 18

Do you find your hope groping in the dark

Sloping and waning

While the moon is waxing?

As though all your innermost dreams

And thoughts you hold most dear

Had been paraded through the streets

With mocking and jeering and spitting.

Come with me I say

The revolution starts with us.

Our lights have been put out too often

Wicks go sizzle between The Man’s greasy fingers.

All those people with nothing to offer

But their hearts in ink dots

Or paint swaths

Or sound waves.

Get a real job! They say.

But the art in our veins,

Make life worth living

And it’s so hard to strip it off.

Like the bark of a tree

That without will surely die,

So it would be with us

If we amputate our muse.

Protect your light!

At all costs defend it!

I’ll stand by your side

I’ll have your back.

Let’s have our cake and eat it too,

We’re going to need two cakes.

At least.

At least.

At least.

As all artists know,

The bare minimum is the foundation

For something great.

– Vagabond Prophet

Prompt Day 17

Gazing through polished panes

Longing after things with greatest pains,

Trying on some,

Walking past others.

Through the growth of more eyelids

You never really see at all,

You only see what you aren’t

What you lack, never what you are.

Window shopping can be fun

For the penniless and imaginative,

Don’t take appearances too seriously.

The ones who’ve never window shopped

Have the most to learn.

To have never wanted

To have never repressed your desires,

Never leaving behind something

Wished for on a whim.

What could you know of others?

What could you know of need

Or patience or gratitude

For something earned with sweat?

Whichever you are

Fortunate or less so

This last part is for you

And I’ll deliver with all the subtlety

Of an asteroid.

If you’re window shopping

Is better than your

Mirror gazing

It’s time to make some changes.

– Vagabond Prophet

Prompt Day 16

Oh you brilliant bohemian you!

To count the number of times you articulated

For me something shapeless.

Thoughts I’d had for years that evaded endlessly.

Every time I reached for them,

Slipping between fingers like smoke.

Yet you penned it in ink

Plainly for all to see.

Is that how you wrote so much?

Stealing thoughts of others

Transforming them into beauty.

The only kind of theft I’m happy to pardon.

How fitting, how terrible

That you should die, your blood turned to poison.

Your body wracked with pain

And your spirits lacked of wind.

As though life smiled on the grace of words,

And decided you’d had your fill of loveliness.

Thank you for doing it all the same,

You plagiarizer of my mind

You thief of dreams.

– Vagabond Prophet

       – For Rainer Maria Rilke

Prompt Day 15

In some cultures legends

The killing blow of a previous life.

Some say stork bites, other say nothing at all.

My father, myself, my son and daughter

All have the same one.

Strawberry stain on the neck.

Were we rebels in France

And all got the guillotine?

Or all facing firing squads

For crimes against the crown?

I can hide it with my hair

But of the truth I am aware,

I see it in everything

Even in this birthmark.

I am a blemished and imperfect sacrifice

And you, you were perfect lacking nothing

And took upon yourself, every killing blow.

– Vagabond Prophet

Prompt Day 13

Most peoples rituals?

Buttoning top to bottom,

Pizza on Fridays.

My rituals?

Bombarding those I know

With preposterous queries.

It’s just what’s in this mind

That wants out.

What colour is your letter A?

What colour is your imaginary dragon?

Rather have horns or a tail?

Favourite food ethnicity?

Rather be deaf or blind?

Rather freeze or burn to death?

I grow weary of small talk

I find it just so little.

I want to learn what shapes

A person’s thoughts

And which hilltop

Their compass says is north.

Make your thoughts work

Make one nerve ending stretch

To unknown territory to reach the next

Unusual shapes just to bridge that gap.

Learn your favourite word in nineteen languages.

Don’t be a lazy suzan,

Spinning the same ideas round and round.

I bore of the weather,

I bore of sports.

But to discuss something

Never discussed before

That just might interest.

– Vagabond Prophet

– Bonus points for anybody who answers those questions for me, I think my co-workers are getting tired of me pestering them.

Prompt Day 12

I don’t see many people these days,

There lights blind my eyes

I run and I hide.

My name is Aurora

Come north come at dark

And I’ll dance for you

Through the night.

My flowy dress twirls outwards

And my hair changes colours

You’ve never seen before.

My fingers writing stories in the sky

In a language long forgotten.

I see my face reflected

In the great lakes,

I really am radiant

And wanting to share my beauty.

I want somebody to talk to,

Somebody to sing to,

Somebody to quarrel with.

Come further north, further still

Bring no light of your own

For I’ll light our lives enough,

And you’ll only diminish me.

– Vagabond Prophet

Prompt Day 11

Do doubts even have shadows?

Any dark place I need to travel through

Before I come to true belief.

Maybe doubt is like darkness,

Only the absence of its antonym.

Hey courage! Good to see you

Didn’t recognize you with your long face.

Yes it’s true temptation seeks me out

When I’ve been happily in drought.

I’m afraid of the thoughts

That my own thoughts thought,

Just like I’m afraid that blood tires

Of the burden of oxygen.

Hemoglobin sitting down on its one job

Letting my life slowly slip into the gutter.

I’m afraid of being the man this morning,

The one with electrodes hanging from his head.

Electric power to shock himself into obedience,

A rebellious body to match my mind.

I’m afraid that one day I’ll meet the younger me

And he’ll be ashamed at what he’s to become.

I’m afraid that inaction will rust my very soul,

Yet action is so terrifying, with gears as misaligned as these.

I’m afraid of a current

Ever growing more swift

Until all of my writhing

Counts for nothing at all.

I’m afraid of paperwork,

So I often let the paper work me,

I’m afraid of losing people

And I’m afraid of losing myself in the aftermath.

I’m afraid of the way that time never slows,

“Ready or not here I come!”

I’m never prepared

Always caught unaware.

Okay so there it is

All the fright and trepidation

Laid out with trembling and shaky hands

Arranged into piles to be burned.

He came for fears like mine

And fears of others

Not to eradicate

But to render unimportant.

To prod this coward into courage

And unwrap this wire

I tangled myself in

Calling it self care the whole time.

You don’t take my fear away

You just enable me to meet it

Giving me just enough strength

To survive the battle.

I still get scars I still get bloodied

Just as any soldier does.

Yet I also have my master whispering,

Whispering in my ear in darkest moments.

Promises of a better future where fear is over.

When its days are done and gone

And the nails are in the casket

That we’ll fling into the fire.

Gild my skin and bones with bravery

To keep fighting until that day,

Sharpening my sword

On the steadiness of your truth

And resting my soul in the vastness of your hands.

I can feel you embroidering my heart

Every stitch hurts like hell

Yet you’re promising me heaven,

I can feel beauty taking shape in the corners of my vision.

You’re helping me pretend at strength

Until it’s no longer pretending.

In the crescendo of your love, you called me worth your death!

Me!

This poem won’t get rid of fear,

I tried to make it do so and yet

All it can do, and all I can do

Is be a reminder of the one

Who will chase it away in his good time.

– Vagabond Prophet

Prompt Day 9

The pavement cracks

And the crashing breakers,

Everything in between.

Customs not understood

Families that love me anyways,

Whilst lightning reigns every night.

Heading west and landscapes change,

Desert to jungle and then pacific ocean

All while listening to Paul and the boys.

The further west the wetter it got,

Cilantro in sidewalks turning

To highways in coconut groves.

I learned about the weather

I learned about flavours

And tasted my first insect.

Most of all I learned that

Love needs no language,

And home it needs no flag

Just a warm embrace and plate to match.

– Vagabond Prophet