Need and Needles

Driving downtown seeing all kinds of people,

Walking everywhere in haphazard zigs and zags

Unshaven, unwashed, mind reeling from life.

Existing is a heavy weight

Sometimes too much to bare,

It wrinkles the straight creases in the mind

Making things appear that weren’t

Or taking away what you’d known.

It’s not just bums who chose this life,

It’s Ricky who’d been raped as a boy,

It’s Vicki who’s children

Don’t speak to her anymore.

When there’s this much need

And needles,

It’s everyone’s problem

And there’s no fencing it in.

– Vagabond Prophet

The significance of your magnificence is never lost on me so I’ll get lost in you.

Vagabond Prophet

Cloudy sky

Crumpled velvet moody

Will the heat of the day

Make you turn blue?

Or are you resolute

To let your anger rain down?

– Vagabond Prophet

vagabondprophet:

“When you’ve got a song stuck in your head
That you’ve never heard before.
That’s when you’ll know I’m speaking to you,
In a language just for us.”

— Vagabond Prophet (via vagabondprophet)

Cleft Heart

vagabondprophet:

Early October when the bomb went off,

Tearing us apart.

A brother here, a sister there.

Scattered across the globe.

Like the shock had made

Roots suddenly disappear.

Wandering to find them again.

Something to anchor me to life,

And something to pretend

That none of this ever happened.

It was like walking under a tree

Green burning bright

Like a star in the night.

Until it drops its snow

Right down your back

And your spine inverts itself.

The snow no colder than

The snowball fight earlier.

But never expected.

I never expected any of this

I trusted you,

I loved you.

But after you left,

We didn’t talk for months.

You didn’t understand that.

How could you think,

Nothing would change between us?

When you tore my heart right out.

I was a child,

Not a liver,

I’m not that resilient!

Are you stupid?

Or can you just think

That wishfully?

Couldn’t you have thought wishfully,

About her too?

Build her up in your mind.

Something better than she was,

Instead of leaving me all alone with her,

The only boy around.

We were six!

Then just three,

Only boy was me.

Brothers dug for oil,

Money for their toil.

We all got new family.

Pretend it’s normal

This prefix ‘step’ for everybody.

A monosyllabic word for ignorance.

Did you have stinging nettles

In the corners of your mind,

Shrouding your secrets from yourself?

I didn’t know what a man was!

How could I instantly become?

I guess you didn’t know either.

I found a new father,

He’s never let me down.

He’s unshakable.

Yeah we talk now,

About the weather,

And the price of gas.

But it will never be the same,

I can’t think that wishfully.

I won’t struggle to get as close.

You used to hold me close,

Just to be near me,

I treasure the memory.

It was twelve years ago you left,

Twelve years with a cleft heart.

When you changed the definition of home.

I’m trying to be eloquent now,

But all I can think of,

Is just how much it hurt.

– Vagabond Prophet

Code Blue

Code blue in the ICU

Chest compressions

Clear!

Yellow gowns

People crowded

At your departure bay.

Bed springs squeak

Chances bleak

At least you’ll look

Good in black.

No time to think

Just to react

Curtains closing

On your final act.

Natural progress of death

They told me

Organs failing

One after another.

Round two

Won’t be long now

Dangling from the line

Where fate and hope intertwine.

The family’s tears

Pent up for years

Comes rushing forth

The moment you flatlined.

– Vagabond Prophet

King David

Oh King David,

King of the land

Chosen one to spread the word.

How low you have fallen!

Even Kings are men,

And men are weak.

Hands moved to action

By deceit in our hearts,

And conviction wanes.

Did your spirit cry out

Against your flesh?

When you claimed her as yours

And murdered her lover?

Did any grain of wisdom

Resist the surge of want?

Or did it simply slope,

Beneath the weight of sin.

Your men were off at war

And you sat idle

Baring bitter fruit.

Your shoulders though broad

Could not bare the souls of men

Much less resist the evil one.

That came after you,

And somehow you’re called

A man after his own heart.

Curious, if

A murderer

Liar,

Adultering,

King,

Can somehow be justified,

Maybe there’s hope for me yet.

– Vagabond Prophet

vagabondprophet:

Corrugated

Have you ever met

Someone so dishonest,

That there lies must be fabricated?

Not imagined,

But built,

Out of real material.

Corrugated words,

Folded back,

Against one another.

Hoping they can bare

The weight of their

Collective despair.

– Vagabond Prophet

Vacancy

vagabondprophet:

If sorrow plucks and pulls,

And microphones only diminish

The desperation in your voice.

If the hair on your soul

Has gone grey with worry,

Don’t lose heart.

It’s true all that’s inside

Will be coming out,

But you get to choose

What happens with the vacant space.

– Vagabond Prophet

Spitting off the cliffside
Watch it break its membrane
And widen its trajectory
From the green rock below
To everything, simply everything.

All I can think of now is how
Last time you did this
You spat whole planets into being.

Vagabond Prophet