Tag: creative writing

Echo

Ballroom facades and finest outfits

Simple memories overshadowed by

Champagne flourishes and caviar bribery.

Egos bigger than themselves

To make doorways feel smaller

And double breasted suits

For men with no hearts at all.

Shouts and cries and squeals of glee

Shrouded by the rules of a dance

Performed by thousands before.

It’s not your dance, it’s not ours

They’re the steps given to us

That we now run away from.

We sprint into the rain

Shining gown gets soaked

And I see the skin beneath

Puckered and upset

With what the weather does beget.

Now we can shout

And finally find our voice!

Find a cave and scream out loud

For echoes never lie

Never amplifying or altering

Never adding or subtracting

Just your exact words again.

Forget the champagne and caviar,

Leave your fingerprints in the earth

Let forests, mountains, and caves

Remember the way you sound.

Your utterances indelibly pressed

Into rocks hitherto undented

They will always scream right back

Not holding onto your love

But giving and receiving in equal measure.

Don’t be silent don’t let thoughts

Go unspoken forever

Don’t make the stones wait for your song

Like a mother with a son at war

Waiting for his return

Only to receive a flag,

And a thank you for the blood.

Echoes always tell the truth

The most discerning of sleuths

They always detect a voice

Even in those who

Thought they’d lost theirs

Amongst the magnified silence

Of ballroom masquerades.

– Vagabond Prophet

Thanks @josy57 for the prompt “The true meaning of an echo.” Hope everybody enjoys it.

Real Rainbow

I’ve known anger burning red

And despair oh so blue,

Envy green and cowardice yellow.

I’ve had my countenance turn black

Under a sky of grey

A real rainbow of disdain.

I am not lazy or sloth like as of late,

Come here touch my brow

And feel the residue of my toil

That brings me naught but rot.

Until you came into my life

Breaking dams that held nothing in only out

Flooding dry lake beds

And sprouting gardens where there was dust.

Because of your works not mine

I can call myself justified in time,

A second hand treasure

Better than anything wrought

By these calloused hands.

You can still feel the sweat on my body

See it drip onto a brown soil

Watch me work a land green and budding

See the sun set red

And rise brightest yellow.

I can push off into a vast blue sea

And not care if I sail or get swallowed

For both is to be loved.

You’ve carried me in your shadow of light

Through the deepest blacks

Protected by your majesty

Into a brand new country

With brand new colours

A real rainbow of joy.

– Vagabond Prophet

Thanks @josy57 for prompting me with “Second Hand Treasures.”

Capsizing

In throes of deepest admiration

My heart cracking like lines in pavement,

Overwhelmed to the point of capsizing

As I behold my beloved,

No recesses of firmament

Not present in her gaze.

My pinion pinched and unwieldy

No longer can I sojourn

To the celestial region

So you saw fit

To place in her lissome form

All the beauty of the heavens.

She in state of repose,

Words always kind and sweet

Never besmirch, belittle, or cause harm

To this brittle soul of mine.

I beseech you have mercy on me

The third son of a third son

Of a man with just one eye.

Me I’ve got both,

But it won’t be enough

For my rods and cones

To comprehend her majesty.

– Vagabond Prophet

@delightfulharmonypoetry

Undaunted

These mornings are still cool

While afternoons with heat

Make me perspire into the night.

What can I don

For this time between seasons?

Much the same as

The pains of destiny.

Knowing I’m for the next world

Yet under orders to toil here

To prepare the land and hearts.

For both predicaments

Will take much patience

A period of suffering

And a measure of courage

To look the end of time in the eye

Yet remain undaunted,

Though still perspiring into the night.

– Vagabond Prophet

Turned to Stone

What if all the poems

Do  nothing at all

If I’ve wasted all my time

Sacrificed my sleep

On the altar of art

And it just turns to stone.

Letting my heart unwind

One stanza at a time

Pointlessly.

Without irrigating something good

Or making clear

Something misunderstood.

Oh I pray that I

Can affect real change.

Take my ramblings

To untie lies in others

And inspire courage,  kindness

And all things good and just.

– Vagabond Prophet

Night Sky Conservatory


Do you remember the night sky conservatory?

The time we picked the lock at the gate

Snuck in after dark?

So innocent we felt like criminals.

Little did we know we were stealing

Each other’s hearts.

Do you remember the blanket I spread out

Beneath the stars that slowly revealed themselves

One constellation at a time?

Learning that darkness and light

Can really coexist quite beautifully,

Each gaining significance from the other.

Do you remember the bats

Scattering their silhouettes

Across our unhindered gaze?

Do you remember the creature

Moving not far away?

Do you wonder as I do,

If it was our budding affection manifest

To warn us we were falling?

Do you remember when you said,

“That was my first kiss”

And your very words

Altered my body chemistry?

Do you remember from all the years gone by

Amidst the tangled breaths and foggy windows,

All the vapours of pleasure

Turning into solid child?

How could I not believe in magic

When what I’ve known with you

Is the opposite of tragic?

– Vagabond Prophet

@delightfulharmonypoetry

Upstream

Absinthe green and gin white,

Bourbon brown and whiskeys bite,

Magic brews to subdue or embolden

How they see fit.

Sometimes loosening

A person held at bay,

And others shutting mouths

While throwing punches.

A carefully procured potion

With mystic contents

And curious results.

Magic all around us ought not be surprised,

By cryptic text in cursive illegible.

In the revelation that if we share a continent

There is always an unbroken chain of concrete

Connecting us together.

Keep your ear to the pavement

And feel my heartbeat in the

Slithering cracks and widening potholes

Gas prices rise and fall

In time with my bloods pulsing nature

Yet in the economy of you and me

An empty tank won’t keep me away

As we will always be connected

By a shared river of gravel and tar

I’ll swim upstream I’ll swim down

Please don’t be too far.

– Vagabond Prophet

Thanks @josy57 for prompting @mildreflections and I with “The green of absinthe.”

Pulp

I’m wide asleep and dreaming

Of a future where the world’s not caving in.

Always presumptuous,

Always idealistic.

Today I saw convict wearing green

Shackles on both hands and feet

Those in chains

Still have pains.

In my optimistic stupor I imagine

His crime one that’s victimless.

Dark hair and dark eyes

He had with dark remarks

For the guards at either arm.

I too have a hamartia

A kryptonite, Achilles heel.

Yet surely the stories not yet finished

Are the ones most in need

Of divine intervention.

I’ve been incorrigible

And the man in green may be too,

Yet I hope that on our piles of kindling

Similarly damp

That when a spark does catch

Our hearts can some salvation snatch.

That’s not presumptuous

That’s not idealistic,

I’m crushed by the weight of a savior,

And from pulp comes hopeful seeds.

– Vagabond Prophet

Thanks @josy57 for prompting @mildreflections and myself with “A presumptuous dream.” Hope this wasn’t wasted on the likes of me.

Antlers

Antlers sharp and many pointed

Broader than shoulders

Threatens without words,

Lean and muscular

Bounding high into the sky

Fences meaning nothing.

These creatures wise without books

Knowing the language of the wood

Hissing in the whispered wind

And threatening in it’s quiet.

Knowing things by instinct,

Meaning that nobody knows

Just how it knows things.

Aware that given long hours

In sunlight some things bleach

And some things burn.

Ears turn around

As my feet the ground pound,

You already know

By the shape of my thorax

That I’m rather different.

You vanish as you smell me,

You taste my breath on the air

And foresee that I always fail

More thoroughly than I succeed

I just might try to spare your life,

So naturally you’re afraid.

– Vagabond Prophet