Fireside Memories

Some trains won’t return to station

Yet as I travel long I see

Limbs tossed aside.

The thin arms that carried me thus far

Cast into the ditch

Now flaunt no leverage

Only strength,

Now travelling at great length

Finding enough pieces for a creature.

Pieced together makes a person

That I sit with at fireside,

Telling stories until stars illuminate

More than last remaining embers.

Telling me my own tales

That are strangely familiar

Yet gone unthought of for years.

Young enough to think

The weather man made decisions

Rather than predictions,

A man behind a desk with buttons

Overwhelmed by choice

And always choosing to be unkind,

Rather than a simple man

Trying his best to convey bad news.

Old enough to know that

Black is the colour for mourning

Because it attracts the most heat

Those grieving hearts need

As much as they can get,

Almost like an embrace.

Watching moving pictures with the neighbour

Father implores me to send him home,

Takes me to the driveway where

Man’s best friend is wrapped

In a yellow wool blanket.

People came to help

Digging a hole next to the tree

That reached halfway to heaven.

Now his bones are turned to soil

That roots wriggle against

To further their kingdom

Spreading fingers spreading shadows

On a boy fallen fully awake and weeping.

He’d been companion

He’d been protector

He’d played catcher and outfielder,

But most of all

He’d played my friend.

– Vagabond Prophet

Thanks @josy57 for prompting @mildreflections and I with “dismembering a memory”. A great prompt, hope I did a halfway decent job with it.

Black Out

Trees fall on lines and everything goes dark

The knight has fallen

The night has risen

Suddenly and with no warning.

Like the deepest parts of the ocean

Not yet explored

I delve into closet corners

That I never knew before.

We’d play games

To make the time pass

To laugh away the darkness.

Hide and seek

With everybody hidden,

Scavenger hunts,

For the daylight that we sought.

Amidst stubbed toes

And flashes of smiles with no bodies,

We found family enough shelter

In blackest of blackouts.

As quick as quicksand beneath my feet

Everything comes back with lightning speed,

Ironic, as lightning started all of this.

Hearing furnace pump

A heartbeat ahead of the lights,

Ready or not here I come..

– Vagabond Prophet

Thanks @mildreflections for prompting @josy57 and I with “When the lights go off.”

Bags under eyes, lids propped open regretfully. Blood slows in a traffic jam uncharged by adequate rest. Steps shorten and stumble. A slingshot, a catapult, a trebuchet will do, give me velocity to find my way to you. Fling me high and send me soaring across the night sky, skip me across calm waters, nock me on your bowstring and give me shrewdest point for wherever you’re aiming today.

Vagabond Prophet

Courage

The war won by cowards.

Not heroes strong and true

Always knowing what to do.

Skinny little boys

Fear rattling their bones

Terror shaking their hands

Trying to aim at heads and hearts

Similarly quaking.

Souls such as these won every war

Girding their loins

Deciding action to protect their own,

To defeat the enemy,

To take back the land

More important than their fright.

The cost is great,

Young men upon dying

Finally sharpened their fear

Into courage in acts of debut bravery.

And now remembered as heroes

As they should be.

Courage casting its lustrous shadow

Backwards upon all past deeds

Redeeming them before falling on its sword.

– Vagabond Prophet

Skyline

Standing on the skyline

Waiting for a lifeline

To ride back home.

Standing on the skyline

Wondering how it looked

Before roads and buildings

And all things thatched with tar.

Standing on the skyline

Ignoring the compass

Given your magnetic nature.

You’re my true north,

I’ve walked south until I got there

Proof the earth is round.

You rise in the east

And if I invert myself

You rise in the west too.

Standing on the skyline

With winters rigid bones

And summers fragrant hope.

Standing on the skyline

Seeing mountains and valleys

Formed by your strong hand

And wondering what that says about me.

– Vagabond Prophet

Thanks @josy57 for the prompt “Standing on the Skyline.”

Deadly Sin #5

Greed, as defined by the poets dictionary.

Definition: Hungry hands with unnaturally sharp claws. An ever hungry need for more at the cost of anybody but yourself. Too many teeth for too small a meal, stealing your neighbours supper and still being unsatisfied.

Other definitions include: Unfulfilled desires fueled by diesel and fire.

Eight days a week insisting on nine, willing to kill to get it.

Coupon hoarding for the sale that’s never good enough.

Sharpening knives for the bones you make into broth. Elephant bone soup still insufficient.

Given enough weapons would invade every nation.

Given enough heat would boil the sea to make your tea.

Antonyms: Content, happy, at peace, needing nothing.

Greed only seeks to convince you that nothing about you or your life is enough.

Red Breasted

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”

Solitary Refinement Chapter 1

vagabondprophet:

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

Shooting Stars

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

Drowning

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”