This Barren City

This barren city

These roads slick with tears

These sidewalks cracked

And mountains in every direction.

Here in the valley

Everything settles

The rain filling the fields

Running down from frosty peaks

To overflow my ditches,

The clouds fall on my head

Every morning making everything dewy.

In this barren city

Where anything can grow

Except good will towards

The hopeless, the shattered

The broken and tattered.

To the many who call these streets

Their home tonight,

No bed to rest your weary bones

No place to wash off bad decisions

Hoping tomorrow you are able

Tomorrow you’d have more strength

And someone in your corner.

To them and others

I say unto you

The city might be barren

But you don’t have to be,

The streets might be cold

But your heart isn’t.

The hope that rises with the sun

Will lift you from the pavement

And raise the dead in you.

– Vagabond Prophet

@josy57 thanks for prompting me with “This Barren City.” This issue is dear to me.

Waxless Candles

The wind half sighs half moans

The struggle that is

Its passage through the night.

The calm before the storm

Never came for them

Only the wind

Only the waves

Only the rain.

Like waxless candles

They burn bright

And getting hotter

Through the darkling night.

Until the night is over

And their wick is all turned to ash

Hoping the deeds that they’ll forget

Will be rekindled at next dusk.

They end up forgotten

They end up refused

Forsaken and misused.

Knowing only the hard pavement

For a pillow in this November,

Nothing as bright or as chilling

As the winter sun

Shining boldly yet coldly

In a brilliant and frigid embrace.

The windows frost

And their breath exhausts

Caught, taken it is

By the unforgiving cold.

Like Icarus they collide and burn

With their hopes for themselves.

Meanwhile they all wonder,

“How can I be healthy,

When every doctors definition differs.”

– Vagabond Prophet

Pavement Pillow

The edges bleed on everything

When it rains this hard,

It seems the world is weeping.

To staunch the flow

We have to work together

To pray for warmer weather

For those who get their lullabies

Whispered from whatever

The cracked pavement pillow

Speaks to them tonight.

– Vagabond Prophet

Cover Art

Said you don’t want to move to Seattle,

That’s fine you’ve got enough rain

Falling off your disdain

For anybody just a little different.

Don’t judge a book by it’s cover

But I can’t help but wonder at the scars

On this man saying he lives in cars,

Who’d design a cover that way?

Dad will they have a happy ending?

With such a sad middle.

Thinking, thumbs mid twiddle,

“Son avert your eyes.”

No real answer

Just don’t think about it.

It works as long as you forget

That each person is a story.

Dad if you’d just turn a few pages

Look past the cover,

See he’s a lover

With no flowers left to give.

– Vagabond Prophet

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

Borders

Let’s make some changes

Can we get rid of borders

Guns and money?

I feel panic slip in

The fissures between thoughts.

Numbers on a spreadsheet,

My exactly lacking worth.

That’s what I fear

Not bears or cancer.

Numbers only tell me

How much I can’t give

To the hungry and alone.

So take down borders

Let the people come

I’ll feed them all

With infinite wealth.

Ignorance might not be bliss

But it just may fill a mouth.

– Vagabond Prophet