Tag: my poetry

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.

Taxidermist

You a ferrous metal and I a magnet

Drawn to you by design,

Yet sin degrades all

With it’s terror and it’s squall.

On my worst days

When I listen to the liar

Saying “It’s okay its natural

Like breathing

Or seething.”

Desires denied

Sorrows multiplied.

I shower and feel the skin come off

Everytime hoping the next layer

Will be thicker and less porous

Keeping out the slithering vapours

That slide in so easily.

You told me I’m brand new

But why do I have these phantom pains

From a spine I no longer have?

For you demanded that too…

Tonight don’t let the darkness bite.

Sometimes the prescription for these lenses

Is so strong I can’t even hear you,

My fingers trip over themselves

Can’t ever get the whole story out.

Why are all old men bent over?

Do we all hide our magic?

I am pierced not as though by arrows

But as though by poetry

Run through to the crux of the matter.

The matter of matter

Of what matters,

Do I?

That which upsets me inspires me most

And it’s true tragedy

Brings a man to the surface.

For years now I’ve been far beyond the surface

Can you place me back beneath?

Give me a mermans lungs and let me not choke.

I am both hope and cheer

I am both charm and jeer.

I feel the spectre anticipating

I can hear it berating

And I see it slipping in and out of me

I read the putrid pleasantries

It writes on the corridors of my mind.

Ghost, demon, ghoul whatever name you’ve chosen

Allow me to address you directly this day

Do you not see me?

Look me in the eyes

Hold my gaze I dare you!

I am but the slain wolf

Of greatest hunters

The master taxidermist

Stitching me back together with sterner stuff.

Good or evil a wolf still has teeth

Come now and let us do battle!

I grow tired of dreading the looking glass

Of fleeing the hour where shadows lengthen

Like fear with nightly growth spurts.

That particular kind of weariness

That makes life bleed heavily.

Coffee isn’t enough to hold my hand

To prop open my eyelids

With tent pegs meant for home.

I require victory

I thirst for conquest

Over strongholds in my heart,

Then I may rest.

You have birthed in me a rage

The greatest of the age

You’ve been biding your time

And committing your crime

But I have not been idle

I have known a donor of strength

That will make me victorious.

Come now bring your weapons

See if it does you any good

A man of my word you will soon learn

Light too can bite.

I by might imbued me

Will fight till bones protrude thee.

– Vagabond Prophet

– Thanks @josy57 for prompting me with “Facing your own Ghost,” literal I know but here it is.

Days of Honey

I am Mr. Cash

I am the mourner,

I’m everybody dressed in black

Who am I?

Is grief not where I dwell?

Is sorrow not the gold mine

Where I scratch out a living?

These things you say to me

Only leave me perplexed,

My days stuck in traffic

My nights stuck in thought.

My swallowed tongue

My rib cage rung

Climbing up and down

From a mind with kidney stones.

Every thought taking such effort

To unearth from the depths

And push to the surface

The pain brings me to my knees.

My own heart is the box

Marked fragile, intentionally dropped

Because it says so.

Now these keys on the ring

For locks I don’t remember,

Need to find a resting place,

And those locks with wide open jaws

Awaiting the crooked teeth

Of this forgotten tool

Will not close their lips for any other tongue.

For it knows my shape

And lies in wait

To fulfill the promise

Made by someone other than myself

For I hold the key that another designed

And must seek for it a sheath.

The journey is long

The path winding

And so I am thankful

For the days of honey

That heaven finally brings

To remedy this bitter soul.

– Vagabond Prophet

Thanks @josy57 for prompting me with “Swallowed Tongue.” This one kind of got away from me, hope folks like it.

Kamikaze

I have no blood

I have no heart

Only a red sea in my chest

Tide in highs and lows

Every single second

At the beckoning of a moon

Behind the very sky.

Pulled by things unseen

Plucking feathers clean

Pruning vanity clipping pride

Silencing remarks so snide.

In the end I’ll be a nomad

Walking ever inland

To where the gardens grow

I’ll have no grass to mow

Only seeds to sow.

Come with me

Come one come all

Untie the dreams safely moored

Let them risk open waters

And swift unseen currents.

Be swept away by the music

That’s played in the background

Of your dreams.

Be the kamikaze 

That forgot to say goodbye

Overwhelmed by the importance

Of the task at hand.

– Vagabond Prophet

Bad Part of Town

vagabondprophet:

They call this

The ‘bad’ part of town

The part with the foodbank

And the building for supervised visits.

Families separated

Estranged by circumstance,

Needy, not bad

Desperate not volatile.

I’ll tell you about

The bad part of town,

It’s up on the hill

It’s all chrome and glass.

Throwing food away

Every single day

Ignoring their children

Who just want to play.

– 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”

Sunglasses

If you need proof that every soul

Is at war with itself,

Look no further than your sunglasses.

That in the darkest hour of night

We pray for dawn to break

To chase the shadows away

And illuminate your spirit.

What do you do?

What have I done?

That dearest beseeched ray of day

Finally hops the fence and is found

To be too damn brilliant

Too sharp and discerning to tolerate

It stings the eyes and scorches the skin.

I wear sunglasses,

Keep my foot in both camps

For darkness threatens to smother

And light threatens to burn me

So I stay in the middle.

So you see we are all of us

Creatures afflicted by division,

Fallen spirits trying to float upwards

While still clinging to the ground,

The best gymnast of the heart

Can’t do the splits that well.

Trash your Oakley’s

Nobody can serve two masters.

– Vagabond Prophet

In the echo of your urgency
I discovered an emergency.
Your voice delicate and beautiful,
Like a spiderweb laden with dew.

I hear the panic in your voice
When you can’t make a choice,
I reminded you if you’re over your head
That’s how you know it’s the truth.

Vagabond Prophet

Chin Whiskers

White hair and pale eyes to match,

Deep lines in your loose skin

Marking many winters of the body

And many more of the heart.

Mam can I ask about your chin whiskers?

Were you of such a beauty in youth

That in age it requires new roads to travel?

Now that you’re eyes are unclear

And your legs unsteady,

Majesty comes pouring off your face

Now that your words make no sense.

Don’t worry mam I understand now,

You were somebody’s queen

In a kingdom long fallen.

– Vagabond Prophet