Original Poetry about anything and everything.
Hot or cold
Mild or bold
Wet or dry
Make a decision already!
You circle around the globe
Trying to ‘find’ yourself,
What you should be
When you come to fruition.
Circumlocution embodied,
You try on every outfit
And voice every thought
Over and over
For thirty whole days.
It’s like this every year,
You can’t make up your mind
To stay in the past
Or leap to the summer.
Yet May always comes
To usher April out of the room.
– Vagabond Prophet
Daddy’s home yay!
They cry from the top of the stairs
Wearing dresses and suits
From dancing with each other.
“Daddy, want to watch us dance?”
They spin and spin
Just like the vinyl on the turntable.
“Daddy want to see my super jump?”
“Daddy you need to shave,
Your cheeks are all scratchy.”
These are the things I live for,
Not praise but simply speech
From sweetest voices
Wanting nothing but my attention.
So I’ll watch them orbit the living room,
I’ll keep my cheeks all smooth,
For I am their daddy, and they my children
And they love me, it’s terrifying but it’s true.
They really love me.
– Vagabond Prophet
If ink onto paper isn’t enough
If your black blood onto the sheet
Won’t suffice
You ink your skin.
I did, family crest
For a family spread the world over.
Related by blood
Black to crimson and back again.
Families change
Families grow
Families explode into a hundred pieces.
Brothers and I stitched a picture
Had it fixed upon our skin
A reminder of a past together
Where everything was safer
And we could explore forests in the dark.
The only fires worried about
Was the one that burnt our camp food,
Not the one that started in the shadows
To render home into ashes.
So no matter how we scatter
To make home for ourselves,
We’ll always find a safe place
In each other, in arms
In eyes commonly blue
And in backs commonly emblazoned
With lions and spears and shields.
And grace, most important of all.
Grace for ourselves and each other,
For how we’ve hurt one another,
And for our dad, gone under the pen now too.
Grace for him especially.
He’s hurt us all so deeply
But he still gave us our ink,
And ink is thicker than water.
– Vagabond Prophet
Do you find your hope groping in the dark
Sloping and waning
While the moon is waxing?
As though all your innermost dreams
And thoughts you hold most dear
Had been paraded through the streets
With mocking and jeering and spitting.
Come with me I say
The revolution starts with us.
Our lights have been put out too often
Wicks go sizzle between The Man’s greasy fingers.
All those people with nothing to offer
But their hearts in ink dots
Or paint swaths
Or sound waves.
Get a real job! They say.
But the art in our veins,
Make life worth living
And it’s so hard to strip it off.
Like the bark of a tree
That without will surely die,
So it would be with us
If we amputate our muse.
Protect your light!
At all costs defend it!
I’ll stand by your side
I’ll have your back.
Let’s have our cake and eat it too,
We’re going to need two cakes.
At least.
At least.
At least.
As all artists know,
The bare minimum is the foundation
For something great.
– Vagabond Prophet
Gazing through polished panes
Longing after things with greatest pains,
Trying on some,
Walking past others.
Through the growth of more eyelids
You never really see at all,
You only see what you aren’t
What you lack, never what you are.
Window shopping can be fun
For the penniless and imaginative,
Don’t take appearances too seriously.
The ones who’ve never window shopped
Have the most to learn.
To have never wanted
To have never repressed your desires,
Never leaving behind something
Wished for on a whim.
What could you know of others?
What could you know of need
Or patience or gratitude
For something earned with sweat?
Whichever you are
Fortunate or less so
This last part is for you
And I’ll deliver with all the subtlety
Of an asteroid.
If you’re window shopping
Is better than your
Mirror gazing
It’s time to make some changes.
– Vagabond Prophet
Oh you brilliant bohemian you!
To count the number of times you articulated
For me something shapeless.
Thoughts I’d had for years that evaded endlessly.
Every time I reached for them,
Slipping between fingers like smoke.
Yet you penned it in ink
Plainly for all to see.
Is that how you wrote so much?
Stealing thoughts of others
Transforming them into beauty.
The only kind of theft I’m happy to pardon.
How fitting, how terrible
That you should die, your blood turned to poison.
Your body wracked with pain
And your spirits lacked of wind.
As though life smiled on the grace of words,
And decided you’d had your fill of loveliness.
Thank you for doing it all the same,
You plagiarizer of my mind
You thief of dreams.
– Vagabond Prophet
– For Rainer Maria Rilke
In some cultures legends
The killing blow of a previous life.
Some say stork bites, other say nothing at all.
My father, myself, my son and daughter
All have the same one.
Strawberry stain on the neck.
Were we rebels in France
And all got the guillotine?
Or all facing firing squads
For crimes against the crown?
I can hide it with my hair
But of the truth I am aware,
I see it in everything
Even in this birthmark.
I am a blemished and imperfect sacrifice
And you, you were perfect lacking nothing
And took upon yourself, every killing blow.
– Vagabond Prophet
Few things are improved buried,
Most problems, and most people need airing out.
Shoot your thoughts haphazardly
I’ll be a sparring partner.
Stories were meant to be told
I’ve got one and I musn’t let it mold.
– Vagabond Prophet
Most peoples rituals?
Buttoning top to bottom,
Pizza on Fridays.
My rituals?
Bombarding those I know
With preposterous queries.
It’s just what’s in this mind
That wants out.
What colour is your letter A?
What colour is your imaginary dragon?
Rather have horns or a tail?
Favourite food ethnicity?
Rather be deaf or blind?
Rather freeze or burn to death?
I grow weary of small talk
I find it just so little.
I want to learn what shapes
A person’s thoughts
And which hilltop
Their compass says is north.
Make your thoughts work
Make one nerve ending stretch
To unknown territory to reach the next
Unusual shapes just to bridge that gap.
Learn your favourite word in nineteen languages.
Don’t be a lazy suzan,
Spinning the same ideas round and round.
I bore of the weather,
I bore of sports.
But to discuss something
Never discussed before
That just might interest.
– Vagabond Prophet
– Bonus points for anybody who answers those questions for me, I think my co-workers are getting tired of me pestering them.
I don’t see many people these days,
There lights blind my eyes
I run and I hide.
My name is Aurora
Come north come at dark
And I’ll dance for you
Through the night.
My flowy dress twirls outwards
And my hair changes colours
You’ve never seen before.
My fingers writing stories in the sky
In a language long forgotten.
I see my face reflected
In the great lakes,
I really am radiant
And wanting to share my beauty.
I want somebody to talk to,
Somebody to sing to,
Somebody to quarrel with.
Come further north, further still
Bring no light of your own
For I’ll light our lives enough,
And you’ll only diminish me.
– Vagabond Prophet
Vagabond Prophet 