Prompt Day 11

Do doubts even have shadows?

Any dark place I need to travel through

Before I come to true belief.

Maybe doubt is like darkness,

Only the absence of its antonym.

Hey courage! Good to see you

Didn’t recognize you with your long face.

Yes it’s true temptation seeks me out

When I’ve been happily in drought.

I’m afraid of the thoughts

That my own thoughts thought,

Just like I’m afraid that blood tires

Of the burden of oxygen.

Hemoglobin sitting down on its one job

Letting my life slowly slip into the gutter.

I’m afraid of being the man this morning,

The one with electrodes hanging from his head.

Electric power to shock himself into obedience,

A rebellious body to match my mind.

I’m afraid that one day I’ll meet the younger me

And he’ll be ashamed at what he’s to become.

I’m afraid that inaction will rust my very soul,

Yet action is so terrifying, with gears as misaligned as these.

I’m afraid of a current

Ever growing more swift

Until all of my writhing

Counts for nothing at all.

I’m afraid of paperwork,

So I often let the paper work me,

I’m afraid of losing people

And I’m afraid of losing myself in the aftermath.

I’m afraid of the way that time never slows,

“Ready or not here I come!”

I’m never prepared

Always caught unaware.

Okay so there it is

All the fright and trepidation

Laid out with trembling and shaky hands

Arranged into piles to be burned.

He came for fears like mine

And fears of others

Not to eradicate

But to render unimportant.

To prod this coward into courage

And unwrap this wire

I tangled myself in

Calling it self care the whole time.

You don’t take my fear away

You just enable me to meet it

Giving me just enough strength

To survive the battle.

I still get scars I still get bloodied

Just as any soldier does.

Yet I also have my master whispering,

Whispering in my ear in darkest moments.

Promises of a better future where fear is over.

When its days are done and gone

And the nails are in the casket

That we’ll fling into the fire.

Gild my skin and bones with bravery

To keep fighting until that day,

Sharpening my sword

On the steadiness of your truth

And resting my soul in the vastness of your hands.

I can feel you embroidering my heart

Every stitch hurts like hell

Yet you’re promising me heaven,

I can feel beauty taking shape in the corners of my vision.

You’re helping me pretend at strength

Until it’s no longer pretending.

In the crescendo of your love, you called me worth your death!

Me!

This poem won’t get rid of fear,

I tried to make it do so and yet

All it can do, and all I can do

Is be a reminder of the one

Who will chase it away in his good time.

– Vagabond Prophet

Prompt Day 9

The pavement cracks

And the crashing breakers,

Everything in between.

Customs not understood

Families that love me anyways,

Whilst lightning reigns every night.

Heading west and landscapes change,

Desert to jungle and then pacific ocean

All while listening to Paul and the boys.

The further west the wetter it got,

Cilantro in sidewalks turning

To highways in coconut groves.

I learned about the weather

I learned about flavours

And tasted my first insect.

Most of all I learned that

Love needs no language,

And home it needs no flag

Just a warm embrace and plate to match.

– Vagabond Prophet

Prompt Day 8

One girl always sits at the back,

Headphones in a head with new hair each week

And always looking down.

May your creator turn your eyes upwards one day.

Reflective vests with men attached

Steelworkers plumbers I don’t know,

May your feet find solid ground today.

The driver who was kind

Until he wasn’t,

The woman with the walking cast,

Commuting souls on rerun

A to B and back to A.

May these unclean seats

Find hearts ready to become clean,

May we all find hope

Before the next stop.

– Vagabond Prophet

Prompt Day 7

Spiderwebbed windows and home to vermin,

Holes in doors, where there is doors.

Thin walls and three stories tall,

Though worth so many more.

My memory fails me,

Brick factory?

Ya that’s it, testing each brick

Throwing through the viewports

Of this ship now sunk.

Great bricks, worked every time.

Now the walls hardly upright,

Now inhabiting unsettling inspiration,

To any who venture near.

– Vagabond Prophet

Prompt Day 6

This prompt is a problem for me

I’ll address with a certain brevity.

Writing about what makes me whole?

I can’t, I’m not, don’t know anyone who is.

Next best thing?

Okay, of this I have a string.

Things that make me less broken

Of these I’ve long ago spoken.

The wind and the tide

In my dreams they reside,

Rising and falling predictably,

Something needs to be.

The change of the seasons

All the colours with such reasons,

Constant and never changing

Like his love for me.

One day I will be whole

Oh yes his works I extol,

When he comes back again

To chase away every shadow.

– Vagabond Prophet

Prompt Day 5

Curly hair, curlier thoughts

Winding back and forth upon themselves,

Maybe it’s all just one wound enough to appear plenty.

Who knows?

Eyes blue, my mood more so

Arms weak and strong in equal measure.

Legs good for walking, but bad for getting anywhere.

Pale skin, fair as they say.

Don’t know what fairness has to do with it

I just know I sunburn easily.

Self portraits, one of few things

Done better with images than with words.

For words are a varnish to make things shine,

Though with each layer the grain of the wood

Becomes less and less like the beginning product.

So I’ll cut this short, I’ll spread the varnish thin,

Thin like my hair is lately.

– Vagabond Prophet

Prompt Day 4

Strict regimen of green tea and tofu,

Exercise daily, make a five year plan

Stick to it like super glue.

Survival agenda that’s what that is.

Just kidding what a joke,

As though good intentions

And Oprah prescribed anything

Could solve anything.

How did I really do it?

I didn’t somebody else did

Let me ride on his coattails,

Victory on my behalf

Gird my heart from afar.

– Vagabond Prophet

Prompt Day 3

Oh this land of my growth

Of child and adulthood both,

Fertile fields and damp springs

Your dewy air to everything clings.

Smelling of equal parts manure and marijuana

You’re rich with flora and fauna,

The valley where the lake was drained

It’s residue leaving soil darkly stained.

How expert your fields

For the weather never yields

And yet you open up an angle obtuse

Spouting forth such lovely produce.

You grow and you grow

The rate becoming less slow

Others learning what I’ve always known

The truth engraved inside my bone.

This land so moist and green

This land so yearning and keen,

With vigor in the air

And mountains everywhere.

It will raise one strong

And so I belong

In this strangely sized municipality

With all of its vitality.

– Vagabond Prophet

Prompt Day 2

Snap shatter crack!

Crunch underfoot in great big boots!

Three trillion pieces scattered across the room,

Like the pieces of me buried in my past.

I never know what to say,

Believe it or not I do NOT have a way with words.

Only collecting thoughts and shaping them

Into something relevant,

Long after they’re relevant.

Say something anyways you ought

Nonsensical no matter,

If it’s loud enough we’ll get it one day.

Speak out just like I haven’t,

Yours is a story that we need to hear.

Forget the whispers of deceit

Forget the shackles of your prison

Forget the people that took your power away.

Destroy the silence with the bomb that is your truth!

– Vagabond Prophet

Prompt Day 1

Ahh yes it’s not exactly amazing

But it helps sometimes.

I’ll tell you my secret

How I am as firm and solid as I seem.

Take my hand I’ll guide you past

The smoke and the mirrors,

To this locked wooden box

With a small jar inside.

It’s my weatherproofing

I spread it on every morning

Head to toe

Ankle to earlobe spread evenly.

Endurance of any trial a piece of cake,

Winter? Easy

Sadness? Doable.

Loss of job? No problem.

A crippling fear that every damn thing I’ll ever try in my whole damn life will never amount to anything and by the end of it just be a younger looking version of my dad? I can deal with that too.

I don’t usually part with such a secret,

But since you’re asking

That’s my secret power.

– Vagabond Prophet