Tag: new poets on tumblr

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.

Peek-A-Boo

Formed me from clay

And left me here to stay

My lungs drew their inaugural breath

Signaling I was my own

I am a force

I have a voice.

Now the lengths I have gone

To use that power, to use this voice

In ways never intended.

How does this make sense of you?

When everything I’ve said untrue

How can I climb my way to truth

With feet that have only been uncouth,

Kicking thorns into your skull

Until the stone rolled away

And you brought a brand new day.

What act of devotion

Could I do to prove,

What pilgrimage could I take

And die along the path,

What trophy could I earn

To prove how much I love you

To prove how much I thank you

For making this blind man see.

As I sit here and ponder

My thoughts begin to wander

To when you gripped my hand

And pulled me from the muck.

Maybe it was the Midas touch

That had made the boat finally sink,

The rapacious attempts to better myself

With the pleasures and leisures of the world.

I had begun to think of myself as dead

As a blackened heart whose rosy cheeks

Had not yet realized that the blood

Pumped into them was damned

Polluted and meant for the grave.

I actually believed my transgression

Was too great, outweighing your grace!

How foolish was I?

Did you laugh?

Did you snicker at my childishness?

Before you pulled back the veil

In this high stakes peek-a-boo

To whisper to my soul “Here I am.”

You lovely source of true delight

You safest place amidst the plight

How fully you dismantled my delusions,

How quickly I became aware

It was never your grace that was small

But rather my faith.

A single thought of yours so spacious

I could occupy it for a century

And never find its borders,

I could spend summer after summer

Diving into those waters

And never plumb their depths.

I needed to see myself for what I was

For the monster I was becoming

Before you could save me,

For what man thinking himself complete

Would take a helping hand?

It wasn’t until the storms outside

Mirrored the ones within

And you calmed them with a word,

That I thought to come to you.

Now I pray for others

The ones I would call brothers,

That if they ever leave the zoo

And find all the beasts

That don’t live in cages

The beasts that pound and scratch

Their way through the echoing halls

Of each and every soul,

That they would call for help

Against those deadly baffling foes

And you always faithful to answer

Would smother all their woes.

– Vagabond Prophet

Peace?

When my own mind works against me

What peace can there be?

My right hand throwing rocks

Through my window and

My left hand hurling it back.

In the wild, the ensnaring

Searching tangled roots

I find my fallen mangled boots

And having donned them

March in circles.

Though I spiral endlessly

On the opaque and indiscernible

Ramblings of this nomad mind,

They never churn themselves into butter.

Wasting my time on mundane nothings

I practice braiding water,

I pick my own bones clean

And though Bob Marley said it right

And all three birds are here

I still worry about everything.

The sun’s ray

That brings decay

To the cloth long in the sun,

The shortened days

Where days dismay

Is crushed by weight of night.

I given options often choose destruction

The addictive nightmare

Where at least I’m alive,

I the froward soul

In need of constant reminding

That air is for breathing

Was always meant to fill me

Rather than something to exorcise.

My heart lacquered with

So much bitterness and trauma

It is marinated for disaster,

Like Icarus I collide and burn

With my expectations of myself.

If to you this sounds tiring

To fling oneself into the chasm of chaos,

Then congratulations are in order

For your sound mind and stout heart

And though there is always help out there

So many miles from home

Not all minds and hearts are equal.

When my own mind works against me

What peace can there be?

– Vagabond Prophet

@josy57 prompted me with “A rock through my window.” Thanks for that it is always such a joy writing your prompts.

Darkling

Under waning moon and festooned sky

With darkness to illuminate the night

It is already morning

Though beneath blackened heavens

One couldn’t hope to know

It will soon reverse its darkling effect.

This is faith beyond the wraith

This is hope surpassing spectres

Yesterday’s sun is no

Assurance of today’s

But faith sticks out its hand

Until warmed by mornings kiss.

– Vagabond Prophet

Embroidered

Many words I’ve written for thee

Deeds done and songs sung.

Six years ago you came

I remember it so clearly

Your blood was too sweet for safety

That it had to be diluted

And your mother

Looking smaller and stronger

Than ever before

Stumbling to feed you.

The pain in her face

Overcome by the joy

At seeing you expect her

Her soft touch and her smell

Her sound and her warmth.

That just by being herself

She could bring you comfort,

Eased all the pain of your coming.

Now from baring you into the world

Your mother now has scars

That she wears proudly,

As though embroidered with pride.

So many days ago,

So many spills and fevers and tears,

And each one is such a treasure.

My clever curly boy,

Young storyteller in the making,

Thank you for teaching me

That the most important thing I’ll ever do

Is be a loving dad for you.

– Vagabond Prophet

@delightfulharmonypoetry for our boy on his birthday.

This Obscure Chasm

Where my skin ends

And your breath begins

And this obscure chasm

In between where the magic lives.

The magic we claim

When the distance we shatter

With the urgency of affection

When my bad breath didn’t matter.

What does ten years

Of happiness look like?

Smile lines and stretch marks

Scars and hair gone thin

With weariness and worry,

Unshaven legs in winter

Tangled into mine,

And hatchets I won’t bury.

For no quarrels with your laurels

For me to drive a stake,

Only hands to hold

Only dreams to pave a road for.

And if you should lose your mind

If the woman I know and love

Dies behind your eyes

I’ll love you like the night sky

Like a star long gone

That my eyes

Won’t stop believing in.

– Vagabond Prophet

For @delightfulharmonypoetry , heres to many more years darling.

Thanks @josy57 for the prompt “This Obscure Chasm.

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

Dad Jeans

I was unprepared to have

My heart ensnared

By clutches oh so small.

I was born of summer

But you were born of heaven

With joy in your smile

And sunlight in your eyes.

Born in November the trees

Shade giving virtue had fallen

Honeybee long gone

No longer searched for pollen.

But your young and tender body

So needy and so small

We both got the warmth we needed

In the embrace of one another.

Now every pair of pants I own

Has holes in the knees

They are all worn and torn

From being a train or horse

For you to explore the universe,

From crawling to find you

I the monster in your tale.

I get to see the world anew

From the eyes of a child

Who knows not what borders are

Only what kindness is.

– Vagabond Prophet

@delightfulharmonypoetry

thanks @josy57 for the prompt “Worn and Torn.”

Eleventh of Everything

Sky dimly lit by crescent moon

That itself clothed mostly in shadow

Yields little light

On those battlefields which

One hundred years ago

Run red with bloody rivers.

War is not deserving of poetry

But the lives of young heroes are,

Death ought not have its praises sung

But the courageous acts

Of fearful boys should be told

In tomes with gilded edges.

Today at the eleventh of everything

When no more bullets sang

I will still this heart that beats

In a nation still free

To thank those who found strength

To leave their home

To defend its definition.

– Vagabond Prophet

For Remembrance Day