Big Dipper

One bright and starry night

Just a lad with teary eyes

Lost the bout in the fight

When you pulled back the disguise.

Crashing through partition

I was fully completely, undone

Unraveled my tradition

My top no longer spun.

You broke through all other choices

When you addressed my need

I’d been listening to cunning voices

Devise a cunning deed.

Now that path I have forsaken

Thankful I’ve found another

After all the lies I’d taken

And their attempts to smother.

Now these ideas inverted

With tools forged in heaven

From the river of grace you diverted

To raise me like bread leavened.

All it took was looking up

The big dipper your spoon

Serving the love on which I sup

So much grander than the moon.

How did I ever think

Your grace was not enough

When you fill the sky, fill the rink

To refine this diamond in the rough.

– Vagabond Prophet

– Thanks @josy57 for prompting me with ‘the path I have forsaken.’

Two Bent Knees

I am the third son of a third son

Of a man with just one eye,

He’d have a hundred years now

Tucked under his belt.

Lessons he taught

From battles he fought.

Not the one across the sea

For his vision compromised

The childhood accident

The tragedy despised.

Running with scissors

And tripping with scissors

Not just a cautionary tale.

His war included no bullets

His attrition risked no shrapnel

Just the simple devotion of a simple man

To put bread upon the table.

Raising cattle in a frigid land

Where even water retains no flexibility

And gives up its crown for a time unchallenged.

Years later raising young by the seaside

His tidepool kingdom crashed down

When the water came in high.

One wife down and one to go

The missing mother divided

An already divided clan.

Trudging onwards to surest of horizons

His compass unflinching in its convictions,

His health faded but his faith did not

And the proof was in a vacant body

Found on two bent knees.

– Vagabond Prophet

@mildreflections I think you may like this, I was inspired by your poem about your grandfather.

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.

Brand New Key

Brand new key,

Fitting too well

Not allowing for my elbows,

Suicide by installments,

Or even custody of my own eyes.

Truth isn’t easy to swallow

Nothing that sharp is,

Wildfires don’t permit

Caveats and addendums,

Flash floods don’t schedule

Convenient appointments.

All consuming flame

Knows that real estate

Is the only good investment

So it comes and buys it all

No resistance fought

No feeble squall.

This decimation of autonomy

Is a blessing in the end,

For it strips the razor wire

From my own DNA

And cleans those wounds invisible.

– Vagabond Prophet

Onion

Exiles from the country

We’ve only ever dreamt of,

Refugees from the war

Inside us all.

Like a child miscarried,

The loss complete

But the blood just keeps coming.

I have worked for the firing squad

And know they never exhaust their work,

That injustice builds a tower

Weighty enough to soften

The strongest of spines.

I know that the aortic drum

That beats insistently

With bright red sounds,

Can drive one mad

With its loud demands.

For reasons such as these

Death row can be a freedom,

Homecoming in the coming of death.

A concrete and tangible end,

Real life to sink one’s teeth into

Before your teeth is all that’s left.

Every lungful Sisyphus’ work,

Life too much at full strength,

Some people taking handfuls of night

Just to get through the day.

Oh to find some relief

In this march to our demise.

Lean in close now,

Bend your ear to my lips

As I whisper urgently

With news that changes everything.

Your circumstance may remain,

But perspective is everything

Learning that not all blows

Are for breaking but for shaping.

Be the sculpture carved

From the inside out

With hope turning red from blue

As it swims to the surface.

Peel back the layers

Feel your eyes well up

I’m not an onion I’m a man

Transformed from an earthen bulb

Some black layers true,

But I’m pushing past the dirt now

And you can too.

– Vagabond Prophet

– Thanks @josy57 for prompting me with “Sisyphus’ work.”

Letters Unsent

You began to grow hazy

At the edge of my memory,

Sharpening your knife

On the spinning wheel of my mind.

You took my foggy view

Folding to make some clarity

Shouting words unkind

About different timelines unexplored

Involving strange knots in ropes

Involving headstones with your name.

I lied to you that day,

Left letters unsent, clinging to my tongue

Like bungee jumpers that

Can’t trust the harness won’t

Stretch into oblivion.

I was so shaken by your absence

I couldn’t tell you the truth

So I said nothing at all for months.

I left letters unsent

Words blurred on tear soaked pages.

I grew past you in a year

Like a bamboo grows past an oak,

Me young and strong, sprouting suddenly

You old and creased and resonating

Of my childhood forests

Where we’d collect the biggest leaves.

Now I can see you were

Marred from the start

With regrets running so deep

As to be confused with roots.

You were small and passionate

And you made human mistakes,

I’m strong now,

Like a plant forced to climb

The cracks in the sidewalk.

Stronger for it

And marked by it.

The letters are burned now

And we can embrace again

Though I still get confused

Whether I’m looking up at you

Down at you

Or if we’re at last on level ground.

– Vagabond Prophet

Thanks @josy57 for prompting me with “letters unsent.”

There’s me
And then there’s you
And all I want to do
Is climb into your heart
To make in me a fresh start.

Dissolve like sugar
In those warm cleansing waters
No longer able to discern
Where I end and you begin.

Vagabond Prophet

Hell’s Hallowed Howl

Created like clear running water

Either joining up to marry a greater body

Or going still and murky in marshy mires.

Designed to age like a spider,

Which is to say well

But with a web that tells a story.

My tongue intentionally sits

Uncomfortably in its fractured saddle

Amidst broken teeth and words

Not yet sharpened.

Destined to wrestle with myself

And the one strand of DNA

That must be made of razor wire.

The anthem of the damned

Cries out loudly

“Freedom!”

Freedom to wander

And freedom to ponder

Freedom of choice and care of consequence.

Is freedom the best desire to have?

Not better to serve a good master

Than serve only myself?

I answer this question

In the negative to find I am

A bird that would fly

But grounded by weighty bones,

Having not had the lead yet hollowed out

By painful but saving tools.

By design I am the battlefield

Between Hells Hallowed Howl

And Heavens Terrible Goodness.

Both at times whispering,

Both at times shouthing,

And both at all times

Vying for my soul.

By design I trust in Goodness

Though it does not shimmer

Though it dances less entrancingly,

For its promise to pull out razor wire

And extract lead from my bones.

Though the Howl dances beautifully

Shines brilliantly and sings convincingly,

How to trust something

That only promises my desires

As though there is nothing greater?

By design,

Is a question I can not answer.

– Vagabond Prophet

– Thanks @josy57 for prompting me with “By Design.”

Backtracking Majesty

I am arrested by love

Incarcerated by affection.

I once walked the withering sands alone,

Burning these pale soles black,

Sweat stinging these blue eyes shut.

I used to tread the coals of hot regret

Until I noticed some backtracking majesty.

I saw still morning lakes

Reflecting things much deeper

Than themselves.

Saplings with supporting rods,

Even twigs need a father

Something to grow in the shadow of

Learning not to turn all blooms

Away from but towards the sun.

That trees need no language,

Soil needs no tongue

They speak to each other

With yearning twisted fingers

And thrive upon the embrace.

The sun has no agenda

Yet the mountains bow

Before the glory every morn.

Rain that kisses the land

To lend a helping land

When the fields cry out

With dry lips and parched throats.

No paperwork, no formal requests

Only simple needs simply stated.

Every rockslide applause

For the sky it could never reach,

Every thunderstorm a parade,

Fireworks celebrating

The end of another drought.

Finally the people who dare to trust,

Loving and giving to people

Who can never pay them back.

Working fingers to the bone

To help others find a home,

In this world full of shadows

Finally shedding some light

By trusting and striking

Some matches on the rocks.

So yes I am not my own,

By love I am arrested

My deepest sins contested

And at times even jested,

That I would be such a fool

As to sojourn alone.

By grandeur so big it’s hard to see

I am swallowed whole

And spat back out a whole person,

With a whole soul

That is freely yet completely

Given to the one who soothed

My aching feet and breaking heart.

– Vagabond Prophet

Long Hours

Pen long hours in the dust of your memories,

Discern the bones from the dirt

Excavate the traumas and trophies

And see the foundation of your story.

Pen long hours in the grass of your youth,

With quills wearing feathers so dashing

With ink carve away the parts not needed

White page given meaning by its embrace with black.

Pen long hours in the forests of parenthood,

Admire and prune growth so eager

Never embarrassed or furtive

Only looking for a limb to climb.

Pen long hours in the clouds of age

Wrinkled and grey, ready to let go

Aching to rain life down into the dust

The memories of woodland creatures

Awoken by the hopeful magic of petrichor.

When the sun sets on your inkwell

And life has penned long hours on your soul

And you lay in your spiral bound coffin,

Know that a story is never wasted.

– Vagabond Prophet