Tag: personal

Prompt Day 19


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

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 10

Six of us to start, smiling into the lens

One, two, three,

Cheese!

I didn’t even like cheese.

The eldest at my left

I looked up to him,

And he beat down on others

Because of it.

The other brother on the right

More tender and less angry,

Gave me all my favourite sounds,

Thanks for that.

Then the baby, that wild blonde

That I call sister,

Now she gives her love away

Like its a fake smile

For those old family portraits.

Then the parents, mostly sad

Mostly discontented, just surviving.

Now there’s more, inlaws step what have yous.

Big family is nice though traditions stay the same,

We only ever had two.

1: Ice cream cake.

2: Conflict avoidance.

Beyond happy I’ve my own branch now

To have grafted true beauty

Into this still green sapling

And to have such wonderful fruits

From the labours of our love.

– Vagabond Prophet

Timezones

Sleeping in same bed

Yet time zones apart from one another,

Him straining for a future hoping it’s different

Her yearning for a past that never changes.

Different beds now,

Followed their watches

Did either get what they wanted?

Will I always be haunted,

Wondering if it could have been different?

What if they’d got help

What if we switched leftover night

To Thursdays?

There was never anything left of them by Friday.

My rumination waxing

Never gets any answers,

Just resolutions.

It’ll be different for me.

– Vagabond Prophet

Miracles

vagabondprophet:

On our wedding day

I’d never felt taller

Maybe I just needed

A rooftop to scream off of.

Towering over everybody

Taking you by the hand,

We left as quick as possible

Tires kicking up dirt.

You still wear that dress today

And I think that’s wonderful,

I’d say you were never prettier

But I’d be lying.

You’re most beautiful

When you scowl at the sun,

For interrupting sleep

And cutting dreams short.

I’m just glad

That when the sun does rise

That you’re there at all

I really don’t get it.

You chose this

You chose me,

My body underwhelming

At the very best.

My mind plagued

With beasts and thistles,

And my soul

Struggling to float.

I’m like the arms

In a three legged race

Flailing

Most unhelpful.

But I said

I do

And

So did you.

Miracles really do happen.

– Vagabond Prophet

Shoulders


Everyone has a cross to bare

But you didn’t make all shoulders the same did you?

Mine are broad for a child

And slim for a man

Do you know what I mean?

I just don’t want to be alone

The only thing to save me aches me

But I’ll be saved in the end

Without anymore nails too.

You did that for me,

You carried the world on your shoulders

Those expansive masts of strength

The sails in between

Filled with our sins

To sail through death

And come out the other side

Alive enough for all of us.

– Vagabond Prophet

Cleft Heart

vagabondprophet:


Early October when the bomb went off,

Tearing us apart.

A brother here, a sister there.

Scattered across the globe.

Like the shock had made

Roots suddenly disappear.

Wandering to find them again.

Something to anchor me to life,

And something to pretend

That none of this ever happened.

It was like walking under a tree

Green burning bright

Like a star in the night.

Until it drops its snow

Right down your back

And your spine inverts itself.

The snow no colder than

The snowball fight earlier.

But never expected.

I never expected any of this

I trusted you,

I loved you.

But after you left,

We didn’t talk for months.

You didn’t understand that.

How could you think,

Nothing would change between us?

When you tore my heart right out.

I was a child,

Not a liver,

I’m not that resilient!

Are you stupid?

Or can you just think

That wishfully?

Couldn’t you have thought wishfully,

About her too?

Build her up in your mind.

Something better than she was,

Instead of leaving me all alone with her,

The only boy around.

We were six!

Then just three,

Only boy was me.

Brothers dug for oil,

Money for their toil.

We all got new family.

Pretend it’s normal

This prefix ‘step’ for everybody.

A monosyllabic word for ignorance.

Did you have stinging nettles

In the corners of your mind,

Shrouding your secrets from yourself?

I didn’t know what a man was!

How could I instantly become?

I guess you didn’t know either.

I found a new father,

He’s never let me down.

He’s unshakable.

Yeah we talk now,

About the weather,

And the price of gas.

But it will never be the same,

I can’t think that wishfully.

I won’t struggle to get as close.

You used to hold me close,

Just to be near me,

I treasure the memory.

It was twelve years ago you left,

Twelve years with a cleft heart.

When you changed the definition of home.

I’m trying to be eloquent now,

But all I can think of,

Is just how much it hurt.

– Vagabond Prophet

Muddied

You spent too long in that forbidden land

Too many lungfuls of that water

To not be muddied by it.

Every time you cough

It still smells of deceit.

It’s true God forgives

I’m trying to do the same

But the problem is my nose

It works as good as ever

And the stink of deceit is still on you

From those years long ago.

– Vagabond Prophet