Does your faith evaporate
Like water
On a hot sidewalk?
And children trample
On the remnant of your hopes.
What then?
Do you still believe?
When your heart
Undoes its rivets,
To let itself topple
Like a rookie jenga match.
Does your faith endure
The torrent of survival,
The steady drip of living.
Can it survive a head wound?
Or being trapped in a storm
With no way home?
It could be different you know,
You could let him carry you,
And work out the little knots in your soul.
Just know when your faith
In him is shaken,
His in you is not.
– Vagabond Prophet
Tag: poem
Pocket of Tears
If you’re crying
And you can’t stop,
Follow these simple steps.
Don and button
Your least favourite coat,
Just trust me.
Catch every tear
Into a single pocket
Until it’s brimming.
Then take that pocket
Sew it shut,
If just so you can shed it.
We must unclothe
Our deepest sadness,
No one is warmed by grief.
Now burn it all
Yes the coat too,
For no one is warmed by grief.
– Vagabond Prophet
Imbued
I’d traverse
The universe
To find you
Not to bind you.
I’ll hold you tight
If you think it right,
I’ll find you if you’re subdued
For in my mind, your scents imbued.
– Vagabond Prophet
Gary
I miss my drums
They were named Gary,
Shells made of birch
In hues of cherry.
Then there was Gorbachev
The black one,
All I’m thinking now
Is how I’d like to smack one.
– Vagabond Prophet
When you’ve got a song stuck in your head
That you’ve never heard before.
That’s when you’ll know I’m speaking to you,
In a language just for us.
Rockets and Lullabies
Rockets and lullabies,
Things that light the skies.
One to bring sweet dreams,
One to bring on screams.
One source of light
Has enough might
To light up the sky
Can we just try?
Can we try it once?
I’m not asking months.
In twenty four hours
We can ask the powers.
Which did you prefer?
When it did occur.
Fire and death,
Or a steady sleeping breath?
We tell children lullabies
Before we say goodbyes.
Aren’t we fighting for them?
Those green and budding stems.
Let’s preserve those thoughts,
The ones about lemons and apricots.
Not nightmares and bombs
That flatten pulses found in palms.
– Vagabond Prophet
Gesticulation Tower
Pinstriped in the front standing
Just a little higher than everybody,
Our attention you’re demanding.
I’ve got to say you look smug,
Do you really believe
This’ll fit beneath a rug?
You’ll come falling down I say
Can’t say when,
But there’ll come a day.
Like Genghis Khan
Realizing defeat
Woebegone.
You’ll lose all your power
That you’ve clung to
In your gesticulation tower.
– Vagabond Prophet
Corrugated
Have you ever met
Someone so dishonest,
That there lies must be fabricated?
Not imagined,
But built,
Out of real material.
Corrugated words,
Folded back,
Against one another.
Hoping they can bare
The weight of their
Collective despair.
– Vagabond Prophet
Time You Genius You
Give credit where credit is dueTime you genius you.
None carve as masterfully as you.
And she, she fears time ahead.
How it promises to tug, pull, and crease
Slowly unfolding her youth.
She doesn’t know my eagerness,
To see those same effects
See the whole canvas stretched.
I long to see the way
That she unfurls
Day after day.
As water smooths out stone
So time erodes her face,
A slowly chiseled beauty.
As the ax must blow by blow
Slowly strip away,
The fibers from one another.
So I anxiously await
The sands of time
Etching her away.
Crows feet will appear
The years will dig trenches
In the softness of her face.
I don’t believe in evolution
But her beauty does evolve,
A process of natural seduction.
She enchants me without trying,
As time goes marching by
I’ll orbit her still.
The more that’s scuffed away
Cut or split right off
To make way for something better.
Time you genius you
Master of shape
And all things exquisite.
You will scrub away her youth
Unravel her naivete
Leaving wisdom engraved.
Her body swelled and stretched
With babes not once but twice,
Lasting marks of conquest.
She fought to create,
To be the river’s mouth
For life itself to dawn.
Strip it all away,
This current face of hers,
What are you hiding?
A gift with one million layers,
That unwrap day by day,
No shortcuts.
The crescendo of her beauty
Will take many moons to reach,
I await that goddess truly.
Excess must be shed
To reach the final gem
I’ll hold her against the blows.
If time should bring her pain,
It’s no surprise but all the same
I will crouch down beside her.
With creaky knees and hazy eyes
A foggy mind and weakening spine,
I’ll crouch down to kiss it better.
If time should bring her grief
As part of this descaling,
I’ll be there.
Soak me through with tears
So they eat through me too,
We’ll ferment together.
I only wish to love her
Half as well as time,
Every fold and curve
Marked by its caress.
– Vagabond Prophet
Evergreen
Twisting and turning,
Sinews yearning.
For every rivulet.
Taking the hard way
Taking the easy way,
Whatever the heart desires.
Splitting stones asunder
To take its plunder.
Rich dark soil.
Fortifying Vessels
Nautical wrestles.
Carry me across the sea.
Winter might
Brutal white.
Sorting deciduous, evergreen.
Dieing yearly,
Rather queerly.
Just a little cold is all.
But evergreens don’t listen
To what the weather man has christened.
Fruitful all year long.
Hardy, immovable.
A truth that’s not removable.
That’s how I want to be.
Evergreen.
Never dead.
– Vagabond Prophet