Tag: poem

No Reasoning


There’s no reasoning with demons

Fight or run,

Only options.

Can’t run from something inside you,

Exercise in damnation.

Like talking to a wolf,

Doesn’t look you in the eye

Or read your lips

Or even listen.

Just stares at your neck

That expanse of weakness,

Hunger incarnate.

– Vagabond Prophet

Tuber Lessons

Down underneath covered up

Spreading deeper and deeper

And always covered in filth.

This song is about potatoes.

They’ve known dirt

They’ve known darkness

And they’ve known their place.

Just above that

But with thoughts no higher

I spread and grow

Reaching out with fingers like roots

Soaking up all there is.

Maybe this song is about me.

I’ve known dirt

I’ve known darkness

Where is my place?

Further out on the same level

Roots everywhere intertwine

Fighting for water sources

Choking each other out.

Okay this song is about all of us.

We’ve known dirt

We’ve known darkness

Let’s learn from the spud

And learn our place.

– Vagabond Prophet

Need and Needles


Driving downtown seeing all kinds of people,

Walking everywhere in haphazard zigs and zags

Unshaven, unwashed, mind reeling from life.

Existing is a heavy weight

Sometimes too much to bare,

It wrinkles the straight creases in the mind

Making things appear that weren’t

Or taking away what you’d known.

It’s not just bums who chose this life,

It’s Ricky who’d been raped as a boy,

It’s Vicki who’s children

Don’t speak to her anymore.

When there’s this much need

And needles,

It’s everyone’s problem

And there’s no fencing it in.

– Vagabond Prophet

No Hurry

vagabondprophet:

Waves lapping the shore

Nonchalant

There’s no hurry here.

All the time in the world

To reshape the world

The great architect that water is.

Let me share your surface

To traverse your great expanse

Fill me with your breath

So I can glide with ease.

No engine humming

No gasoline

Just you and me

Caressing each other.

You capsize me with a gust

And into your depths I’m thrust

No longer just a sailor, but fulfilling sailors dreams,

I become part of the vastness.

– Vagabond Prophet

Thirty Acres

Thirty acres in the middle of the city

Pavement closing in on every side

Cattle grazing lazily

While I’m stuck in traffic.

How lucky you are

To be an island of green

Amidst an ocean of grey.

– 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