Be Real

Naked faced for sleep alone

Still fearing the pillow will talk

About how I really look.

Donning masks before pants

Keeping up the charade

In this social masquerade.

Asking same questions

Giving same answers,

How’s it hanging?

Nothing much how about you?

Does anybody else get tired of it?

Does anybody else wish the world

Was ready for real people?

Who answered honestly

When asked about their day.

Yearned to pour to whomever may inquire

Yet reigned myself back for fear of smothering,

Few people are ready for the torrent of others.

Everybody is lonely

Everybody friendless,

Not getting along with disguises

How could we without?

I fail another attempt to write myself away

Drawing ink from my soul until the well runs dry,

More proof that paper isn’t ready for some stories.

Natural looking masks met with

“Are you sick?”

The answer is yes but I won’t say so

I’ll just say, “Fine thanks.”

Though it doesn’t make sense,

Nobody will say so,

For the response is on the list

Of accepted things to say.

Be real

Be fully you and fully new

Wake up and shower in paint thinner

Let your colour shine

Let the sun mature the hues

And heal every bruise.

– Vagabond Prophet

Thanks @josy57 for the prompt “A social masquerade.”

Hive Mind

I’ll love you not like the spring loves flowers

Or how children love mothers.

I’ll love you not how sun loves the moon,

Ever evasive but still reflecting brilliance.

I’ll love you like a bee sting

Sacrificing life to leave my mark on you,

I’ll let you have my honey sweet

That I’ve toiled long to possess.

It’ll never go bad,

But to go unmet

By lips as sweet as yours

Is a fate far worse.

– Vagabond Prophet

Deadly Sin #6

Gluttony, as defined by the poets dictionary.

Definition: Chasms called mouths always open and consuming. A need that’s never met for the ever unreasonable demands. Twisting natural appetites into power struggles, your tastebuds revolting over what once was good enough but now only offends.

Other definitions include: Appetite for appetite.

Hunger for an excess of something.

Particular desires met in particular ways, still never satisfy. Like filling a bucket with a hole in it, or planting in the garden where pests are known to ravage.

Antonyms: Satisfied, content, healthy appetite, “I’m full.”

Gluttony only seeks to put your desires just out of reach no matter how high you climb.

– Vagabond Prophet

Bags under eyes, lids propped open regretfully. Blood slows in a traffic jam uncharged by adequate rest. Steps shorten and stumble. A slingshot, a catapult, a trebuchet will do, give me velocity to find my way to you. Fling me high and send me soaring across the night sky, skip me across calm waters, nock me on your bowstring and give me shrewdest point for wherever you’re aiming today.

Vagabond Prophet

Courage

The war won by cowards.

Not heroes strong and true

Always knowing what to do.

Skinny little boys

Fear rattling their bones

Terror shaking their hands

Trying to aim at heads and hearts

Similarly quaking.

Souls such as these won every war

Girding their loins

Deciding action to protect their own,

To defeat the enemy,

To take back the land

More important than their fright.

The cost is great,

Young men upon dying

Finally sharpened their fear

Into courage in acts of debut bravery.

And now remembered as heroes

As they should be.

Courage casting its lustrous shadow

Backwards upon all past deeds

Redeeming them before falling on its sword.

– Vagabond Prophet

Skyline

Standing on the skyline

Waiting for a lifeline

To ride back home.

Standing on the skyline

Wondering how it looked

Before roads and buildings

And all things thatched with tar.

Standing on the skyline

Ignoring the compass

Given your magnetic nature.

You’re my true north,

I’ve walked south until I got there

Proof the earth is round.

You rise in the east

And if I invert myself

You rise in the west too.

Standing on the skyline

With winters rigid bones

And summers fragrant hope.

Standing on the skyline

Seeing mountains and valleys

Formed by your strong hand

And wondering what that says about me.

– Vagabond Prophet

Thanks @josy57 for the prompt “Standing on the Skyline.”

Deadly Sin #5

Greed, as defined by the poets dictionary.

Definition: Hungry hands with unnaturally sharp claws. An ever hungry need for more at the cost of anybody but yourself. Too many teeth for too small a meal, stealing your neighbours supper and still being unsatisfied.

Other definitions include: Unfulfilled desires fueled by diesel and fire.

Eight days a week insisting on nine, willing to kill to get it.

Coupon hoarding for the sale that’s never good enough.

Sharpening knives for the bones you make into broth. Elephant bone soup still insufficient.

Given enough weapons would invade every nation.

Given enough heat would boil the sea to make your tea.

Antonyms: Content, happy, at peace, needing nothing.

Greed only seeks to convince you that nothing about you or your life is enough.

Shackles

Punish me brutally

Lock me up in shackles

Give me what I deserve.

All these years I’ve begged

Just to get what I’m owed

Only to realize

There is nothing worse.

Now learning my earnings

Are what you’ve saved me from

I’ll swear my allegiance

To your promise

That doesn’t fit on paper.

Who else has threatened death

With life

And won?

– Vagabond Prophet

Deadly Sin #4

Sloth, as defined by the poets dictioary.

Definition: To have one’s soul trapped in half set concrete. Wanting to move and able to move but the effort is beyond conception and eventually desire is too. Conforming to whatever mold you happen to find yourself in out of ease. Especially pernicious as being the most comfortable of the sins. Every tragedy, every dream, every ambition can be safely ignored with nothing more than a blanket and a pillow.

Other definitions include: Laziness.

A lack of interest in living.

To have had your blood swapped with a thick thick roux.

Some slip into it for a brief reprieve from calamity, and find themselves so sluggish that they can’t ever leave.

Antonyms: Vitality, energetic, productivity.

Slothfulness only seeks to ruin hearts by stagnation. To still the waters of your mind until they can nourish nothing at all and never feel another ripple at all no matter how one seeks to disturb them.

– Vagabond Prophet

Red Breasted

Midnight snacks and joints that crack

The consequence of needs not flaunted.

Dreaming is hard when what you desire

Is beyond imagination.

In the meantime I keep

A dead bird in my pocket

Robin red breasted

Dressed to impress,

Imbue me with your majesty

So I can pretend at confidence

Until it’s not pretend.

Don’t be a mute canary

In the coalmine

Silent when we need your shrill chirp.

In death give me your sense for emergency

And a voice to match.

All these things and more I’ll do

Until I wake up by surprise

To find a new sunrise

Finding a world, no longer in disguise.

– Vagabond Prophet

– Thanks @josy57 for the prompt “a dead bird in my pocket”