Vintage

Hold me up to the light

Inspect me under looking glass

With delicate brushes

Comb me over

To prove I am authentic.

This is borrowed strength

I am festooned with the strands

With the ribbons of blood

Strewn within me

From those that went before.

The stewards of memory

May know and verify

That I am the proud owner

Of vintage skin and antique blood.

These are legs

That have been leant

A tongue only for a term,

And a heart

I still make payments on.

It’s a rent to own program

You bleed yourself dry

For long enough

You might just get to be yourself.

Dying every day

And living every death

With your blood in my veins

That you died to provide.

– Vagabond Prophet

@josy57 yeah you! Thanks for prompting me with “Borrowed Antiques.”

Days of Honey

I am Mr. Cash

I am the mourner,

I’m everybody dressed in black

Who am I?

Is grief not where I dwell?

Is sorrow not the gold mine

Where I scratch out a living?

These things you say to me

Only leave me perplexed,

My days stuck in traffic

My nights stuck in thought.

My swallowed tongue

My rib cage rung

Climbing up and down

From a mind with kidney stones.

Every thought taking such effort

To unearth from the depths

And push to the surface

The pain brings me to my knees.

My own heart is the box

Marked fragile, intentionally dropped

Because it says so.

Now these keys on the ring

For locks I don’t remember,

Need to find a resting place,

And those locks with wide open jaws

Awaiting the crooked teeth

Of this forgotten tool

Will not close their lips for any other tongue.

For it knows my shape

And lies in wait

To fulfill the promise

Made by someone other than myself

For I hold the key that another designed

And must seek for it a sheath.

The journey is long

The path winding

And so I am thankful

For the days of honey

That heaven finally brings

To remedy this bitter soul.

– Vagabond Prophet

Thanks @josy57 for prompting me with “Swallowed Tongue.” This one kind of got away from me, hope folks like it.

Flat Earth

Dipped in water and then oil

Not knowing how to mix with myself.

Sometimes you have to re-break the bone

To get it set right.

Wide asleep

When the vines that creep

Pull me under,

I hear beasts within and without,

I hear claws upon the door

At most unholy hours.

I am the peacock with need so dire

To prove itself just once,

I am the rhinoceros with steepest spire

Upon my face betraying lies.

I am the tiger saying its for camouflage

But it was always about ego,

Nobody else has this colour scheme.

Here’s the truth that chills in July:

If we spoke before The Tower of Babel

We might understand each other,

However in this post Babel era

I only mix the shadows of words together

Rendering the truest shade of grey.

I miss the days of old

When the earth was flat,

Stars on the same level.

When I could run full speed

And have flames engulf my need

Stripping off the laquer

The feathers, the horns, the stripes.

The earth is round, but slowly

You’re bending it back

Back to how it was,

Running gets easier as the slope

Promises to lessen in time,

And though I’m dumbfounded

I’m finally finding sanctuary.

– Vagabond Prophet

Thanks @josy57 for the prompt “Finding Sanctuary” I hope this makes some kind of sense.

Remnant

Oh son with limber ligaments,

Elastic mind and sinew,

Let what remains of your youth

Stretch much further than mine has,

Let your vigour for adventure

Weather many winters.

Let your glittering eyes

Shine through every storm.

Spend your days in innocence

Picking flowers for your mother

And learn nothing of

The treachery of lechery.

Clothe yourself in all things joyful

And arm yourself with skills uncommon

Building bridges to others

Not walls to keep them out.

The flame that burns so brightly

If reduced to embers can survive,

Being blown into action days later

By desperate measures

From desperate lungs.

My lungs.

I’ll be your bellows

To forge within you

Strength I only heard of in age.

You’ll be better than me,

An anchor, a muster point

A lighthouse.

For those surviving the blight

Of those spectres in the night

And for all of them you’ll point

To the rising son.

– Vagabond Prophet

Thanks @josy57 for the prompt “what remains of your youth”

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 18

Do you find your hope groping in the dark

Sloping and waning

While the moon is waxing?

As though all your innermost dreams

And thoughts you hold most dear

Had been paraded through the streets

With mocking and jeering and spitting.

Come with me I say

The revolution starts with us.

Our lights have been put out too often

Wicks go sizzle between The Man’s greasy fingers.

All those people with nothing to offer

But their hearts in ink dots

Or paint swaths

Or sound waves.

Get a real job! They say.

But the art in our veins,

Make life worth living

And it’s so hard to strip it off.

Like the bark of a tree

That without will surely die,

So it would be with us

If we amputate our muse.

Protect your light!

At all costs defend it!

I’ll stand by your side

I’ll have your back.

Let’s have our cake and eat it too,

We’re going to need two cakes.

At least.

As all artists know,

The bare minimum is the foundation

For something great.

– Vagabond Prophet

Prompt Day 17

Gazing through polished panes

Longing after things with greatest pains,

Trying on some,

Walking past others.

Through the growth of more eyelids

You never really see at all,

You only see what you aren’t

What you lack, never what you are.

Window shopping can be fun

For the penniless and imaginative,

Don’t take appearances too seriously.

The ones who’ve never window shopped

Have the most to learn.

To have never wanted

To have never repressed your desires,

Never leaving behind something

Wished for on a whim.

What could you know of others?

What could you know of need

Or patience or gratitude

For something earned with sweat?

Whichever you are

Fortunate or less so

This last part is for you

And I’ll deliver with all the subtlety

Of an asteroid.

If you’re window shopping

Is better than your

Mirror gazing

It’s time to make some changes.

– Vagabond Prophet

Prompt Day 16

Oh you brilliant bohemian you!

To count the number of times you articulated

For me something shapeless.

Thoughts I’d had for years that evaded endlessly.

Every time I reached for them,

Slipping between fingers like smoke.

Yet you penned it in ink

Plainly for all to see.

Is that how you wrote so much?

Stealing thoughts of others

Transforming them into beauty.

The only kind of theft I’m happy to pardon.

How fitting, how terrible

That you should die, your blood turned to poison.

Your body wracked with pain

And your spirits lacked of wind.

As though life smiled on the grace of words,

And decided you’d had your fill of loveliness.

Thank you for doing it all the same,

You plagiarizer of my mind

You thief of dreams.

– Vagabond Prophet

– For Rainer Maria Rilke

Prompt Day 15

In some cultures legends

The killing blow of a previous life.

Some say stork bites, other say nothing at all.

My father, myself, my son and daughter

All have the same one.

Strawberry stain on the neck.

Were we rebels in France

And all got the guillotine?

Or all facing firing squads

For crimes against the crown?

I can hide it with my hair

But of the truth I am aware,

I see it in everything

Even in this birthmark.

I am a blemished and imperfect sacrifice

And you, you were perfect lacking nothing

And took upon yourself, every killing blow.

– 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