Gravitas

All sound is born from silence

All art is born from fractured beauty

Trying to graft some goodness to some pain.

Now I dare to unlock my voice

I’ve carried this whole time.

The knot in my stomach

Turns to words on my lips

And though I am afraid

I know that half of fear is wonder.

I wonder

I wonder will my voice

Find a pleasing place

Amongst the octaves

To sing my story gone untold.

With baritone gravitas

And soprano urgency

My song will soar above the madness.

– Vagabond Prophet

@josy57 gave me the prompt “I’ve carried it all this time.” Thanks for that. I hope folks enjoy.

Wardrobe

Beware the song with steps danced slowly

With melody so sweet that each word

Eagerly leaps from your tongue,

Do not let beautiful mantras

Robe your mind with lies.

Beware the wolf with wardrobe full of deceit,

Having spent its days learning your itches

Content with scratching before biting,

Not all pleasures good

Many dipped in arsenic

For hunted animals,

In dead of winter of course

He calls you precious.

A caution for the new tenant

In the old house

Unaware of the boards that creak

To wake a sleeping beast,

Know where you are and be on guard,

Mindful that home is a place nobody has been.

Careful with the man who never plays pretend,

Never trying to be somebody better than he is

To make it fit by force, always at ease

With a spirit malnourished.

Traits so wonderful never fit naturally

But in time you can grow into them.

– Vagabond Prophet

Thanks @josy57 for prompting @mildreflections and I with “Hunted Animals.”

Hope folks like it.

Echo

Ballroom facades and finest outfits

Simple memories overshadowed by

Champagne flourishes and caviar bribery.

Egos bigger than themselves

To make doorways feel smaller

And double breasted suits

For men with no hearts at all.

Shouts and cries and squeals of glee

Shrouded by the rules of a dance

Performed by thousands before.

It’s not your dance, it’s not ours

They’re the steps given to us

That we now run away from.

We sprint into the rain

Shining gown gets soaked

And I see the skin beneath

Puckered and upset

With what the weather does beget.

Now we can shout

And finally find our voice!

Find a cave and scream out loud

For echoes never lie

Never amplifying or altering

Never adding or subtracting

Just your exact words again.

Forget the champagne and caviar,

Leave your fingerprints in the earth

Let forests, mountains, and caves

Remember the way you sound.

Your utterances indelibly pressed

Into rocks hitherto undented

They will always scream right back

Not holding onto your love

But giving and receiving in equal measure.

Don’t be silent don’t let thoughts

Go unspoken forever

Don’t make the stones wait for your song

Like a mother with a son at war

Waiting for his return

Only to receive a flag,

And a thank you for the blood.

Echoes always tell the truth

The most discerning of sleuths

They always detect a voice

Even in those who

Thought they’d lost theirs

Amongst the magnified silence

Of ballroom masquerades.

– Vagabond Prophet

Thanks @josy57 for the prompt “The true meaning of an echo.” Hope everybody enjoys it.

Prompt Day 12

vagabondprophet:

I don’t see many people these days,

There lights blind my eyes

I run and I hide.

My name is Aurora

Come north come at dark

And I’ll dance for you

Through the night.

My flowy dress twirls outwards

And my hair changes colours

You’ve never seen before.

My fingers writing stories in the sky

In a language long forgotten.

I see my face reflected

In the great lakes,

I really am radiant

And wanting to share my beauty.

I want somebody to talk to,

Somebody to sing to,

Somebody to quarrel with.

Come further north, further still

Bring no light of your own

For I’ll light our lives enough,

And you’ll only diminish me.

– Vagabond Prophet

Upstream

Absinthe green and gin white,

Bourbon brown and whiskeys bite,

Magic brews to subdue or embolden

How they see fit.

Sometimes loosening

A person held at bay,

And others shutting mouths

While throwing punches.

A carefully procured potion

With mystic contents

And curious results.

Magic all around us ought not be surprised,

By cryptic text in cursive illegible.

In the revelation that if we share a continent

There is always an unbroken chain of concrete

Connecting us together.

Keep your ear to the pavement

And feel my heartbeat in the

Slithering cracks and widening potholes

Gas prices rise and fall

In time with my bloods pulsing nature

Yet in the economy of you and me

An empty tank won’t keep me away

As we will always be connected

By a shared river of gravel and tar

I’ll swim upstream I’ll swim down

Please don’t be too far.

– Vagabond Prophet

Thanks @josy57 for prompting @mildreflections and I with “The green of absinthe.”

Pulp

I’m wide asleep and dreaming

Of a future where the world’s not caving in.

Always presumptuous,

Always idealistic.

Today I saw convict wearing green

Shackles on both hands and feet

Those in chains

Still have pains.

In my optimistic stupor I imagine

His crime one that’s victimless.

Dark hair and dark eyes

He had with dark remarks

For the guards at either arm.

I too have a hamartia

A kryptonite, Achilles heel.

Yet surely the stories not yet finished

Are the ones most in need

Of divine intervention.

I’ve been incorrigible

And the man in green may be too,

Yet I hope that on our piles of kindling

Similarly damp

That when a spark does catch

Our hearts can some salvation snatch.

That’s not presumptuous

That’s not idealistic,

I’m crushed by the weight of a savior,

And from pulp comes hopeful seeds.

– Vagabond Prophet

Thanks @josy57 for prompting @mildreflections and myself with “A presumptuous dream.” Hope this wasn’t wasted on the likes of me.

Fireside Memories

Some trains won’t return to station

Yet as I travel long I see

Limbs tossed aside.

The thin arms that carried me thus far

Cast into the ditch

Now flaunt no leverage

Only strength,

Now travelling at great length

Finding enough pieces for a creature.

Pieced together makes a person

That I sit with at fireside,

Telling stories until stars illuminate

More than last remaining embers.

Telling me my own tales

That are strangely familiar

Yet gone unthought of for years.

Young enough to think

The weather man made decisions

Rather than predictions,

A man behind a desk with buttons

Overwhelmed by choice

And always choosing to be unkind,

Rather than a simple man

Trying his best to convey bad news.

Old enough to know that

Black is the colour for mourning

Because it attracts the most heat

Those grieving hearts need

As much as they can get,

Almost like an embrace.

Watching moving pictures with the neighbour

Father implores me to send him home,

Takes me to the driveway where

Man’s best friend is wrapped

In a yellow wool blanket.

People came to help

Digging a hole next to the tree

That reached halfway to heaven.

Now his bones are turned to soil

That roots wriggle against

To further their kingdom

Spreading fingers spreading shadows

On a boy fallen fully awake and weeping.

He’d been companion

He’d been protector

He’d played catcher and outfielder,

But most of all

He’d played my friend.

– Vagabond Prophet

Thanks @josy57 for prompting @mildreflections and I with “dismembering a memory”. A great prompt, hope I did a halfway decent job with it.

Shapeless

Souls, water, wind,

Angels, demons, and love.

Things most likely to dance

Between polar opposites of good and evil

Can’t take shape, won’t take shape.

Molded my nurturing and vitriol,

Only shaped by what it pushes against,

I’ve been shaped by a God above

That loves me somehow,

A devil below

That loves me like

A beautiful yet poisonous plant.

I’m shaped by people on either side

That love me wonderfully

And hurt me wonderfully.

A candle burned at every side

Not just at the ends

Until all that’s left is wick.

Needing something to slow my melt

But God is above and that doesn’t work

Until he turns me upside down

Whispering in my ear,

“I’ll shape you masterfully.”

Cut away the gnarled bits

Sand the rough edges.

Wipe stain upon the wood

Bringing out the grain

That needs that touch

To come to the surface.

– Vagabond Prophet

Thanks @mildreflections for prompting @josy57 and I with “the shape of a soul.

Black Out

Trees fall on lines and everything goes dark

The knight has fallen

The night has risen

Suddenly and with no warning.

Like the deepest parts of the ocean

Not yet explored

I delve into closet corners

That I never knew before.

We’d play games

To make the time pass

To laugh away the darkness.

Hide and seek

With everybody hidden,

Scavenger hunts,

For the daylight that we sought.

Amidst stubbed toes

And flashes of smiles with no bodies,

We found family enough shelter

In blackest of blackouts.

As quick as quicksand beneath my feet

Everything comes back with lightning speed,

Ironic, as lightning started all of this.

Hearing furnace pump

A heartbeat ahead of the lights,

Ready or not here I come..

– Vagabond Prophet

Thanks @mildreflections for prompting @josy57 and I with “When the lights go off.”

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.”