Tag: poetryportal

Strolling through sopping grey

Summers first reprieve

Is a whisper of autumn.

When every blade of grass is slick

From the breath of the night

And all parched land takes flight

Making way for things shadegrown

Before the big sleep.

Vagabond Prophet

Frigid

vagabondprophet:

The wind bites my face

And I know that’s your embrace

But it hurts,

Must you be so cold?

I make a hot cup of something

See I’ve got an answer for everything,

As usual I’m either too smart

Or too dumb.

I don’t even know which

It changes like a switch,

So let the wind bite my face

And make my legs go numb.

Let me stay stranded in the cold

No choice but to be bold,

When I’m captured by your might

Captivated by frightful beauty.

Make your frosty tongue

Climb every rung

And run piercing

Through every passageway.

Don’t give me a way out

Don’t make it a fair bout,

Call me to yourself

Grip me firmly.

Take me in your hand

Put on me your brand

Enchant me with

Your frigid brilliance.

– Vagabond Prophet

Fickle Plumage

vagabondprophet:

Diuretic of the mind,

Extruded thoughts

Shaped by force.

Dread and malevolence,

Hornets in my pockets,

All good excuses.

I know the real reason

I push everything out

At transparency o’clock.

I pluck every bit out,

All that fickle plumage,

To let you see underneath.

I don’t need both hands

To count all my friends,

I just need both hands to be thankful

For the friends I have.

– Vagabond Prophet

Onion

Exiles from the country

We’ve only ever dreamt of,

Refugees from the war

Inside us all.

Like a child miscarried,

The loss complete

But the blood just keeps coming.

I have worked for the firing squad

And know they never exhaust their work,

That injustice builds a tower

Weighty enough to soften

The strongest of spines.

I know that the aortic drum

That beats insistently

With bright red sounds,

Can drive one mad

With its loud demands.

For reasons such as these

Death row can be a freedom,

Homecoming in the coming of death.

A concrete and tangible end,

Real life to sink one’s teeth into

Before your teeth is all that’s left.

Every lungful Sisyphus’ work,

Life too much at full strength,

Some people taking handfuls of night

Just to get through the day.

Oh to find some relief

In this march to our demise.

Lean in close now,

Bend your ear to my lips

As I whisper urgently

With news that changes everything.

Your circumstance may remain,

But perspective is everything

Learning that not all blows

Are for breaking but for shaping.

Be the sculpture carved

From the inside out

With hope turning red from blue

As it swims to the surface.

Peel back the layers

Feel your eyes well up

I’m not an onion I’m a man

Transformed from an earthen bulb

Some black layers true,

But I’m pushing past the dirt now

And you can too.

– Vagabond Prophet

– Thanks @josy57 for prompting me with “Sisyphus’ work.”

Escapee

I am the foolhardy child

Who ran from the safehouse

To the hands of my accuser.

Escapee fleeing my own freedom.

You pursued me relentlessly

Like the sun the moon,

Saying you’d take me

Ignoring all scars

You’d not reject me

Until the shore rejects the waves.

You won me over

Under a clear sky

Using stars always there

To paint new pictures just for me.

Now in the heat of the night

I whisper the truth under

Moth laden lanterns

To others lost as I once was.

That you took my place

In a risk that made heaven

Hold its breath

To erase my coming death.

– Vagabond Prophet

Letters Unsent

You began to grow hazy

At the edge of my memory,

Sharpening your knife

On the spinning wheel of my mind.

You took my foggy view

Folding to make some clarity

Shouting words unkind

About different timelines unexplored

Involving strange knots in ropes

Involving headstones with your name.

I lied to you that day,

Left letters unsent, clinging to my tongue

Like bungee jumpers that

Can’t trust the harness won’t

Stretch into oblivion.

I was so shaken by your absence

I couldn’t tell you the truth

So I said nothing at all for months.

I left letters unsent

Words blurred on tear soaked pages.

I grew past you in a year

Like a bamboo grows past an oak,

Me young and strong, sprouting suddenly

You old and creased and resonating

Of my childhood forests

Where we’d collect the biggest leaves.

Now I can see you were

Marred from the start

With regrets running so deep

As to be confused with roots.

You were small and passionate

And you made human mistakes,

I’m strong now,

Like a plant forced to climb

The cracks in the sidewalk.

Stronger for it

And marked by it.

The letters are burned now

And we can embrace again

Though I still get confused

Whether I’m looking up at you

Down at you

Or if we’re at last on level ground.

– Vagabond Prophet

Thanks @josy57 for prompting me with “letters unsent.”

Brushfire

Your mother said I wasn’t right

Not serious enough,

Now we laugh until we’re pink

Thinking of being with anyone else.

Resonating something deep inside me

I didn’t even know needed vibration.

I was kindling

You were a match

Together we’re a brushfire.

Burning and spreading until

Our love insisted on having

Skin of its own.

Now you’re a mother

And I’m a father

And together

We are the stewards

Of the miraculous.

– Vagabond Prophet

@delightfulharmonypoetry

Bang the Drum

I bang the drum just with my thumb

Till the knuckles gone numb,

Both the drum skin and mine hurting

And better for it.

Safety never inspired

Any marching orders,

Calm seas never filled

Any sails,

And the pursuit of safety

Never protected the innocent.

Denatured eggs turn white with heat

And in turn give me strength.

Ironic that to spread some hope

I need to scratch out my doubt,

Burn away with love something

Terrible but naturally part of me.

Ironic not like the boss cracking jokes

While firing you,

Ironic like a vaccination scar

That resilience should be marked by harm.

Fight your nature,

Fight the cancer that makes

You cower in the night

And walk past the hungry.

Wrestle and arrest

The thoughts that push you

To hurt just out of curiosity,

Like thieves lacking nothing

Only doing it for sport.

Don’t be so alarmed when good news

Threatens your way of life

It only seeks to remind you

It’s always been a way of death.

– Vagabond Prophet

– Thanks @josy57  for the prompt “denatured.” It’s always a joy.

Return to Sender

I opened the letter as it arrived

Hoping it would buoy her spirits

And diminish the long shadows ahead

Only to find the screen displaying

A line flatter than a prairie.

The code blue was issued

And skilled men and women

Sprang into action

Making the bed springs squeak

Their emergency made plain.

I should be used to this by now,

Death is part of every life,

Irony is cruel sometimes,

Just like the irony of a body bag

That insists on sterile packaging.

As though the dead would complain

About the cleanliness of

Their final sleep.

The medicine we needed

Not found in this world,

Now here we are hoping

She can still find it somehow

The fountains of joy

And streams of love

No doctor can prescribe.

I am sorry but I must

Return this to sender

For the woman in my care

Has died this afternoon.

A letter from one heart

To another no longer beating.

– Vagabond Prophet

– Thanks @josy57 for the prompt “The medicine we need”