Original Poetry about anything and everything.
The yawning chasm
The muscle spasm
The heavy eyelids
That cry for more unrest.
There aren’t enough hours
For me to complete towers
I began many moons ago
Though I work the mortar daily.
I’m a stardust child clean
Now laced with gasoline
Strike a match
Watch chemicals react
See me explode
This heart barely intact.
– Vagabond Prophet
This is exhaustion
This is where my mind hibernates
And my arms and legs
By rote accomplish much.
No path less traveled
Was ever tread by rote
No trails blazed by bravery
Ever made half aware.
Shock me with lightning
Make my smile frightening
Scatter the bones of the strong
Into the soil of the weak,
Inferior they rise
With nobody paying any mind.
With banners high
And sharpened spears
Remembering the pain
Throughout all the years.
Though these thoughts may abate
My soul I prostrate
Riddle me with tumors
Spread vicious rumors
Leave me torn asunder
From every past blunder.
– Vagabond Prophet
A volunteer from the crowd now
Step behind the shroud now
While I run you through
With steely knives.
It is plainly murder
But the crowd goes wild
As long as bright red smile
Is painted on the face.
Stay your quarrelsome tongue
While this logic you’ve clung
Listens to my explanation.
In any other scenario
You’d demand my blood too
But when I’m on the stage
And you’re in your chair
I make the rules
Understand?
– Vagabond Prophet
Okay that was weird. Thanks @josy57 for the prompt “in any other scenario.” Really don’t know where this came from…
What good can come
From his habit of sleeplessness?
Is this your question,
Friend that ones easy.
It’s true summer is defeated
By the frozen blows of winter
Yet winter begets spring.
The ore scorched by fire
And beaten by the hammer
Turns into brilliant jewelry.
All my hobbies and interests
All of my leisure and yard work
Put on the bottom shelf
Just for a time.
This brief opportunity
To affect change in the lives
Of desperate children
With no place to rest their head,
Is worth every minute of rest
That I put to death on the altar
Of servitude.
Are you sure? Is it working?
Do your yawns create some virtue
Does your unrested mind
Really get any good work done?
You queried
Arms crossed
Smirk pulled up high
Like a flag on holiday.
In midwestern climate
Can you trust good weather
Long enough to shed
Your cynical husk?
The sunrise is majestic
Whether I’m waking
Or not yet found my bed.
It is brilliance like this
I was made to reflect
And my silver mind
Pounded into mirror
By this bludgeoning war
Of attrition will serve me well.
I care not for
The scathing mockery
For I know that through strife
I may find
The unpopped kernels
Of my genius.
– Vagabond Prophet
@josy57 Thank you for the prompt “On the bottom shelf” I enjoyed that.
I heard tales of you
From woefully unreliable sources
Who poured their propaganda
Like concrete,
Hoping to build a foundation
For themselves.
Lips on the inside
Teeth on the outside
You’d always bite
Before you’d kiss.
This is what I was told.
Now I listened to my friends
But kept a spark of doubt,
Upon meeting you
I was made to breath heavy
And fan it into flame.
Since then the fire
Has taken many forms,
Like traversing the town on foot
To see you for thirty minutes.
Like stealing the cities
Entire supply of yellow flowers
To brighten your grey workplace.
Like shade
Saving in summer
Yet deadly in winter,
Your smile careened
Through my heart.
Leaving mailboxes tipped
And street signs turned around
Now unsure if I’m driving
Too fast or too slow
But it’s towards you
So I push my foot down.
– Vagabond Prophet
Like a shooting star
Could my death inspire
The minds of those
Standing far enough away
To only see the beautiful
The luminous.
Having stood any closer
They may observe
I carry as much darkness as light
But in the night sky
It’s a fact I hope to hide.
Having come from
One of those voids
That we still bother naming,
That I may one day
Land on a tangled
And ropy shore and climb
My way to legend.
Crawl to higher ground
To see my own fiery wake
Burn the gaze of watchers
Take their thirst to slake.
– Vagabond Prophet
Shipwrecked on a shore
Of feral condemnation
From every corner of the nation,
Combing every grain of sand
To find some remnant
Of your past life.
They think you’re unconscious
But you hear the whispers,
“Why are we bothering,
Can’t we let him slip
Through the cracks of our care?
Should we slip some
Intravenous fear to finish him off?”
I know not why you fill that bed
Or why your breach of protocol
Has the hallway outside
Filled with more armed guards
Then I can count on one hand.
The endlessness
Of your listlessness
And your breathlessness
That keeps draughting
Maskful after maskful
Of precious oxygen.
The threat of whip and lash
If you manage to leave
In cuffs rather than a bag.
There is value in sweat
And valour in tears,
Do you know these things?
Or only preyed upon that fact?
I don’t know
I can’t know.
I know that
The words tied to your name
Are not yet set in stone
Not carved into your bone.
The consequence
Of confidence
Is responsibility,
Is it a mantle
You’re prepared for?
Is this even your fault?
Are you one of those sad ones
Born with a convoluted tubule
Connecting ear to brain
Always twisting the truth,
Like a game of telephone
The message constantly misshapen.
Were lies only passed through your hands,
But licking all those envelopes
Your tongue stuck
To the roof of your mouth
Making truthful speech impossible?
Now having cried so many tears
The sea mistakes you
For part of itself
And heeds not your cries for help.
Though what they say could be true
That you released quivering bullets
From a quaking hand,
Don’t let the ticking of the clock
Be the author of your days.
Remember when good news
Wears camouflage
And bad news wears neon
That I’d still lend an ear.
After this one simple question,
If you could relive your life
Would you ruin it
In a brand new way?
These are questions we share
For ourselves, for our souls.
What else do we share?
Do we share a blood type?
Could your A+’s
Meet my O-’s
And make a different alphabet,
Where the words tied to your name
Don’t anchor you the same?
– Vagabond Prophet
Thank you so much @josy57 for prompting me with “The words tied to your name.”
More hospital related poetry for everybody, or as I like to call it…
Antiseptic verse
Enjoy.
The most skilled of cashiers
Couldn’t make change of this noise
For some quiet.
I’d wrestle the sun
To keep the night from coming
With its sinister grin
And loud taunts
That daylight may never return.
These thoughts drowned out
With songs sung in every tongue
Of good hope and love.
If your belief
Grants no reprieve
From the devil on your sleeve
Your anchor set in ground
That avoids its touch.
Leave now!
Run fast!
Take your coat
And a boat
And row right out to sea!
Rivers flow to oceans
And oceans feel the union
Deep inside themselves.
This is the answer
The remedy from cancer,
All roads don’t lead home
But all homes do have a road
Leading to them.
If you’re found with a heart
Eager for sanctuary
Having fainted exhausted in the ditch
It’s still better than having never set out.
The guide may come correct
Misguided steps but beginning is a must.
You are worth your weight in gold
Let timid souls grow bold.
– Vagabond Prophet
Firewood stacked in the cellar of my heart
Waiting for some rogue spark,
To make the whole thing catch,
The inferno lying in wait.
Everything takes its turn in the sky
Like the sun
Like the moon
Like my own judgement of myself.
One of those confused souls
Living vicariously through the toilet
Taking everyones shit
Except my own.
To end this marching
I just might have to
Euthanize my own legs.
Sometimes I feel like an electromagnet
With no current running through,
Having lost all of its virtue.
Unless you wanted something cold
Something hard
Something that will never
Grip you tightly.
At this particular juncture I realize
Something strange even to me,
Reality never contradicts itself
Except in the presence of hurricanes.
That the most tranquil of eyes would beget
Such a tempestuous halo dancing round it,
For cows give milk and sadness gives tears
How is it that peace births terror so strong
As to peel roofs from homes.
The typhoon that stops its spinning
To focus its efforts inwards
Inducting some insanity and rage
To that placid and torporial center,
Introduce some apocalyptic worry
To the serene eye.
This would make far more sense.
How do these coexist?
How do they share a bed
Without one taking the blanket
To let the other shiver and die?
How do black and white dance
And in their twirls and pirouettes
Not ever turn to grey?
Yet that’s what has occured in me
A rotten center amidst alien goodness
That eventually makes itself back to the center
Until it all dissipates, leaving not but calm.
Skin stretched taut over
A rib cage mast to make a sail,
Blood fills it like a gale
To push me ever onwards.
On my way one foot
In front of the other,
Trudging the road
Of happy destiny.
Though I don’t quite emit light
The disease is in remission
I’m casting a lighter shadow.
– Vagabond Prophet
– Hey @josy57 ! Thanks for the great prompt
“Casting a Lighter Shadow”.
On the eve of higher learning
Keep your bright heart burning
That amongst red apples and gold stickers
You’d be the only flame that never flickers.
With hair as curly
As the shapes
You first drew on paper,
Eyes as brown
As the coffee I drink
Each and every morning.
If I could pluck your brightness
I’ve little doubt I’d live forever,
To be a father
Is to never die.
But rather have my blood
Pump through better veins,
To have the apprentice take the tool
Carving the block in ways
I never could with hands
I helped form.
One day I’ll be humbled by age
And you a shining knight
Will have your own page
To raise up with wisdom I will give thee.
Tonight just rest your lovely head
Before this new journey,
When the sun rises
On your keen brow
Know that it never sets
On your father’s prayers for you.
– Vagabond Prophet
– Son starting kindergarten. I’m not crying you’re crying!
Vagabond Prophet 