Tag: prose poetry

vagabondprophet:

Balsa Wood

If I could remake you

Out of balsa wood

Would I?

You’d be lighter

Yet strong,

Easily take flight.

The wind would push

Against your wings

And caress your face.

Ascension, descension,

Thrown by the carelessness

Of the air and the sky.

Letting every splinter

Alter your course,

Dancing on the map.

Would you even return,

Fight the current

To come back to me.

I see you in the flesh

And swear

You’re something better

Could I set you free?

Free of the land

And free of me.

Knots and imperfections

Same as now,

But you would fly.

You belong

High above me,

A distant speck.

I can’t make this choice

I’m selfish in my love,

What say You?

Wind filled wingspan?

Or me, simply me,

Pink tongue, white teeth.

I’ll be yours

To hold and kiss,

To wriggle against.

I know it’s a poor choice.

I’ve always ruffled

One too many feathers.

So which is it?

The clouds,

Cotton and dewy.

Or me, simply me

I’ll hold you close

And love you tenderly.

If you wish

I’ll remake you

Out of balsa wood

But know that if

The gale proves too much,

You may return to me

I’d make you safe again

Peeling back every ring

Of that lovely balsa wood.

– Vagabond Prophet

Evergreen

vagabondprophet:

Twisting and turning,

Sinews yearning.

For every rivulet.

Taking the hard way

Taking the easy way,

Whatever the heart desires.

Splitting stones asunder

To take its plunder.

Rich dark soil.

Fortifying Vessels

Nautical wrestles.

Carry me across the sea.

Winter might

Brutal white.

Sorting deciduous, evergreen.

Dieing yearly,

Rather queerly.

Just a little cold is all.

But evergreens don’t listen

To what the weather man has christened.

Fruitful all year long.

Hardy, immovable.

A truth that’s not removable.

That’s how I want to be.

Evergreen.

Never dead.

– Vagabond Prophet

Solitary Refinement Chapter 27

Dear Joshua                 April 20th 2018

Woke up this morning and saw the cave in my eyes. Do you remember that cave in the forest I told you I was scared of? I just get the feeling that the blacks of my eyes in the mirror look like the entrance to that place. It’s weird I know but I get really freaked out looking into the mirror. Especially today of all days, after a night like last.

I heard Kal speak finally. His voice was surprisingly high, and it bothered me all the more. Just like how his glasses didn’t seem to fit the rest of him his voice was the same. Like he’s some sort of combination of characteristics designed to make me uneasy.

“It’s cold tonight, I’m going to come up to your bed for some warmth.” He said it so matter of factly, not threatening or with his voice raised at all. I tried to tell a guard like you’ve been suggesting all along but he just told me to get to bed, didn’t really listen at all. Then it was lights out. About thirty minutes after the lights shut off and I’d started to hear snores coming from around the cell block, I heard the creak of Kal climbing the bunk. I had my knife in hand and swung it at him. I missed but he saw the glint of the blade in the moonlight coming in through the window. He simply climbed back down and got into his bed.

Then, once he was settled he whispered loud enough only for me to hear, “I’m going to get you, you know. That broken little knife won’t keep you safe long. I’m going to gag you and do what I want, you can’t stop me and you know it. Nobody will hear your screaming.”

Joshua what can I do? The guards have already shown they don’t really care. So who is there to trust that can help me? Trevor can protect me in the day, but after lights out and we all need to be in bed? I don’t need to be indebted to him anymore than I am already anyways. It may just come to what I feared. I know I swung at him today but I think even I knew I wouldn’t really hurt him, I just was hoping it would make him think twice. Seems it’s just made him enraged. I may have to really do it, I might have to really kill him.

Please tell me you see a way out of this.

A.N. There’s not very many chapters left in this. It’s been a journey but we’re near the end. I’d love some feedback or reviews. My ask box is open in case you’d like to do it anonymous style.

Harmony

vagabondprophet:


I need more music

I’ve got rhythm in my veins

And a heart that pumps

Not blood but a beat.

To create something

To be consumed by the ears,

To bring into life

Meaningful sound.

My heart beats

In polyrhythms,

And my feet journey

To find the melody.

So you be the woodwinds

And I’ll be the strings,

I’ll learn you first by ear,

And then by heart.

– Vagabond Prophet

vagabondprophet:

Insurance

I am the .1 percent

Can’t be disinfected

I’m the tsunami

That can’t be detected

And for the house fire

That can’t be expected

They say insurance,

Get insurance

But insurance is just paper

You scribbled all over

Saying you’ll get money

When your world is over

Money’s just paper

And paper starts fires

This just complicates

And stirs in me a fire

So now you understand

I hope it’s all clear

If you lose everything

That you hold dear

Your paper won’t help you

I won’t be held liable

When I take your life

Like something easily pliable

Because I’m

About

to snap.

vagabondprophet:

Talking to Myself

If I write you a thousand words

Will you see the picture?

Of me alone and wanting you.

If I write ten thousand words

Will you receive the comic strip?

A scene, a day in the life, lacking the warm touch of your breath.

Or maybe this

Won’t work that way

Maybe I’m just

Talking to myself

First tendrils of madness

Soaking in like butter

On warm bread.

It tickles.

vagabondprophet:

Discarded

To dive headlong

Into the ravine

The vee cut neckline

Plunging into the bosom

Of mother nature herself

To die of despair

A pendulum in the air

To swallow handfuls of madness

To dull the crowding sadness

All of these deaths I abhor

But cruelest yet

Is that you ignore

Not a glance, whisper, or touch.

Discarded

Like coupons from a store

You no longer frequent.

Solitary Refinement Chapter 26

Dear Joshua                                         April 15th 2018

    I hear what you’re saying and I appreciate that you’re concerned about my safety and that you want to help me take care of the other things dear to my heart. I really do. I just can’t do that though, I can’t talk to anybody about Kal or Trevor and if I know Liz at all if I trouble her with legal garbage than any chance I have of mending things is gone for sure. I just have to hope that at some point the last drop of water will flow under the bridge and she will miss me enough to come by with the kids. With Kal and Trevor though that’s a whole different animal. Let me put this plainly, if I complain that Trevor has threatened me and that I feel threatened by Kal I may be killed. Trevor has friends in high places so I can’t really trust any of the authorities I may complain to, and even if I complain about Kal I don’t want to have that conversation with Trevor when he says something like, “So I heard you don’t think I can keep you safe, well let’s see how who you do on your own.” It’s just, it’s all bad. Thanks for trying to help but this is one of those things that rests squarely on my shoulders.

Yesterday I accidentally broke the tip off of a knife in my cooking class when I was trying to filet a fish and I bent the blade too far trying to get between the skin and the meat. The teacher told me to put the knife in the garbage and get another. I nodded, and pocketed it.

Joshua, please understand me. That was the most terrifying moment of my existence. Not proposing to Liz worried she would say no, not the complicated births of our children, not all the times I had to skulk back home and tell her I was out of work again. This was even more terrifying than that time we were hiking and I slipped on some gravel and almost tumbled down a cliffside, or the time I was driving my car and got hit by a snow plow.

It was a simple enough thing to do that I’m sure nobody noticed, but it was like in that moment I made the decision that I will kill somebody if I think I need to. Like I’m a murderer at heart just waiting for a life to take and nobody else knows it yet. Having finally passed that check mark of morality, that under the right circumstances I’ve decided I will stab somebody to death, I really didn’t feel good about myself in that moment but I also felt like I kind of had to. I also felt a strange sense of power that I wasn’t entirely comfortable with. The means and resolve to kill is not something that sits well with me but I need to get back to my family one day and that means I need to survive prison. I tried to stay under the radar, I tried not to make enemies but I have them anyways.

I didn’t worry about Kal sleeping beneath me as much last night while I lay there with my white knuckled  grip on the knives plastic grip. I actually slept a bit myself. My God did I need that. You don’t have kids so I can’t compare my exhaustion to you with even that. When your tired taking care of kids it’s a happy kind of tired. Yeah your sweaty and dirty from playing with them at the park and cleaning up after them in every imaginable way, but it’s your children and you’d do anything for them. The weariness that comes with fearing for your life is so completely different, always checking over your shoulder. Every time I’m standing outside and I feel the wind on my neck I’m filled with dread that I’ll turn around to see Kal pushing me down to do something horrible. Relentless panic is a horrible thing and I hope you never experience it. Maybe animals really can smell fear.

    Do you think anybody else here feels the way I do?