Tag: savage words

Peacock

I am a peacock preening feathers

So you might not notice

How slight I really am.

Maintain this sheen make it gleam

Lest it betray my fear

Of prying eyes

From fiendish spies.

So many layers built upon

For year after year after year

I don’t remember the colour

Of my own natural skin.

There are few and far between

That see me as I am,

When days length gives way

To evenings hold and nights sway,

All the shimmer and shine

Of my prized plumage

Means nothing in the dark.

The fear of being known

As well of being unknown

Keeps me painted today,

Now you know my secret

Seen the crack in my veneer,

When twilight comes

And the brilliance of the sun

Angles just right I’ll see yours too.

Wear your flaw proudly

It’s what makes you unique

Makes you not by rote,

Not just a laugh track

On the rerun of anybodies life,

Not just another zoo attraction

Be a rebel a renegade

Choose to boil or freeze

No matter the centigrade.

– Vagabond Prophet

@josy57 “Cracked Veneer.” This was nifty, thanks again.

This Barren City


This barren city

These roads slick with tears

These sidewalks cracked

And mountains in every direction.

Here in the valley

Everything settles

The rain filling the fields

Running down from frosty peaks

To overflow my ditches,

The clouds fall on my head

Every morning making everything dewy.

In this barren city

Where anything can grow

Except good will towards

The hopeless, the shattered

The broken and tattered.

To the many who call these streets

Their home tonight,

No bed to rest your weary bones

No place to wash off bad decisions

Hoping tomorrow you are able

Tomorrow you’d have more strength

And someone in your corner.

To them and others

I say unto you

The city might be barren

But you don’t have to be,

The streets might be cold

But your heart isn’t.

The hope that rises with the sun

Will lift you from the pavement

And raise the dead in you.

– Vagabond Prophet

@josy57 thanks for prompting me with “This Barren City.” This issue is dear to me.

Potential

I am simple and strong

I am neither good or evil

For I do not choose my burden

Or even how I will carry it

That is done by the stranger’s hand.

I will with treasure tarry

Across plane, train, and ferry

To bring my payload

To expectant signatures.

Sometimes I am rushed

Sometimes I am empty or full

To the point my corrugated spine

Bursts and holds no more.

I am not good or evil

I am only potential.

If all this and more is true

Of me a cardboard box

What does that say of you?

– Vagabond Prophet

Tapestry


Some sentences finish themselves,

Picture a chicken and a stump

In a barren backyard

Grass all plucked and gone,

Does your mind not add

The beheaded bird

The bloodied ax?

And if I tell you of a man

Proposing to his love,

Does your imagination not

Force his knee to bend?

We all fill things in,

The way we think they ought to be,

And we all do it the same way,

How curious, how strangely universal

We can be when it’s not actual speech.

What does this say of us

Why is it this way?

Is there some common thread

Throughout the tapestry of humanity?

Some golden but fine little shimmer

That says we are all built

By the same carpenter?

If this example avails

No spark of truth for you

I can do this all day,

I’ve paid attention too long

To not recognize the artists strokes.

– Vagabond Prophet

Peace?

When my own mind works against me

What peace can there be?

My right hand throwing rocks

Through my window and

My left hand hurling it back.

In the wild, the ensnaring

Searching tangled roots

I find my fallen mangled boots

And having donned them

March in circles.

Though I spiral endlessly

On the opaque and indiscernible

Ramblings of this nomad mind,

They never churn themselves into butter.

Wasting my time on mundane nothings

I practice braiding water,

I pick my own bones clean

And though Bob Marley said it right

And all three birds are here

I still worry about everything.

The sun’s ray

That brings decay

To the cloth long in the sun,

The shortened days

Where days dismay

Is crushed by weight of night.

I given options often choose destruction

The addictive nightmare

Where at least I’m alive,

I the froward soul

In need of constant reminding

That air is for breathing

Was always meant to fill me

Rather than something to exorcise.

My heart lacquered with

So much bitterness and trauma

It is marinated for disaster,

Like Icarus I collide and burn

With my expectations of myself.

If to you this sounds tiring

To fling oneself into the chasm of chaos,

Then congratulations are in order

For your sound mind and stout heart

And though there is always help out there

So many miles from home

Not all minds and hearts are equal.

When my own mind works against me

What peace can there be?

– Vagabond Prophet

@josy57 prompted me with “A rock through my window.” Thanks for that it is always such a joy writing your prompts.

Darkling

Under waning moon and festooned sky

With darkness to illuminate the night

It is already morning

Though beneath blackened heavens

One couldn’t hope to know

It will soon reverse its darkling effect.

This is faith beyond the wraith

This is hope surpassing spectres

Yesterday’s sun is no

Assurance of today’s

But faith sticks out its hand

Until warmed by mornings kiss.

– Vagabond Prophet

Waxless Candles

The wind half sighs half moans

The struggle that is

Its passage through the night.

The calm before the storm

Never came for them

Only the wind

Only the waves

Only the rain.

Like waxless candles

They burn bright

And getting hotter

Through the darkling night.

Until the night is over

And their wick is all turned to ash

Hoping the deeds that they’ll forget

Will be rekindled at next dusk.

They end up forgotten

They end up refused

Forsaken and misused.

Knowing only the hard pavement

For a pillow in this November,

Nothing as bright or as chilling

As the winter sun

Shining boldly yet coldly

In a brilliant and frigid embrace.

The windows frost

And their breath exhausts

Caught, taken it is

By the unforgiving cold.

Like Icarus they collide and burn

With their hopes for themselves.

Meanwhile they all wonder,

“How can I be healthy,

When every doctors definition differs.”

– Vagabond Prophet

Brace Myself

Rubbing fiberglass on my chest

Scuff the skin, make it more thin

That air may avoid my lips

And enter my lungs directly.

Avoid the middleman

Dad always said

He’s only there for your money

Standing with vitriolic smile

And outstretched hand.

I am a master of depravity

I put my face into the furrows

I find it makes me grounded

If I plant my dreams in soil.

When flowers grew no more

In the arid plains of my heart

I asked you to hold my hand

And walk me to greener land.

Though you’ve burned my sorrow

In flames of your love

I still feel sometimes tarnished

Like a pencil erased

The page retains impressions.

My blood I’d taught

To tell just backward riddles

Still sometimes pumps a lie.

When I wake from dreams

And cry out to you

And am deafened by the silence,

Sometimes silence is the answer.

For sometimes beauty

In obscurity

Greater than in clarity.

How tenaciously I’ve fought

For my right to rot,

Only to have you grip me tighter.

You borrowed my burden

Yet refused to give it back,

Now I ride this river

Mile after mile.

The water it transforms

From the muddy browns

To the salty blues

Until the heights above

Are as vast as

The depths below.

Now even if I fall

It’s only deeper in to you

And the only preparation

I now make

Is to brace myself for grace.

– Vagabond Prophet

Hey @josy57 thank you for the prompt “Borrowed Burden,” as always it’s been a joy.

Pavement Pillow

The edges bleed on everything

When it rains this hard,

It seems the world is weeping.

To staunch the flow

We have to work together

To pray for warmer weather

For those who get their lullabies

Whispered from whatever

The cracked pavement pillow

Speaks to them tonight.

– Vagabond Prophet