Original Poetry about anything and everything.
Fifty year old Bordeaux
A truly lovely bottle,
Travel back in time
See history of this wine
And be shocked at transformation.
Before alcohol
Before corks and bottles
Before oak casks
Is simply a mound of dead grapes.
Musn’t be afraid of death,
Only doorway
To another kind of life.
– Vagabond Prophet
The irony of pleasant weather
When we learned we’re not to be together.
The currents of discontent
Loosening you from the riverbed.
Nearly thirty long years of marriage,
Erosion is a persistent thing.
I think you taught me that
Driving past canyons
Above river beds long gone dry
Water having spent itself
On carving things uncarvable.
The worst storm for me was this
Most strange in its calmness.
No screaming match
No begging at the door.
Excepting of course for
The screaming match days later
Where I spoke my greatest lie.
The cold front met the warm front
Swirling around dancing beautiful
Save for its destruction
Ash clouds floating down
To smother what was left.
I said very little.
What is there to say
To the one who taught you speech
When he leaves.
Plates shifting earth quaking
I was shaken awake
By a thirst unslaked.
I’m not thirsty anymore,
And we still touch
Though from opposite sides
Of the canyon.
– Vagabond Prophet
– Today’s prompt:
Write about the worst storm you’ve ever experienced.
So this might be cheating but it’s what came to mind.
Shake from dreams where brining
Wake to find sun shining
A world wearing green
That by it I may glean.
Thorns on bushes not defenseless
Fruitful not senseless
You the great I AM
I the great AM NOT.
Vagabond Prophet
Conduit between body and head
Corridor for traveling thoughts
And speeding instructions.
It bends unnaturally as time
Slowly puts down its full weight
And as thoughts get clogged in mind
With nowhere to go.
For a job that only values my sweat
My rhyming spheres of soul
Gone unnoticed.
Every borrowed lungful
Of air I waste on breathing
Rather than singing.
Neck is sore today,
No wonder! You’d be sore too
If you’d been cajoled
Into molds unsavoury.
Excepting for this one thing
That my neck slowly straightens
As I learn to let go.
A jubilant surrender
Of weights that break my neck,
Simple recognition that I put
Them on myself
And that you’d lift them off
If I’d just let you.
– Vagabond Prophet
Such pure blue sky
Meets pure black thought,
Can I be one with blue
Without tarnishing you?
Under burden I can’t shoulder
Will your perfection smoulder?
Say it’s not in vain
Come in this heart reign.
Complete this work
Bring me out of mirk
Though my name on every nail
Come in might to fill this sail.
– Vagabond Prophet
Oh! Look over yonder
Ye brilliant must ponder
As earthen staff impaled
Into oceans deepest trench.
Between Sun and Moon
Where quilt of stars are strewn,
She of light and he of darkness
Made their battle.
She of goodness, green, and soil
He of shadows, pride sure to spoil,
Her majesty wielded supernovas
His insidiousness armed with blackest hole.
Blessed Queen of sky and birth
With shield of light and rod of earth
Might of the heavens
Their blows making water quake.
Rod met sword and musically rang
Swirling waters to themselves clang
When staff broke in two
And plunged into ocean depth.
Causing terrific quake
Causing world to break,
The known globe scabbing over
Solid ground for creatures yet to be.
They yet meet blades
Sparks becoming glades
Every piece of celestial debris
Adding to our home.
– Vagabond Prophet
– Today I was tasked with writing a creation myth, enjoy.
I procrastinate everything,
Like going to the dentist.
Especially going to the dentist,
It’s been twelve long years
Since I sat in that sterile throne.
Now I’m left tonguing nothing
Where teeth used to be.
Better false teeth
Than a false smile.
– Vagabond Prophet
That word ‘aftermath’
Conjuring images of bombs
And rubble and fallout
Of a nuclear kind.
Could it be different?
Let’s make it different
Must act now
There is no rewind.
Aftermath of kindness,
Fallout of justice
Desperately needed
In a land dying to unwind.
– Vagabond Prophet
Poetry: Writing what you feel,
Erasing half the words
And praying the page itself
May read between the lines.
Vagabond Prophet
I lilt and sway
Just like Gord’s voice
When he sang Fiddlers Green,
Soundtrack for my life.
Sinclair drops the bass,
Fay crashes cymbals,
Paul and Robby plucking strings,
Like wizards to make waves
For the words to dance all over,
Like the wind in a storm,
A real nautical disaster.
Yer not the Ocean but the surface is green
And the dark interweaves
In a lonely iridescence,
It’s terribly deep and the cold is complete.
Just like the ocean.
Loving your country, playing songs of small town news,
I can teach my children about the nation
With rock and roll.
Canada divided into thirteen parts,
A discography of thirteen albums,
No coincidence.
The most honourable thing yet,
That you evolved to challenge a nation
Unknowingly flawed, abusive.
Adoring your home, but not calling it perfect
True patriotism, true love always seeks to improve.
That’s just what you did
You are ahead by a century.
Now Downie gone,
But his voice will ring out forever,
As he walks among the stars.
I still lilt and sway
Just like Gord’s voice
When he sang anything,
Soundtrack for my life.
– Vagabond Prophet
– for ‘ The Tragically Hip’, quotes throughout this poem from their songs: Nautical Disaster, Yer not the Ocean, Fiddlers Green, Ahead by a Century, The Drop Off.
– If you don’t know this band you should, He rhymes Catharsis with ‘My arse is’. If that’s not a clever lyricist I don’t know what is.
Vagabond Prophet 