Original Poetry about anything and everything.
Hot or cold
Mild or bold
Wet or dry
Make a decision already!
You circle around the globe
Trying to ‘find’ yourself,
What you should be
When you come to fruition.
Circumlocution embodied,
You try on every outfit
And voice every thought
Over and over
For thirty whole days.
It’s like this every year,
You can’t make up your mind
To stay in the past
Or leap to the summer.
Yet May always comes
To usher April out of the room.
– Vagabond Prophet
Daddy’s home yay!
They cry from the top of the stairs
Wearing dresses and suits
From dancing with each other.
“Daddy, want to watch us dance?”
They spin and spin
Just like the vinyl on the turntable.
“Daddy want to see my super jump?”
“Daddy you need to shave,
Your cheeks are all scratchy.”
These are the things I live for,
Not praise but simply speech
From sweetest voices
Wanting nothing but my attention.
So I’ll watch them orbit the living room,
I’ll keep my cheeks all smooth,
For I am their daddy, and they my children
And they love me, it’s terrifying but it’s true.
They really love me.
– Vagabond Prophet
Through tempest spurned
And fury turned
On a meadow swathed in white.
Lightning rods attracting
The wrath of heaven acting
Shot forth onto dry grass.
Kindlings always destined
To burn up, never questioned
No dreams of an unscorched future.
To smoulder away
Paving the way
For those that will burn brighter.
– Vagabond Prophet
If ink onto paper isn’t enough
If your black blood onto the sheet
Won’t suffice
You ink your skin.
I did, family crest
For a family spread the world over.
Related by blood
Black to crimson and back again.
Families change
Families grow
Families explode into a hundred pieces.
Brothers and I stitched a picture
Had it fixed upon our skin
A reminder of a past together
Where everything was safer
And we could explore forests in the dark.
The only fires worried about
Was the one that burnt our camp food,
Not the one that started in the shadows
To render home into ashes.
So no matter how we scatter
To make home for ourselves,
We’ll always find a safe place
In each other, in arms
In eyes commonly blue
And in backs commonly emblazoned
With lions and spears and shields.
And grace, most important of all.
Grace for ourselves and each other,
For how we’ve hurt one another,
And for our dad, gone under the pen now too.
Grace for him especially.
He’s hurt us all so deeply
But he still gave us our ink,
And ink is thicker than water.
– Vagabond Prophet
Fragile blossoms fall
Give way to leaves.
Colour of deep red wine.
Oh you don’t have to be
So obvious,
I’m already drunk
With wonder at
Your creative power.
Vagabond Prophet
Warmer weather
Thinner leather
Winds touch becomes
More bearable.
As I shed my coat
I’m surrounded by a moat
Daytimes gaze
Embrace from every side.
Vagabond Prophet
I used to believe
In true love and soulmates,
Now I know it false.
It’s true she’s my mate
And that she has my soul
But I chose her
And she chose me.
No accident no ‘falling in’
Like slipping in mud
Or slowly going mad.
Providence played a part
To be sure
But our choices are
What define us.
No smoky bar
Or mystic circumstance
Just she and me
Opposite sides of a dirty couch.
A choice we still
Make every day
When life is lovely
When life is ghastly.
Our couch is still stained
A reminder of our promises.
– Vagabond Prophet
How quickly I became bankrupt
In the absence of yourself,
I didn’t know until I left you forlorn
Abandoned in the far reaches of the echo
That I’d been living cup to cup
For a love now gone cold.When I return let there yet be
Some faint embers left in which
We can partake.
Vagabond Prophet
– This is what happens when a guy like me forgets his coffee at home before work starts.
Do you find your hope groping in the dark
Sloping and waning
While the moon is waxing?
As though all your innermost dreams
And thoughts you hold most dear
Had been paraded through the streets
With mocking and jeering and spitting.
Come with me I say
The revolution starts with us.
Our lights have been put out too often
Wicks go sizzle between The Man’s greasy fingers.
All those people with nothing to offer
But their hearts in ink dots
Or paint swaths
Or sound waves.
Get a real job! They say.
But the art in our veins,
Make life worth living
And it’s so hard to strip it off.
Like the bark of a tree
That without will surely die,
So it would be with us
If we amputate our muse.
Protect your light!
At all costs defend it!
I’ll stand by your side
I’ll have your back.
Let’s have our cake and eat it too,
We’re going to need two cakes.
At least.
At least.
At least.
As all artists know,
The bare minimum is the foundation
For something great.
– Vagabond Prophet
Gazing through polished panes
Longing after things with greatest pains,
Trying on some,
Walking past others.
Through the growth of more eyelids
You never really see at all,
You only see what you aren’t
What you lack, never what you are.
Window shopping can be fun
For the penniless and imaginative,
Don’t take appearances too seriously.
The ones who’ve never window shopped
Have the most to learn.
To have never wanted
To have never repressed your desires,
Never leaving behind something
Wished for on a whim.
What could you know of others?
What could you know of need
Or patience or gratitude
For something earned with sweat?
Whichever you are
Fortunate or less so
This last part is for you
And I’ll deliver with all the subtlety
Of an asteroid.
If you’re window shopping
Is better than your
Mirror gazing
It’s time to make some changes.
– Vagabond Prophet
Vagabond Prophet 