Tag: spilled ink

Chin Whiskers

White hair and pale eyes to match,

Deep lines in your loose skin

Marking many winters of the body

And many more of the heart.

Mam can I ask about your chin whiskers?

Were you of such a beauty in youth

That in age it requires new roads to travel?

Now that you’re eyes are unclear

And your legs unsteady,

Majesty comes pouring off your face

Now that your words make no sense.

Don’t worry mam I understand now,

You were somebody’s queen

In a kingdom long fallen.

– Vagabond Prophet

Uncommon Tongue

Accents are hard

The R’s never end

And the understanding

Never begins.

So thick as to be spread

On the barrier between,

More mortar for the wall.

But when she spoke to me

In an uncommon tongue,

In the dialect of my soul

It was all over for me.

You were destined to invade

To lay claim to my heart

Shocking me into perfect communion

With wonder dripping from your lips.

– Vagabond Prophet

Colour Wheel

Blood in different hues

Red’s coming from blues

Deep scarlets

And shallow crimsons.

Life stories in different shades,

Humour like strawberries,

Regret like beets,

Pride bright as the robins chest.

Dozens of you lying there

Blood pulsing through those tubes,

A colour wheel crafted by disease.

– Vagabond Prophet

Ought

I can smell vanity a mile away,

Like a festering wound covered up

In finest perfume and cleverest shadows.

Some things ought to rot

Be swept away and sucked under.

If you could live forever

Would you really want to?

The promise of death is a blessing.

I’ll be vile enough a creature

In eighty long years.

I don’t want to meet the person

Who’s hitched a thousand rides

Around the sun, insistent it’s still fun.

– Vagabond Prophet

Everything


You’re shapeless and that’s hard sometimes

I try to picture you and my mind just swirls

Like cream poured slowly into coffee.

This one thing helps,

That you’ve shaped everything I’ve ever loved.

Every contour and edge,

All the care and strength transcendent.

Everything captures much,

Nothing escapes that net called “everything”

Except you.

– Vagabond Prophet

Not Even Clouds

All week long, frigid mornings

And warm afternoons,

Cold sweats,

Hot sweats.

Thursday comes and it’s time

To wisen up, no coat

Just my experience and hope

To keep me warm until the P.M.

That’s the day that mother nature

Couldn’t hold it any longer,

Leaking out so rapidly

Not even clouds could absorb

Before soaking me through.

– Vagabond Prophet

Mulled Wine


How have your teeth

Not yet dissolved

Like sugar cubes

In sweet mulled wine?

How have your legs

Not yet gone brittle

From upholding

So fearsome a beauty?

How has your mind

Not yet shattered

From containing

Such brilliance?

How have your fingers

Not yet liquefied

From writing stories

Like a flash flood?

– Vagabond Prophet

Thirty Two

vagabondprophet:

Thirty Two years old

And he’s really gone.

Body beautifully adorned

And underground.

What now life?

What will you do now?

Will you strike me down

Or make me endure this?

Future I can’t see

Evasive and ever changing,

The past never changes

But tortures every moment.

The present sharpens

And blunts me

In equal measure,

Useless for every task at hand.

How will I scrape

Out an existence,

If grief sands me down

To a featureless stone.

Blunt and sharp in equal measure,

Useless for every task at hand.

– Vagabond Prophet