Original Poetry about anything and everything.
Nooks and crags
Hard and rough to the touch,
Stories hidden deep within
Somewhere between
The rings and the sap.
Hardest foundations
For the tenderest of shoots,
Finest green needles
Homes for nomads of the forest.
Towering over all
The only witness of history
And with tightest lips
You perform interpretive dance
With your roots underground,
Accomplices in beauty
Can’t help but join the show.
– Vagabond Prophet
Rushing in and out,
Twice a day everyday.
Highs and lows
In lofty throws.
Leaving lines on the rocks
Of past embraces
Felt a thousand times before,
Too be felt a thousand times more.
Predictably relentless,
Like taxes or red lights,
But much more real
With much more zeal.
No easy thing to resist
To shift your weight
From bottom to top
Full speed and full stop.
I’ll give my all to fight this squall
Resist a sea that plucks
Whenever it pleases
Tossing whitecap teases.
That’s just how it feels
Living here and believing
In stories great and true
Though some may say askew.
A world in love with authenticity
That’s somehow always fiction
It can feel so hollow
And unsated with each swallow.
This rhythmic pulsing of humanity
Blood pressure from disease untreated,
I know this cure
It’s simple and it’s pure.
I’ve never done drugs
Yet know what addiction is
I’ve been the man in sin
I’ve been lost in swamps within.
I have battled my own blood
Wrestled my own current
Distraught with its intent
To assimilate to a soul bent.
I have fought to untangle
My dreams from nightmares
To realize in deepest chagrin
The differences are thin.
If you want to walk against the tide
Of your broken nature clawing
I’ll show you the path
But first get rid of wrath.
When water starts rising
Up and past your navel
Find the one rivulet
Rebellious and immaculate.
The one teaspoon in an ocean
That when tide rushes up
It rushes down
With upside down frown.
Follow it abandoning all
Strip all that drags you down
Be cleansed by drowning the part
Of you that was dead from the start.
– Vagabond Prophet
Thanks @josy57 for the prompt “Against the Tide”
Pride, as defined by the poets dictionary.
Definition: Taxidermy of the soul, taking what is dead and setting it up as a trophy to be admired above all other living things.
Other definitions include: To paint a thick coat of most beautiful paint over what is clearly rotten wood, then boasting about your masterpiece.
Preferring night lights to star light, simply because they do what you tell them to.
To be so puffed up with air, you actually believe you’re strong until somebody comes along and pops you.
To take every offense so personally as though all ill intent was always aimed at you.
To have an inability to gaze into any surface not a mirror.
Antonyms include: Humility, empathy, caring for others, generosity.
Pride only seeks to convince itself it dwells above that which is common, deserving more while earning less. Such a heart can never know a higher power, such a heart can never admit need.
Ice Cream ain’t got nothing
On the sweetness and smoothness
Of her skin on my fingers.
Vinegar ain’t got nothing
On the sting in her venom
Lying in wait, beneath a tongue
Usually so sweet.
Sheets of egyptian cotton
Ain’t got nothing,
On the comfort she brings me.
Any other woman
Ain’t got nothing,
On the love I have for her.
Burned too many times
In a flame of her own blood
Heart now singed at edges
But tender at the center.
Medium rare ain’t got nothing
On her perfection gained by fire.
– Vagabond Prophet
Wrath, as defined by the poets dictionary.
Definition: What happens when mortals confuse themselves as Gods and allow themselves rage undiluted by servitude to a sovereign.
Other definitions include: Red pumping so violently that it lashes out with unkind words and unkind hands.
Tempestuous resolve to cause suffering and destruction.
Antonyms include: Kindness, Peace, Justice, righteous indignation.
Wrath only seeks to tip the scales and in that plunging down land with heavy fists on whatever it may.
– Vagabond Prophet
I have wept for losses kept, begrudgingly unlatched from this breast more appropriately called “slumber”. I’m no tractor I’m no horse I don’t have enough torque to pull this baggage. Leave them behind like expired spices, no longer seasoning or giving flavour, only turning more to dust with each passing year.
– Another sprint, hope somebody enjoys it.
4.5 hours sleep
Is not enough to support
Corporate expectations.
I’ll just hope that
I get all my stumbling out
Into this journal.
Oh that my sleeplessness
Transformed to black ink
Would take forms
Unthought of in wakefulness.
So I’ll bleed ink
Until the prolonged blink
Where they begin to
Carve my headstone
With keen edged tools
And heavy blows.
They’ll lower to the grave
Luckily shaped like bed
Then and then only will I rest.
– Vagabond Prophet
Oh son with limber ligaments,
Elastic mind and sinew,
Let what remains of your youth
Stretch much further than mine has,
Let your vigour for adventure
Weather many winters.
Let your glittering eyes
Shine through every storm.
Spend your days in innocence
Picking flowers for your mother
And learn nothing of
The treachery of lechery.
Clothe yourself in all things joyful
And arm yourself with skills uncommon
Building bridges to others
Not walls to keep them out.
The flame that burns so brightly
If reduced to embers can survive,
Being blown into action days later
By desperate measures
From desperate lungs.
My lungs.
I’ll be your bellows
To forge within you
Strength I only heard of in age.
You’ll be better than me,
An anchor, a muster point
A lighthouse.
For those surviving the blight
Of those spectres in the night
And for all of them you’ll point
To the rising son.
– Vagabond Prophet
Thanks @josy57 for the prompt “what remains of your youth”
Not enough hours in the day
So I carve into the night
With shrewd ambition
And blades waved blindly,
Forgetting its importance.
So many words in my brain
Rushing to get out
I see a splash and can’t tell
If it’s a jumping fish
Or just my foot at the other end
Of the bath.
Things in my mind stumble out
With little to no coaxing
Found strolling in cursive.
I’ve got battlecries pouring out fingers
And when the muse courses through
I’m it’s slave.
Take my sleep,
Let me eat not but toast
Allow me no reprieve
From the onslaught.
I can’t go back to drought
Not again.
Protect me from the rivers streams
Becoming desert floors,
I can’t bare to see the current
Turn to dust.
– Vagabond Prophet
I am no physician
But this juxtaposition
Seems to me indicative
Of malignant growth.
Not all growth is progress,
This seems particularly
Shady…
– Vagabond Prophet
Vagabond Prophet 