Empty Journals

I’m not righting

About the write things

It’ll take courage

I need to dig for.

Things inside covered

Under lock and key,

I got a glimpse last week

It nearly smothered me.

Strangled, driven to tears

By the sorrow in myself.

Key broke off in the lock

No going back now.

Maybe that’s why

I’ve many empty journals,

Pages waiting to give shape

To things I’m unwilling to admit.

Stagnant water feeds nothing

I’ll never grow like this,

I’ll age in a day

An unnaturally creased child.

So please grant me bravery

To look into the mirror

And see what’s really there

Smoke pouring from a closed off room.

– Vagabond Prophet

Lightening

Can we have sunshine yet?

To have your face

Shine upon me

So brightly I squint.

To illuminate the colours

And hues of everything,

Everything is grey

Until you shine your light.

While I do like the darkness

And stillness of night

Like we’re all alone together,

Some lightening would be nice.

– Vagabond Prophet

Eden

vagabondprophet:

Your lips like ripened apples

So heavy with sweetness

Waiting to fall upon me.

Engulf me with your glistening sweetness,

That’s always baptizing my senses.

Your skin like lake water

When you kick up the bottom.

Murky swirling browns.

An opaque beauty in my arms,

Every night that we’re together.

Your eyes remind me of coffee.

Brown and lovely and warm,

Spiced and roasted to electrify me.

You captivate my thoughts,

And I will serve you always.

Your hair so long,

Like a rare black gold

I find it everywhere.

Like the rest of our home

Desires you as deeply as I do.

You’re the Garden of Eden,

Just for me.

– Vagabond Prophet

Solitary Refinement Chapter 27

Dear Joshua April 20th 2018

Woke up this morning and saw the cave in my eyes. Do you remember that cave in the forest I told you I was scared of? I just get the feeling that the blacks of my eyes in the mirror look like the entrance to that place. It’s weird I know but I get really freaked out looking into the mirror. Especially today of all days, after a night like last.

I heard Kal speak finally. His voice was surprisingly high, and it bothered me all the more. Just like how his glasses didn’t seem to fit the rest of him his voice was the same. Like he’s some sort of combination of characteristics designed to make me uneasy.

“It’s cold tonight, I’m going to come up to your bed for some warmth.” He said it so matter of factly, not threatening or with his voice raised at all. I tried to tell a guard like you’ve been suggesting all along but he just told me to get to bed, didn’t really listen at all. Then it was lights out. About thirty minutes after the lights shut off and I’d started to hear snores coming from around the cell block, I heard the creak of Kal climbing the bunk. I had my knife in hand and swung it at him. I missed but he saw the glint of the blade in the moonlight coming in through the window. He simply climbed back down and got into his bed.

Then, once he was settled he whispered loud enough only for me to hear, “I’m going to get you, you know. That broken little knife won’t keep you safe long. I’m going to gag you and do what I want, you can’t stop me and you know it. Nobody will hear your screaming.”

Joshua what can I do? The guards have already shown they don’t really care. So who is there to trust that can help me? Trevor can protect me in the day, but after lights out and we all need to be in bed? I don’t need to be indebted to him anymore than I am already anyways. It may just come to what I feared. I know I swung at him today but I think even I knew I wouldn’t really hurt him, I just was hoping it would make him think twice. Seems it’s just made him enraged. I may have to really do it, I might have to really kill him.

Please tell me you see a way out of this.

A.N. There’s not very many chapters left in this. It’s been a journey but we’re near the end. I’d love some feedback or reviews. My ask box is open in case you’d like to do it anonymous style.

Cleft Heart

vagabondprophet:

Early October when the bomb went off,

Tearing us apart.

A brother here, a sister there.

Scattered across the globe.

Like the shock had made

Roots suddenly disappear.

Wandering to find them again.

Something to anchor me to life,

And something to pretend

That none of this ever happened.

It was like walking under a tree

Green burning bright

Like a star in the night.

Until it drops its snow

Right down your back

And your spine inverts itself.

The snow no colder than

The snowball fight earlier.

But never expected.

I never expected any of this

I trusted you,

I loved you.

But after you left,

We didn’t talk for months.

You didn’t understand that.

How could you think,

Nothing would change between us?

When you tore my heart right out.

I was a child,

Not a liver,

I’m not that resilient!

Are you stupid?

Or can you just think

That wishfully?

Couldn’t you have thought wishfully,

About her too?

Build her up in your mind.

Something better than she was,

Instead of leaving me all alone with her,

The only boy around.

We were six!

Then just three,

Only boy was me.

Brothers dug for oil,

Money for their toil.

We all got new family.

Pretend it’s normal

This prefix ‘step’ for everybody.

A monosyllabic word for ignorance.

Did you have stinging nettles

In the corners of your mind,

Shrouding your secrets from yourself?

I didn’t know what a man was!

How could I instantly become?

I guess you didn’t know either.

I found a new father,

He’s never let me down.

He’s unshakable.

Yeah we talk now,

About the weather,

And the price of gas.

But it will never be the same,

I can’t think that wishfully.

I won’t struggle to get as close.

You used to hold me close,

Just to be near me,

I treasure the memory.

It was twelve years ago you left,

Twelve years with a cleft heart.

When you changed the definition of home.

I’m trying to be eloquent now,

But all I can think of,

Is just how much it hurt.

– Vagabond Prophet

Harmony

vagabondprophet:

I need more music

I’ve got rhythm in my veins

And a heart that pumps

Not blood but a beat.

To create something

To be consumed by the ears,

To bring into life

Meaningful sound.

My heart beats

In polyrhythms,

And my feet journey

To find the melody.

So you be the woodwinds

And I’ll be the strings,

I’ll learn you first by ear,

And then by heart.

– Vagabond Prophet

Why I Write Vol.2

If you keep words inside

You won’t explode,

You’ll just die.

Everyone will forget you,

Just occupying a grave,

Keeping it cold for the next owner.

Worse than saying too much,

Is saying too little,

If I pontificate at exhausting length

I apologize but only a little.

One day I will die

And all that will be left

Is my words,

Passed down in words.

– Vagabond Prophet

Stat!

Hello what is your emergency?

Stickers we need stickers!

Is that all?

Yes sir, we’re right out.

So I ran across the building,

Borrowing from someone else.

Mam, I’ve got your stickers,

You should know people are dying.

Next time I’ll bring

Them oxygen masks,

You can find your own

Damn stickers.

– Vagabond Prophet

Commuting

On my walk to work,

Rain washes yesterday away,

Wash me like a fruit

Don’t let me go astray.

Cars go speeding by

I really hope they see me,

I’m ready for the day now

And this puddle is gleamy.

If the water keeps on coming

It’ll find what’s underground,

I pray it’s strength for the day

Something I’ve not yet found.

– Vagabond Prophet

Solitary Refinement Chapter 26

Dear Joshua April 15th 2018

I hear what you’re saying and I appreciate that you’re concerned about my safety and that you want to help me take care of the other things dear to my heart. I really do. I just can’t do that though, I can’t talk to anybody about Kal or Trevor and if I know Liz at all if I trouble her with legal garbage than any chance I have of mending things is gone for sure. I just have to hope that at some point the last drop of water will flow under the bridge and she will miss me enough to come by with the kids. With Kal and Trevor though that’s a whole different animal. Let me put this plainly, if I complain that Trevor has threatened me and that I feel threatened by Kal I may be killed. Trevor has friends in high places so I can’t really trust any of the authorities I may complain to, and even if I complain about Kal I don’t want to have that conversation with Trevor when he says something like, “So I heard you don’t think I can keep you safe, well let’s see how who you do on your own.” It’s just, it’s all bad. Thanks for trying to help but this is one of those things that rests squarely on my shoulders.

Yesterday I accidentally broke the tip off of a knife in my cooking class when I was trying to filet a fish and I bent the blade too far trying to get between the skin and the meat. The teacher told me to put the knife in the garbage and get another. I nodded, and pocketed it.

Joshua, please understand me. That was the most terrifying moment of my existence. Not proposing to Liz worried she would say no, not the complicated births of our children, not all the times I had to skulk back home and tell her I was out of work again. This was even more terrifying than that time we were hiking and I slipped on some gravel and almost tumbled down a cliffside, or the time I was driving my car and got hit by a snow plow.

It was a simple enough thing to do that I’m sure nobody noticed, but it was like in that moment I made the decision that I will kill somebody if I think I need to. Like I’m a murderer at heart just waiting for a life to take and nobody else knows it yet. Having finally passed that check mark of morality, that under the right circumstances I’ve decided I will stab somebody to death, I really didn’t feel good about myself in that moment but I also felt like I kind of had to. I also felt a strange sense of power that I wasn’t entirely comfortable with. The means and resolve to kill is not something that sits well with me but I need to get back to my family one day and that means I need to survive prison. I tried to stay under the radar, I tried not to make enemies but I have them anyways.

I didn’t worry about Kal sleeping beneath me as much last night while I lay there with my white knuckled grip on the knives plastic grip. I actually slept a bit myself. My God did I need that. You don’t have kids so I can’t compare my exhaustion to you with even that. When your tired taking care of kids it’s a happy kind of tired. Yeah your sweaty and dirty from playing with them at the park and cleaning up after them in every imaginable way, but it’s your children and you’d do anything for them. The weariness that comes with fearing for your life is so completely different, always checking over your shoulder. Every time I’m standing outside and I feel the wind on my neck I’m filled with dread that I’ll turn around to see Kal pushing me down to do something horrible. Relentless panic is a horrible thing and I hope you never experience it. Maybe animals really can smell fear.

Do you think anybody else here feels the way I do?