Dear Diary February 14th 2017I sent something to Liz for Valentines Day a few days ago. Return to Sender again. How can I stop this? I can’t make her accept the things I send to her and the kids, I can’t make her respond to me, and I can’t make her visit. I used to love Valentines Day, I wouldn’t do any overtime on those days so I could come home early. I’d swing open the door with flowers in my hand still in my overalls and dirty all over. She would give a rare smile and she’d be already dolled up with her hair up and a pretty dress on hoping I’d do something special and I never disappointed. I’d get a baby sitter and do a movie and a fancy dinner, after I got showered and dressed nicely myself. The whole time I was getting ready Liz would be positively giddy, just kind of giggling and bouncing on the spot like Nina, “come on, come on!”
Sometimes we’d even drive to the city and see a play, a big production, and we’d get champagne during the intermission. Those days I spared no expense. When we got home she would check to see that the kids were asleep and then practically throw me into bed. Unzipping her dress in one quick motion that I’m still replaying in my head, and unbuttoning my shirt while I fall backwards onto the bed. She always got so excited about sex on Valentines Day, any time I went over the top with spoiling ourselves really. I was always excited by her beauty, and I always wanted to spoil her too. I would have done all those extravagant things everyday if I could have. I would always have to make up for how expensive those nights were by working at least twelve hour days the rest of the month.
It was always worth it, not just for the great sex but to see Liz get excited about going out. To see her all ready to go as soon as I get home, electric with energy and bouncing just like our little girl, she so rarely got excited about anything that it was so great for me to see. The kids I could always make happy, just doing anything with them, all they ever wanted was my time and attention. Liz though, it was so hard to make her smile or even seem happy sometimes. I tried though, that’s all I ever did.
Tag: spilled prose
Rockets and Lullabies
Rockets and lullabies,
Things that light the skies.
One to bring sweet dreams,
One to bring on screams.
One source of light
Has enough might
To light up the sky
Can we just try?
Can we try it once?
I’m not asking months.
In twenty four hours
We can ask the powers.
Which did you prefer?
When it did occur.
Fire and death,
Or a steady sleeping breath?
We tell children lullabies
Before we say goodbyes.
Aren’t we fighting for them?
Those green and budding stems.
Let’s preserve those thoughts,
The ones about lemons and apricots.
Not nightmares and bombs
That flatten pulses found in palms.
– Vagabond Prophet
Gesticulation Tower
Pinstriped in the front standing
Just a little higher than everybody,
Our attention you’re demanding.
I’ve got to say you look smug,
Do you really believe
This’ll fit beneath a rug?
You’ll come falling down I say
Can’t say when,
But there’ll come a day.
Like Genghis Khan
Realizing defeat
Woebegone.
You’ll lose all your power
That you’ve clung to
In your gesticulation tower.
– Vagabond Prophet
Corrugated
Have you ever met
Someone so dishonest,
That there lies must be fabricated?
Not imagined,
But built,
Out of real material.
Corrugated words,
Folded back,
Against one another.
Hoping they can bare
The weight of their
Collective despair.
– Vagabond Prophet
Time You Genius You
Give credit where credit is dueTime you genius you.
None carve as masterfully as you.
And she, she fears time ahead.
How it promises to tug, pull, and crease
Slowly unfolding her youth.
She doesn’t know my eagerness,
To see those same effects
See the whole canvas stretched.
I long to see the way
That she unfurls
Day after day.
As water smooths out stone
So time erodes her face,
A slowly chiseled beauty.
As the ax must blow by blow
Slowly strip away,
The fibers from one another.
So I anxiously await
The sands of time
Etching her away.
Crows feet will appear
The years will dig trenches
In the softness of her face.
I don’t believe in evolution
But her beauty does evolve,
A process of natural seduction.
She enchants me without trying,
As time goes marching by
I’ll orbit her still.
The more that’s scuffed away
Cut or split right off
To make way for something better.
Time you genius you
Master of shape
And all things exquisite.
You will scrub away her youth
Unravel her naivete
Leaving wisdom engraved.
Her body swelled and stretched
With babes not once but twice,
Lasting marks of conquest.
She fought to create,
To be the river’s mouth
For life itself to dawn.
Strip it all away,
This current face of hers,
What are you hiding?
A gift with one million layers,
That unwrap day by day,
No shortcuts.
The crescendo of her beauty
Will take many moons to reach,
I await that goddess truly.
Excess must be shed
To reach the final gem
I’ll hold her against the blows.
If time should bring her pain,
It’s no surprise but all the same
I will crouch down beside her.
With creaky knees and hazy eyes
A foggy mind and weakening spine,
I’ll crouch down to kiss it better.
If time should bring her grief
As part of this descaling,
I’ll be there.
Soak me through with tears
So they eat through me too,
We’ll ferment together.
I only wish to love her
Half as well as time,
Every fold and curve
Marked by its caress.
– Vagabond Prophet
Little Knots
Does your faith evaporate
Like water
On a hot sidewalk?
And children trample
On the remnant of your hopes.
What then?
Do you still believe?
When your heart
Undoes its rivets,
To let itself topple
Like a rookie jenga match.
Does your faith endure
The torrent of survival,
The steady drip of living.
Can it survive a head wound?
Or being trapped in a storm
With no way home?
It could be different you know,
You could let him carry you,
And work out the little knots in your soul.
Just know when your faith
In him is shaken,
His in you is not.
– Vagabond Prophet
Pocket of Tears
If you’re crying
And you can’t stop,
Follow these simple steps.
Don and button
Your least favourite coat,
Just trust me.
Catch every tear
Into a single pocket
Until it’s brimming.
Then take that pocket
Sew it shut,
If just so you can shed it.
We must unclothe
Our deepest sadness,
No one is warmed by grief.
Now burn it all
Yes the coat too,
For no one is warmed by grief.
– Vagabond Prophet
Gary
I miss my drums
They were named Gary,
Shells made of birch
In hues of cherry.
Then there was Gorbachev
The black one,
All I’m thinking now
Is how I’d like to smack one.
– Vagabond Prophet
Solitary Refinement Chapter 22
Dear Diary March 15th 2018
I need to talk to somebody. I’m going to lose my mind soon, maybe I should start talking to Joshua again soon, maybe I should write Liz again. Writing Liz took so much out of me the last time I wrote her, pouring out all my emotions knowing with certainty I will not get a reply. Josh, I was so mad at Josh for suggesting that Liz might not be faithful to me. I’m trying to look at this from his perspective, seeing a wife that won’t talk to her husband, won’t let her kids do the same, and won’t talk to her husband’s friends either. If I really focus on that I guess thinking there’s more going on than I can see isn’t exactly ridiculous, but what does that help? I love her and I believe she loves me and would remain faithful. If I let myself think otherwise I think I would totally lose hope. It’s hard to keep hoping, but I still look forward to getting out of here and going to see her even if she is furious and she hasn’t talked to me in a long time. Just that face, with it’s smooth skin and sharp lines and dark eyes, it’s still the one I see when I close my eyes and try to ignore where I am. I can almost forget I’m in a bunk bed above Kal when I focus on her, just the image of her doing something normal like cracking eggs into a pan. Sometimes I think of her wearing my baggy t-shirts while making pancakes on a Saturday morning. Everytime it manages to sneak a ray of joy and hope into my day no matter how bleak it has been. I hope it doesn’t get taken from me as contraband.
Did Joshua have a reason for thinking that about her? Maybe I should ask him. Not talking to anybody on the outside is worse than getting bad news from people on the outside I’m finding. When I think of how being ignored like this makes me feel I fall into a vivid daydream. I’m in the dark in a mountain valley, before the light withers I see tall mountains crowded tightly and high above me. After night falls and before I try to sleep I shout so I can hear the echo of my voice off of the mountains so I can feel like I’m not alone. No echo comes, nothing at all. My voice just disappears as soon as it leaves my lips, falling dead to the ground like a flower gone dry and tossed by a wicked wind. It wasn’t quite like I was mute, I could hear the sounds come out of my mouth, but they just never mattered and never got far. As if they were sterile, unable to father meaningful sound and just remaining mindless noise. Where did the hills go? What killed my voice? Questions, all I have is questions, even in my daydreams.
Solitary Refinement Chapter 21
Dear Diary February 14th 2017
I sent something to Liz for Valentines Day a few days ago. Return to Sender again. How can I stop this? I can’t make her accept the things I send to her and the kids, I can’t make her respond to me, and I can’t make her visit. I used to love Valentines Day, I wouldn’t do any overtime on those days so I could come home early. I’d swing open the door with flowers in my hand still in my overalls and dirty all over. She would give a rare smile and she’d be already dolled up with her hair up and a pretty dress on hoping I’d do something special and I never disappointed. I’d get a baby sitter and do a movie and a fancy dinner, after I got showered and dressed nicely myself. The whole time I was getting ready Liz would be positively giddy, just kind of giggling and bouncing on the spot like Nina, “come on, come on!”
Sometimes we’d even drive to the city and see a play, a big production, and we’d get champagne during the intermission. Those days I spared no expense. When we got home she would check to see that the kids were asleep and then practically throw me into bed. Unzipping her dress in one quick motion that I’m still replaying in my head, and unbuttoning my shirt while I fall backwards onto the bed. She always got so excited about sex on Valentines Day, any time I went over the top with spoiling ourselves really. I was always excited by her beauty, and I always wanted to spoil her too. I would have done all those extravagant things everyday if I could have. I would always have to make up for how expensive those nights were by working at least twelve hour days the rest of the month.
It was always worth it, not just for the great sex but to see Liz get excited about going out. To see her all ready to go as soon as I get home, electric with energy and bouncing just like our little girl, she so rarely got excited about anything that it was so great for me to see. The kids I could always make happy, just doing anything with them, all they ever wanted was my time and attention. Liz though, it was so hard to make her smile or even seem happy sometimes. I tried though, that’s all I ever did.
Vagabond Prophet 