Tag: spilled words

State of Dry

Drop the Y and add an X

See what changes with my sex,

Thinner arms

Misunderstood charms.

Perhaps my braun of less import

And the way I walk of more,

My spines ability to bear burdens

No longer enough for most employers.

When adolescent trauma

Struck my heart beneath a chest

Growing breasts instead of hair

Would it have found my cement

In a different state of dry to indent?

In the wilder days of untamed youth

Would I have smelled

More like a rose

Than the earth it came from.

When the mornings are dark

And I can more easily examine

The flickering candle within

As it throws shaky shadows

Of my more curvaceous form,

If I were woman strong and true

Would I still work the land?

This farmer tending fields by night

Hoping by the end of season,

It may yet yield morning.

– Vagabond Prophet

Thanks for prompting me with ‘imagine your life if you had been born a female.“ @josy57

Taxidermist

You a ferrous metal and I a magnet

Drawn to you by design,

Yet sin degrades all

With it’s terror and it’s squall.

On my worst days

When I listen to the liar

Saying “It’s okay its natural

Like breathing

Or seething.”

Desires denied

Sorrows multiplied.

I shower and feel the skin come off

Everytime hoping the next layer

Will be thicker and less porous

Keeping out the slithering vapours

That slide in so easily.

You told me I’m brand new

But why do I have these phantom pains

From a spine I no longer have?

For you demanded that too…

Tonight don’t let the darkness bite.

Sometimes the prescription for these lenses

Is so strong I can’t even hear you,

My fingers trip over themselves

Can’t ever get the whole story out.

Why are all old men bent over?

Do we all hide our magic?

I am pierced not as though by arrows

But as though by poetry

Run through to the crux of the matter.

The matter of matter

Of what matters,

Do I?

That which upsets me inspires me most

And it’s true tragedy

Brings a man to the surface.

For years now I’ve been far beyond the surface

Can you place me back beneath?

Give me a mermans lungs and let me not choke.

I am both hope and cheer

I am both charm and jeer.

I feel the spectre anticipating

I can hear it berating

And I see it slipping in and out of me

I read the putrid pleasantries

It writes on the corridors of my mind.

Ghost, demon, ghoul whatever name you’ve chosen

Allow me to address you directly this day

Do you not see me?

Look me in the eyes

Hold my gaze I dare you!

I am but the slain wolf

Of greatest hunters

The master taxidermist

Stitching me back together with sterner stuff.

Good or evil a wolf still has teeth

Come now and let us do battle!

I grow tired of dreading the looking glass

Of fleeing the hour where shadows lengthen

Like fear with nightly growth spurts.

That particular kind of weariness

That makes life bleed heavily.

Coffee isn’t enough to hold my hand

To prop open my eyelids

With tent pegs meant for home.

I require victory

I thirst for conquest

Over strongholds in my heart,

Then I may rest.

You have birthed in me a rage

The greatest of the age

You’ve been biding your time

And committing your crime

But I have not been idle

I have known a donor of strength

That will make me victorious.

Come now bring your weapons

See if it does you any good

A man of my word you will soon learn

Light too can bite.

I by might imbued me

Will fight till bones protrude thee.

– Vagabond Prophet

– Thanks @josy57 for prompting me with “Facing your own Ghost,” literal I know but here it is.

White Knuckling Fiend

The white knuckling fiend

With fists gone pale

In dogged determination.

He wouldn’t admit to himself

Everything was unraveling

Like wool sweaters you never wear

Only ever pulling on the threads.

He had tragedy in his veins

And his countenance began to crumble

As he wildly brandished

The polished pistol at noon.

Now weeks later

Many lies later

And three trials deep.

His threats cajole me one way

My hopes quite another,

Now here’s for some medieval justiceFor modern thought.

That’s what I say to myself

Preceding the first smirk in months,

I won’t take the fall

For wrinkled blueprints

Stuffed in my red pants

When I wasn’t even looking.

Under oath I have the voice

Of a nightingale,

And though he shouts his threats

He’s years away from me now.

And these blanket truths I’ve uttered

Comfort me just like one.

– Vagabond Prophet

– thanks @josy57 for prompting me with ’ under oath.’ More weirdness today.

Obstacles

They were like rooftop geese

Building homes, raising young

In all the wrong places

In spaces unnatural for their kind.

They were like the hammock

Just waiting for a body to drop

Before the knot betrays its weakness

And plunges to the hard ground.

They had no vacancy

In their hearts for eachother,

The affection atrocious

The quarrels ferocious.

They were diehard tryhards

Attempting something significant

Only down this path at all

For some misplaced expectation.

Sparrows wearing owl beaks

To make folks think them wise.

The crescent waned

And so did the wax

On the long night of

Strained and forced relations

The stale devotion

Began to attract flies.

It died loudly I still hear it in my sleep.

Somehow I still wake with a smile

The puzzle box given me

Not a picture to copy,

So I turn the pieces over

To make something new.

Together we became like seeds

Endlessly turning ourselves inside out

In our attempts to climb the sky.

Now we’ve evolved into compasses

Caring nothing for obstacles

Only convictions and destinations.

Years ago now that I used your tongue

To ask for your hand

We venture together

Into the kingdom broad and tall

That’s casts its borders like fishing nets.

– Vagabond Prophet

Thanks @josy57 for the prompt ‘stale devotion’

@delightfulharmonypoetry

Shake hands with worry

Make all courage scurry

Give a nod to fury

Jingling his keys.

Veins pumping vanity

It’s vain it’s insanity

As I travel from solstice of length

To the solstice of brevity.

Trample something damp

To make myself feel strong.

I’m the prophet who having

Seen his own defeat

Only had bravery galvanized

To prove the fates wrong.

I chew on keys

To unlock the words stuck

On the tip of my tongue.

I should have known

How this would end

I had been tonguing

The fatal flaw for months.

And when I brought my

Jaws down to crush that dinner

I should have known

I’d be defeated, fractured into pieces.

– Vagabond Prophet

@josy57 thanks for the prompt “knowing when to lose.” This thing is weird but there it is. Out in the world now.

Strolling through sopping grey

Summers first reprieve

Is a whisper of autumn.

When every blade of grass is slick

From the breath of the night

And all parched land takes flight

Making way for things shadegrown

Before the big sleep.

Vagabond Prophet

Days of Honey

I am Mr. Cash

I am the mourner,

I’m everybody dressed in black

Who am I?

Is grief not where I dwell?

Is sorrow not the gold mine

Where I scratch out a living?

These things you say to me

Only leave me perplexed,

My days stuck in traffic

My nights stuck in thought.

My swallowed tongue

My rib cage rung

Climbing up and down

From a mind with kidney stones.

Every thought taking such effort

To unearth from the depths

And push to the surface

The pain brings me to my knees.

My own heart is the box

Marked fragile, intentionally dropped

Because it says so.

Now these keys on the ring

For locks I don’t remember,

Need to find a resting place,

And those locks with wide open jaws

Awaiting the crooked teeth

Of this forgotten tool

Will not close their lips for any other tongue.

For it knows my shape

And lies in wait

To fulfill the promise

Made by someone other than myself

For I hold the key that another designed

And must seek for it a sheath.

The journey is long

The path winding

And so I am thankful

For the days of honey

That heaven finally brings

To remedy this bitter soul.

– Vagabond Prophet

Thanks @josy57 for prompting me with “Swallowed Tongue.” This one kind of got away from me, hope folks like it.