How to Write a Book
Take your heart, slice it into hundreds of convenient and easy to flip through slivers, give it a front and back cover. The End.
– Vagabond Prophet
Original Poetry about anything and everything.
Take your heart, slice it into hundreds of convenient and easy to flip through slivers, give it a front and back cover. The End.
– Vagabond Prophet
Unenlightening
I can hear it off the eaves
Drip drip drip.
Distant coyotes,
Yip yip yip.
The darkness and fog
Combine and decide,
Unenlightening.
Tonight we unenlighten.
The rain comes quicker
And thicker than before,
Making soil so fertile
As to be barren.
One dewy drop
Says to another,
“We’re so heavy, full of wet,
Tonight let’s unenlighten.”
That’s when I start to feel,
Along with tobacco smoke
Swirling in my mind,
I’m being unenlightened.
Flipping through your pages
Traditions get unraveled.
With your gold gilded edges,
The unenlightening is frightening.
Contradicting every wisdom
That I’ve ever known.
You put your trust in vagrants,
Rather than royalty.
You talked to strangers
Befriended cheats,
Trusted prostitutes,
Beguiling in the streets.
So I’ll do it I’ll commit,
To break the mold,
To be an idiot,
To become unenlightened.
Rain’s just pouring now,
I’ve just learned up is down,
Meaning we’re all drowning.
I’m the only one who knows.
Thank God for unenlightening.
– Vagabond Prophet
On our wedding day
I’d never felt taller
Maybe I just needed
A rooftop to scream off of.
Towering over everybody
Taking you by the hand,
We left as quick as possible
Tires kicking up dirt.
You still wear that dress today
And I think that’s wonderful,
I’d say you were never prettier
But I’d be lying.
You’re most beautiful
When you scowl at the sun,
For interrupting sleep
And cutting dreams short.
I’m just glad
That when the sun does rise
That you’re there at all
I really don’t get it.
You chose this
You chose me,
My body underwhelming
At the very best.
My mind plagued
With beasts and thistles,
And my soul
Struggling to float.
I’m like the arms
In a three legged race
Flailing
Most unhelpful.
But I said
I do
And
So did you.
Miracles really do happen.
– Vagabond Prophet
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
“When you’ve got a song stuck in your head
That you’ve never heard before.
That’s when you’ll know I’m speaking to you,
In a language just for us.”— Vagabond Prophet (via 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
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
Percolator Love
You’ve been percolating
Just for me,
While I imitate life.
When I’m weary and afflicted
From a fitful sleep, fears reoccurred,
You’re waiting for me.
Epitome of bittersweet,
Bitter enough I need you,
Sweet enough I want you.
Electrify my mind,
Like soul adrenaline
I’ll dance if you ask.
Could we be like before?
When I’d stay up all night,
Just to be with you?
Nowadays more like a crutch,
Keeping weariness at bay
And I hate that.
I want the excitement again
Of first love’s
First sip.
But coffee my dear,
How ever far you stray
You still make my day.
– Vagabond Prophet
Let us go away
To the gutters of decay
See what we can find
To inspire new growth.
I’ve got sadness
Let’s turn into gladness,
And maybe this doubt
Will transform into faith.
I’ve got rage
Locked inside a cage
Maybe we can change it
Into something kinder.
That’s just what you do
The impossible it’s true,
It’s how this lump of dust
Is breathing at all.
– Vagabond Prophet
If even milk can die
And turn into something great
What does that say of me?
In my current state.
If fruit can perish
Turning into wine
Give strength to my gut,
But not straight off the vine.
Okay you’ve made it clear
I’ll undergo the transformation,
I’ll die and die again
Is this truly salvation?
– Vagabond Prophet