Tag: vagabond prophet

Solitary Refinement Chapter 25

Dear Joshua                                          April 3rd 2018

Hey Josh, I think I’m ready to talk to you again I just need to set something straight. Don’t talk bad about my wife. I get it, you see your friend being treated badly by his own wife and you want to say something about it and from your position I can see how you can see it’s not a ridiculous thing to wonder about. I just, I know she wouldn’t do that. If I let my mind wander that way I know that I’ll go crazy. I can’t take it to lose the hope of having my family back again one day.

    So I got confirmation that I’m definitely not overreacting by being freaked out by Kal, just the other day I saw one of the guards that I hadn’t seen in a long time tell me he’d be worried if he was me. He said Kal’s cellmates never last this long and that Kal must be getting frustrated, said to be careful and watch my back. It seems as though the guards can’t do anything about behaviour like Kal’s though, until he actually does something to me and I make an official complaint they can’t move me or him or anything like that. How wonderful it is to have my fears confirmed and then be told that there is no solution available to me. I’m so freaking done, every morning I look in the mirror and I see a frightened pair of eyes in a weary body.

    When I’m not working in the kitchen I’ve been in the library here, I just realized they had one recently. I used to like reading as a kid but as an adult after work and playing with the kids I always felt too tired to read and would fall asleep shortly after ever picking a book up. Now since I can barely sleep anyways I am actually able to read again. They have a few poetry books that I am enjoying, reading over and over as much as I can in the few minutes I have to spare. I love novels, but poetry is different. I’m learning lots of new words from them that I have to look up in the dictionary. It’s just so interesting that the pain and suffering of these poets chose to manifest itself in such beautiful ways. It helps me feel even though I’m going through this terrible season in my life, it can maybe just maybe mean something to somebody.

Just What We Do

Well never stop

As long as theirs bones to break

And lives to take.

As long as we pump blood

Well take yours

And use it to paint our houses

Use it to dress our spouses.

As long as  theirs smiles

I’ll turn them to frowns

For miles and miles

Dreams turned upside down.

I’ll take all your hope and put it on a rope

Saying go climb to the top

And then I give it a chop

To watch you dangle and dance

It’s not planned just happenstance.

Misery is the next stop

And the drivers never late

Rain snow or sleet

He will never abate.

It’s just what we do

And we like it too

See who can bleed the most

Of someone else’s blood.

– Vagabond Prophet

– I think this is a song too, it’s just hiding it’s melody from me right now.

Pell-mell

The current it sucks

All my fervor it plucks

And down it throws

To Davie jones.

But my love for you

And all that you do

Will never grow old

Forgotten or cold.

Your grin from ear to ear

Your unstoppable cheer

Your hair it fell

All messy and Pell-mell.

I quite like your voice

Saying I’m your choice

Insistent you are not deigning

Yourself to a man that is waning.

– Vagabond Prophet

Glory Upside Down

You are my love

And it moves me like a shove

And hits me like a glove.

That you would be mine

All of the time

Willingly

Not under the influence of wine.

You’re the jewel in my crown

Pajamas adorn you like a gown

Turning even your frown

Into glory upside down.

And I know for a fact

That your claws retract

Reveiling kindness intact 

And strength compact.

I’ll always be yours

To seep into your pores

You’re like the mystery of lore

And my addiction cries for more.

– Vagabond Prophet

Sleight of Hand

There’s a lot of broken people

Across the sea,

But there’s a lot broken people here too

You don’t have to go

across the sea

To be useful to me.

Don’t wait for a sign

No water divine

It’s as simple as a coat

For a shivering man

There’s no secret trick

No sleight of hand

Just a bit of bread

For an outstretched hand

All your brilliance and might

Can not win this fight

You just have to do something right

A rickety shack could he everything

To a man without a home

An old blanket could be everything

To a child with nothing but a stone

Don’t wait for a sign

No water divine

It’s as simple as a coat

For a shivering man

There’s no secret trick

No sleight of hand

Just a bit of bread

For an outstretched hand

– Vagabond Prophet

– Another song folks, let me know if you like the songs and should keep them coming.

Solitary Refinement Chapter 24

Dear Diary                                    March 27th 2018

  I really noticed my eyes today, I think for maybe the first time ever, or at least since I got in here. Bloodshot, wide gaze, icy blue with not enough pupil. I always liked my eyes, I thought they made me look good, girls like blue eyes right? I saw more than that though, I saw deeper, I saw fear and a panic just barely undercover.

I remember when I was a kid and I’d go for walks through the forest there was this cave my dad always told me to stay away from. It had a wide mouth but you could see the path quickly narrowed, and after a bend it turned pitch black. I never went into it, always curious, but for the warnings I never satisfied that curiosity. My dad never told me what was in there, I asked him he must not have known either. He would always just say some basic dad advice about how you don’t go into the dark unprepared.

Even once I was an adult I never went in there, it’s fostered in me a fear of the dark and what beasts there lurk. Even well into my teens I had nightmares of something coming out of the cave at night, all I could ever see was long claws and glowing eyes. I always hid and it always knew where to find me. I would be snatched by a grip so strong it was like iron, and as I screamed it would pull me turn after turn into the cave. I always woke up screaming and right at the point where the blackness was becoming complete. That was the worst part, that even in my dreams I couldn’t find out what was in there, I just knew that it meant me harm and I couldn’t escape it. Just a vicious blackness, a hungry chasm, a sinister darkness. Something to be feared for sure but having no name for it made it worse I found.

In the mirror this morning I saw the entrance to that cave in my eyes. The thin bloodshot veins leading to the pupil like the roots of trees that stopped before that hellish corridor. No wonder I’ve been afraid lately, I’ve got fear itself living right inside my head. How fitting that it should find a way to colour everything I look at with its hazy hue and awful whispers in my ear. Even when I’ve been so far removed from that forest, all the worst things come with you into prison.

I think it was one of the presidents that said something like, “There is nothing to fear except fear itself.” Okay, wise words to be sure. Not exactly comforting if you see fear itself in the mirror though. I don’t think I’ll be able to forget the cave now that I’ve seen it. What option now but to live in fear? Or go boldly and explore the cave with torches and pitchforks. Only if the entrance to the cave is inside myself, is the beast then also?

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

Focus

vagabondprophet:

Madness can be comfortable,

Like a sleeping bag

On a snowy day.

Just shut it out

Focus on warmth.

Sadness can be tolerable,

When everybody leaves you

And you can finally get some sleep.

Just shut it out

Focus on warmth.

Betrayal can be manageable,

If you betray yourself too,

It’s no different.

Just shut it out

Focus on warmth.

Then that all changed

I got locked up.

Psychiatry Ward.

More like circus

For people who

Just couldn’t handle any more.

Insisting on the existence

Of Neverland or something like it

And always being denied.

Every levee breaks

And every tower shakes,

Just ask the princess.

She’s in room 11B

Says her name is “Lady Hopscotch”

Her tower dropped her to the ground.

So when I got locked up,

Seeing walls of white like snow

I tore my bed apart

And crawled inside my mattress.

Just shut it out,

Focus on warmth.

– Vagabond Prophet