Tag: vagabond prophet

vagabondprophet:

Big Dipper

One bright and starry night

Just a lad with teary eyes

Lost the bout in the fight

When you pulled back the disguise.

Crashing through partition

I was fully completely, undone

Unraveled my tradition

My top no longer spun.

You broke through all other choices

When you addressed my need

I’d been listening to cunning voices

Devise a cunning deed.

Now that path I have forsaken

Thankful I’ve found another

After all the lies I’d taken

And their attempts to smother.

Now these ideas inverted

With tools forged in heaven

From the river of grave you diverted

To raise me like bread leavened.

All it took was looking up

The big dipper your spoon

Serving the love on which I sup

So much grander than the moon.

How did I ever think

Your grace was not enough

When you fill the sky, fill the rink

To refine this diamond in the rough.

– Vagabond Prophet

– Thanks @josy57 for prompting me with ‘the path I have forsaken.’

Big Dipper

One bright and starry night

Just a lad with teary eyes

Lost the bout in the fight

When you pulled back the disguise.

Crashing through partition

I was fully completely, undone

Unraveled my tradition

My top no longer spun.

You broke through all other choices

When you addressed my need

I’d been listening to cunning voices

Devise a cunning deed.

Now that path I have forsaken

Thankful I’ve found another

After all the lies I’d taken

And their attempts to smother.

Now these ideas inverted

With tools forged in heaven

From the river of grace you diverted

To raise me like bread leavened.

All it took was looking up

The big dipper your spoon

Serving the love on which I sup

So much grander than the moon.

How did I ever think

Your grace was not enough

When you fill the sky, fill the rink

To refine this diamond in the rough.

– Vagabond Prophet

– Thanks @josy57 for prompting me with ‘the path I have forsaken.’

Pounds Per Week


I am awake when I should be asleep

I am awake when I should be awake,

I save resting for the space between stanzas.

For I read these thoughts aloud

To a vast and dusty crowd

That claps and cheers me on

From the PM to the AM and back again.

I should close these eyes right now

But with stalwart rhythm this mind churns on

And the quill moves more eloquently

If I keep this blue gaze fixed

On a white page inked black.

Perpetual sleeplessness is my vocation,

Though no references save the coffee vendor

That weighs me out in pounds per week,

You should know I am a professional

And I will not burnout, for this backlog of dreams

Demands vigilance of this exact kind.

– Vagabond Prophet

Overflowing

That time of year where rains come

And will for the next seven months,

The gutters an empty summer trough

With not but a sparse dried leaf

Are now full to overflowing

By the weeping of the sky.

The unused ladder

Squeaks under my weight

Boots that feel buttered

Slip on rusted rungs.

This task like that of Atlas

That never ends so you never begin,

Just like the clogged eaves of this heart.

– Vagabond Prophet

Two Bent Knees


I am the third son of a third son

Of a man with just one eye,

He’d have a hundred years now

Tucked under his belt.

Lessons he taught

From battles he fought.

Not the one across the sea

For his vision compromised

The childhood accident

The tragedy despised.

Running with scissors

And tripping with scissors

Not just a cautionary tale.

His war included no bullets

His attrition risked no shrapnel

Just the simple devotion of a simple man

To put bread upon the table.

Raising cattle in a frigid land

Where even water retains no flexibility

And gives up its crown for a time unchallenged.

Years later raising young by the seaside

His tidepool kingdom crashed down

When the water came in high.

One wife down and one to go

The missing mother divided

An already divided clan.

Trudging onwards to surest of horizons

His compass unflinching in its convictions,

His health faded but his faith did not

And the proof was in a vacant body

Found on two bent knees.

– Vagabond Prophet

@mildreflections I think you may like this, I was inspired by your poem about your grandfather.

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.