Tag: writers on tumblr

Prompt Day 24

I tied a hangman’s noose

Within the womb

Around my neck was slung

And from those gallows swung.

I was six days late

The pressure wouldn’t abate

I’ve always been

Afraid of change.

I came out looking blue

Foreshadowing how I’d feel

Writing this at all.

I was timid, I was quiet,

Sleeping days away.

Always compliant

Never outspoken.

Obedient, a good kid

They’d say.

Now looking back as a man

With fissures throughout my heart

I think it’s not that simple.

Never outspoken sure,

For every strongly expressed opinion

Was shouted, and frightened

This gentle child into quietness.

So I grew with roots reluctant

To claim soil another may one day want,

Older brothers younger sister

More abrasive than I.

I like tile they like sandpaper,

Every attempt to rough me up

Only made me smoother.

One day I was called to manhood

By nothing but necessity.

At an age that couldn’t be expected

To swing a hammer well.

Hell I couldn’t even swing a decision yet

How could I possibly step into shoes

Strangely unworn before

And with strength strike

The nail on the head.

I filled those shoes in time

Sometimes feeling room still

By my big toe.

I swung a decision,

I’d be the man I wanted to be

To be different than the example.

A timid trailblazer still covers ground,

A kite broken free may crash,

Or fly higher than ever imagined.

The world needs good men

I’ll fill that need or die trying,

She needed me to be more,

My soul began
To grow chest hair.

So that’s where I’m from

There’s my past laid out.

My future?

Well that’s up to me isn’t it.

– Vagabond Prophet

Prompt Day 19


If ink onto paper isn’t enough

If your black blood onto the sheet

Won’t suffice

You ink your skin.

I did, family crest

For a family spread the world over.

Related by blood

Black to crimson and back again.

Families change

Families grow

Families explode into a hundred pieces.

Brothers and I stitched a picture

Had it fixed upon our skin

A reminder of a past together

Where everything was safer

And we could explore forests in the dark.

The only fires worried about

Was the one that burnt our camp food,

Not the one that started in the shadows

To render home into ashes.

So no matter how we scatter

To make home for ourselves,

We’ll always find a safe place

In each other, in arms

In eyes commonly blue

And in backs commonly emblazoned

With lions and spears and shields.

And grace, most important of all.

Grace for ourselves and each other,

For how we’ve hurt one another,

And for our dad, gone under the pen now too.

Grace for him especially.

He’s hurt us all so deeply

But he still gave us our ink,

And ink is thicker than water.

– Vagabond Prophet

Soul Mates

I used to believe

In true love and soulmates,

Now I know it false.

It’s true she’s my mate

And that she has my soul

But I chose her

And she chose me.

No accident no ‘falling in’

Like slipping in mud

Or slowly going mad.

Providence played a part

To be sure

But our choices are

What define us.

No smoky bar

Or mystic circumstance

Just she and me

Opposite sides of a dirty couch.

A choice we still

Make every day

When life is lovely

When life is ghastly.

Our couch is still stained

A reminder of our promises.

– Vagabond Prophet

How quickly I became bankrupt
In the absence of yourself,
I didn’t know until I left you forlorn
Abandoned in the far reaches of the echo
That I’d been living cup to cup
For a love now gone cold.

When I return let there yet be
Some faint embers left in which
We can partake.

Vagabond Prophet

– This is what happens when a guy like me forgets his coffee at home before work starts.

Prompt Day 16

Oh you brilliant bohemian you!

To count the number of times you articulated

For me something shapeless.

Thoughts I’d had for years that evaded endlessly.

Every time I reached for them,

Slipping between fingers like smoke.

Yet you penned it in ink

Plainly for all to see.

Is that how you wrote so much?

Stealing thoughts of others

Transforming them into beauty.

The only kind of theft I’m happy to pardon.

How fitting, how terrible

That you should die, your blood turned to poison.

Your body wracked with pain

And your spirits lacked of wind.

As though life smiled on the grace of words,

And decided you’d had your fill of loveliness.

Thank you for doing it all the same,

You plagiarizer of my mind

You thief of dreams.

– Vagabond Prophet

       – For Rainer Maria Rilke

Prompt Day 15

In some cultures legends

The killing blow of a previous life.

Some say stork bites, other say nothing at all.

My father, myself, my son and daughter

All have the same one.

Strawberry stain on the neck.

Were we rebels in France

And all got the guillotine?

Or all facing firing squads

For crimes against the crown?

I can hide it with my hair

But of the truth I am aware,

I see it in everything

Even in this birthmark.

I am a blemished and imperfect sacrifice

And you, you were perfect lacking nothing

And took upon yourself, every killing blow.

– Vagabond Prophet