Tag: writers on tumblr

Atlas

An Atlas problem, back once broken

Beneath the gravity of everything,

One came and took my burden

The crushing load of life and sadness and sin.

You took it and took it so well,

No more world upon my back!

My hope begins to wax,

Yet my spine still slopes

It may take time, more than this lifetime

For my body to straighten.

I still find that boredom breeds only treachery,

In the serfdom of my heart

The beggars still start riots,

However bigger and above and transcendent!

By your melodies I escaped the weight of tragedy,

And in your sanctuary I’ll bend back to shape.

In your joy you’ll quiet this mutineers heart.

– Vagabond Prophet

Prompt Day 13

Most peoples rituals?

Buttoning top to bottom,

Pizza on Fridays.

My rituals?

Bombarding those I know

With preposterous queries.

It’s just what’s in this mind

That wants out.

What colour is your letter A?

What colour is your imaginary dragon?

Rather have horns or a tail?

Favourite food ethnicity?

Rather be deaf or blind?

Rather freeze or burn to death?

I grow weary of small talk

I find it just so little.

I want to learn what shapes

A person’s thoughts

And which hilltop

Their compass says is north.

Make your thoughts work

Make one nerve ending stretch

To unknown territory to reach the next

Unusual shapes just to bridge that gap.

Learn your favourite word in nineteen languages.

Don’t be a lazy suzan,

Spinning the same ideas round and round.

I bore of the weather,

I bore of sports.

But to discuss something

Never discussed before

That just might interest.

– Vagabond Prophet

– Bonus points for anybody who answers those questions for me, I think my co-workers are getting tired of me pestering them.

Prompt Day 11

Do doubts even have shadows?

Any dark place I need to travel through

Before I come to true belief.

Maybe doubt is like darkness,

Only the absence of its antonym.

Hey courage! Good to see you

Didn’t recognize you with your long face.

Yes it’s true temptation seeks me out

When I’ve been happily in drought.

I’m afraid of the thoughts

That my own thoughts thought,

Just like I’m afraid that blood tires

Of the burden of oxygen.

Hemoglobin sitting down on its one job

Letting my life slowly slip into the gutter.

I’m afraid of being the man this morning,

The one with electrodes hanging from his head.

Electric power to shock himself into obedience,

A rebellious body to match my mind.

I’m afraid that one day I’ll meet the younger me

And he’ll be ashamed at what he’s to become.

I’m afraid that inaction will rust my very soul,

Yet action is so terrifying, with gears as misaligned as these.

I’m afraid of a current

Ever growing more swift

Until all of my writhing

Counts for nothing at all.

I’m afraid of paperwork,

So I often let the paper work me,

I’m afraid of losing people

And I’m afraid of losing myself in the aftermath.

I’m afraid of the way that time never slows,

“Ready or not here I come!”

I’m never prepared

Always caught unaware.

Okay so there it is

All the fright and trepidation

Laid out with trembling and shaky hands

Arranged into piles to be burned.

He came for fears like mine

And fears of others

Not to eradicate

But to render unimportant.

To prod this coward into courage

And unwrap this wire

I tangled myself in

Calling it self care the whole time.

You don’t take my fear away

You just enable me to meet it

Giving me just enough strength

To survive the battle.

I still get scars I still get bloodied

Just as any soldier does.

Yet I also have my master whispering,

Whispering in my ear in darkest moments.

Promises of a better future where fear is over.

When its days are done and gone

And the nails are in the casket

That we’ll fling into the fire.

Gild my skin and bones with bravery

To keep fighting until that day,

Sharpening my sword

On the steadiness of your truth

And resting my soul in the vastness of your hands.

I can feel you embroidering my heart

Every stitch hurts like hell

Yet you’re promising me heaven,

I can feel beauty taking shape in the corners of my vision.

You’re helping me pretend at strength

Until it’s no longer pretending.

In the crescendo of your love, you called me worth your death!

Me!

This poem won’t get rid of fear,

I tried to make it do so and yet

All it can do, and all I can do

Is be a reminder of the one

Who will chase it away in his good time.

– Vagabond Prophet

Prompt Day 10

Six of us to start, smiling into the lens

One, two, three,

Cheese!

I didn’t even like cheese.

The eldest at my left

I looked up to him,

And he beat down on others

Because of it.

The other brother on the right

More tender and less angry,

Gave me all my favourite sounds,

Thanks for that.

Then the baby, that wild blonde

That I call sister,

Now she gives her love away

Like its a fake smile

For those old family portraits.

Then the parents, mostly sad

Mostly discontented, just surviving.

Now there’s more, inlaws step what have yous.

Big family is nice though traditions stay the same,

We only ever had two.

1: Ice cream cake.

2: Conflict avoidance.

Beyond happy I’ve my own branch now

To have grafted true beauty

Into this still green sapling

And to have such wonderful fruits

From the labours of our love.

– Vagabond Prophet

Music and Marriage

The snare drum and bass drum

Married by song

Joined in their work

But separated by a few beats.

They need that time apart

To carry the music

Oh! To play in the same moment

Would lose something of themselves.

To be united and together

Though separate and unique

That’s true marriage

For the conductor knows best.

– Vagabond Prophet

Prompt Day 9

The pavement cracks

And the crashing breakers,

Everything in between.

Customs not understood

Families that love me anyways,

Whilst lightning reigns every night.

Heading west and landscapes change,

Desert to jungle and then pacific ocean

All while listening to Paul and the boys.

The further west the wetter it got,

Cilantro in sidewalks turning

To highways in coconut groves.

I learned about the weather

I learned about flavours

And tasted my first insect.

Most of all I learned that

Love needs no language,

And home it needs no flag

Just a warm embrace and plate to match.

– Vagabond Prophet

Prompt Day 8


One girl always sits at the back,

Headphones in a head with new hair each week

And always looking down.

May your creator turn your eyes upwards one day.

Reflective vests with men attached

Steelworkers plumbers I don’t know,

May your feet find solid ground today.

The driver who was kind

Until he wasn’t,

The woman with the walking cast,

Commuting souls on rerun

A to B and back to A.

May these unclean seats

Find hearts ready to become clean,

May we all find hope

Before the next stop.

– Vagabond Prophet

Prompt Day 7


Spiderwebbed windows and home to vermin,

Holes in doors, where there is doors.

Thin walls and three stories tall,

Though worth so many more.

My memory fails me,

Brick factory?

Ya that’s it, testing each brick

Throwing through the viewports

Of this ship now sunk.

Great bricks, worked every time.

Now the walls hardly upright,

Now inhabiting unsettling inspiration,

To any who venture near.

– Vagabond Prophet