Peacock

I am a peacock preening feathers

So you might not notice

How slight I really am.

Maintain this sheen make it gleam

Lest it betray my fear

Of prying eyes

From fiendish spies.

So many layers built upon

For year after year after year

I don’t remember the colour

Of my own natural skin.

There are few and far between

That see me as I am,

When days length gives way

To evenings hold and nights sway,

All the shimmer and shine

Of my prized plumage

Means nothing in the dark.

The fear of being known

As well of being unknown

Keeps me painted today,

Now you know my secret

Seen the crack in my veneer,

When twilight comes

And the brilliance of the sun

Angles just right I’ll see yours too.

Wear your flaw proudly

It’s what makes you unique

Makes you not by rote,

Not just a laugh track

On the rerun of anybodies life,

Not just another zoo attraction

Be a rebel a renegade

Choose to boil or freeze

No matter the centigrade.

– Vagabond Prophet

@josy57 “Cracked Veneer.” This was nifty, thanks again.

This Barren City

This barren city

These roads slick with tears

These sidewalks cracked

And mountains in every direction.

Here in the valley

Everything settles

The rain filling the fields

Running down from frosty peaks

To overflow my ditches,

The clouds fall on my head

Every morning making everything dewy.

In this barren city

Where anything can grow

Except good will towards

The hopeless, the shattered

The broken and tattered.

To the many who call these streets

Their home tonight,

No bed to rest your weary bones

No place to wash off bad decisions

Hoping tomorrow you are able

Tomorrow you’d have more strength

And someone in your corner.

To them and others

I say unto you

The city might be barren

But you don’t have to be,

The streets might be cold

But your heart isn’t.

The hope that rises with the sun

Will lift you from the pavement

And raise the dead in you.

– Vagabond Prophet

@josy57 thanks for prompting me with “This Barren City.” This issue is dear to me.

Potential

I am simple and strong

I am neither good or evil

For I do not choose my burden

Or even how I will carry it

That is done by the stranger’s hand.

I will with treasure tarry

Across plane, train, and ferry

To bring my payload

To expectant signatures.

Sometimes I am rushed

Sometimes I am empty or full

To the point my corrugated spine

Bursts and holds no more.

I am not good or evil

I am only potential.

If all this and more is true

Of me a cardboard box

What does that say of you?

– Vagabond Prophet

Tapestry

Some sentences finish themselves,

Picture a chicken and a stump

In a barren backyard

Grass all plucked and gone,

Does your mind not add

The beheaded bird

The bloodied ax?

And if I tell you of a man

Proposing to his love,

Does your imagination not

Force his knee to bend?

We all fill things in,

The way we think they ought to be,

And we all do it the same way,

How curious, how strangely universal

We can be when it’s not actual speech.

What does this say of us

Why is it this way?

Is there some common thread

Throughout the tapestry of humanity?

Some golden but fine little shimmer

That says we are all built

By the same carpenter?

If this example avails

No spark of truth for you

I can do this all day,

I’ve paid attention too long

To not recognize the artists strokes.

– Vagabond Prophet

Peek-A-Boo

Formed me from clay

And left me here to stay

My lungs drew their inaugural breath

Signaling I was my own

I am a force

I have a voice.

Now the lengths I have gone

To use that power, to use this voice

In ways never intended.

How does this make sense of you?

When everything I’ve said untrue

How can I climb my way to truth

With feet that have only been uncouth,

Kicking thorns into your skull

Until the stone rolled away

And you brought a brand new day.

What act of devotion

Could I do to prove,

What pilgrimage could I take

And die along the path,

What trophy could I earn

To prove how much I love you

To prove how much I thank you

For making this blind man see.

As I sit here and ponder

My thoughts begin to wander

To when you gripped my hand

And pulled me from the muck.

Maybe it was the Midas touch

That had made the boat finally sink,

The rapacious attempts to better myself

With the pleasures and leisures of the world.

I had begun to think of myself as dead

As a blackened heart whose rosy cheeks

Had not yet realized that the blood

Pumped into them was damned

Polluted and meant for the grave.

I actually believed my transgression

Was too great, outweighing your grace!

How foolish was I?

Did you laugh?

Did you snicker at my childishness?

Before you pulled back the veil

In this high stakes peek-a-boo

To whisper to my soul “Here I am.”

You lovely source of true delight

You safest place amidst the plight

How fully you dismantled my delusions,

How quickly I became aware

It was never your grace that was small

But rather my faith.

A single thought of yours so spacious

I could occupy it for a century

And never find its borders,

I could spend summer after summer

Diving into those waters

And never plumb their depths.

I needed to see myself for what I was

For the monster I was becoming

Before you could save me,

For what man thinking himself complete

Would take a helping hand?

It wasn’t until the storms outside

Mirrored the ones within

And you calmed them with a word,

That I thought to come to you.

Now I pray for others

The ones I would call brothers,

That if they ever leave the zoo

And find all the beasts

That don’t live in cages

The beasts that pound and scratch

Their way through the echoing halls

Of each and every soul,

That they would call for help

Against those deadly baffling foes

And you always faithful to answer

Would smother all their woes.

– Vagabond Prophet

Peace?

When my own mind works against me

What peace can there be?

My right hand throwing rocks

Through my window and

My left hand hurling it back.

In the wild, the ensnaring

Searching tangled roots

I find my fallen mangled boots

And having donned them

March in circles.

Though I spiral endlessly

On the opaque and indiscernible

Ramblings of this nomad mind,

They never churn themselves into butter.

Wasting my time on mundane nothings

I practice braiding water,

I pick my own bones clean

And though Bob Marley said it right

And all three birds are here

I still worry about everything.

The sun’s ray

That brings decay

To the cloth long in the sun,

The shortened days

Where days dismay

Is crushed by weight of night.

I given options often choose destruction

The addictive nightmare

Where at least I’m alive,

I the froward soul

In need of constant reminding

That air is for breathing

Was always meant to fill me

Rather than something to exorcise.

My heart lacquered with

So much bitterness and trauma

It is marinated for disaster,

Like Icarus I collide and burn

With my expectations of myself.

If to you this sounds tiring

To fling oneself into the chasm of chaos,

Then congratulations are in order

For your sound mind and stout heart

And though there is always help out there

So many miles from home

Not all minds and hearts are equal.

When my own mind works against me

What peace can there be?

– Vagabond Prophet

@josy57 prompted me with “A rock through my window.” Thanks for that it is always such a joy writing your prompts.

Embroidered

Many words I’ve written for thee

Deeds done and songs sung.

Six years ago you came

I remember it so clearly

Your blood was too sweet for safety

That it had to be diluted

And your mother

Looking smaller and stronger

Than ever before

Stumbling to feed you.

The pain in her face

Overcome by the joy

At seeing you expect her

Her soft touch and her smell

Her sound and her warmth.

That just by being herself

She could bring you comfort,

Eased all the pain of your coming.

Now from baring you into the world

Your mother now has scars

That she wears proudly,

As though embroidered with pride.

So many days ago,

So many spills and fevers and tears,

And each one is such a treasure.

My clever curly boy,

Young storyteller in the making,

Thank you for teaching me

That the most important thing I’ll ever do

Is be a loving dad for you.

– Vagabond Prophet

@delightfulharmonypoetry for our boy on his birthday.

This Obscure Chasm

Where my skin ends

And your breath begins

And this obscure chasm

In between where the magic lives.

The magic we claim

When the distance we shatter

With the urgency of affection

When my bad breath didn’t matter.

What does ten years

Of happiness look like?

Smile lines and stretch marks

Scars and hair gone thin

With weariness and worry,

Unshaven legs in winter

Tangled into mine,

And hatchets I won’t bury.

For no quarrels with your laurels

For me to drive a stake,

Only hands to hold

Only dreams to pave a road for.

And if you should lose your mind

If the woman I know and love

Dies behind your eyes

I’ll love you like the night sky

Like a star long gone

That my eyes

Won’t stop believing in.

– Vagabond Prophet

For @delightfulharmonypoetry , heres to many more years darling.

Thanks @josy57 for the prompt “This Obscure Chasm.

Waxless Candles

The wind half sighs half moans

The struggle that is

Its passage through the night.

The calm before the storm

Never came for them

Only the wind

Only the waves

Only the rain.

Like waxless candles

They burn bright

And getting hotter

Through the darkling night.

Until the night is over

And their wick is all turned to ash

Hoping the deeds that they’ll forget

Will be rekindled at next dusk.

They end up forgotten

They end up refused

Forsaken and misused.

Knowing only the hard pavement

For a pillow in this November,

Nothing as bright or as chilling

As the winter sun

Shining boldly yet coldly

In a brilliant and frigid embrace.

The windows frost

And their breath exhausts

Caught, taken it is

By the unforgiving cold.

Like Icarus they collide and burn

With their hopes for themselves.

Meanwhile they all wonder,

“How can I be healthy,

When every doctors definition differs.”

– Vagabond Prophet

Dad Jeans

I was unprepared to have

My heart ensnared

By clutches oh so small.

I was born of summer

But you were born of heaven

With joy in your smile

And sunlight in your eyes.

Born in November the trees

Shade giving virtue had fallen

Honeybee long gone

No longer searched for pollen.

But your young and tender body

So needy and so small

We both got the warmth we needed

In the embrace of one another.

Now every pair of pants I own

Has holes in the knees

They are all worn and torn

From being a train or horse

For you to explore the universe,

From crawling to find you

I the monster in your tale.

I get to see the world anew

From the eyes of a child

Who knows not what borders are

Only what kindness is.

– Vagabond Prophet

@delightfulharmonypoetry

thanks @josy57 for the prompt “Worn and Torn.”