Tag: writerscreed

Rigid

Some people just want to get along

With everybody at all costs,

Insisting everybody can be right.

They cut off the branch they sit on

As a shelter for themselves.

Afraid to offend people

By disagreeing with anything.

All that proves though,

Is a refusal to stand for anything.

No land to defend

A nomad belonging neither

To truth or lies.

You can’t swap gravy for hummus

And tell me it’s the same,

And if you try you’ll always feel anchored

By the weight of your own name.

I’m not inflexible

I don’t refuse to listen

But some truths really are that rigid.

And just for saying that

You gawk in shock and disbelief,

That I would dare to say

That the definition of North

Can’t be stretched

To also mean south.

– Vagabond Prophet

True North

Like a ship graveyard

Where we sort through the rotten planks

To find the few good ones.

Together we may salvage

One seaworthy vessel

From the thousand capsized.

We all push off from shore

Without giving the land a last glance

We go past the breakers,

No map, just a promise.

A common faith

Of a country far away,

Something I’ve always known of.

It’s like the way the moon

Chases a Sun it’s never seen

Except for in dreams.

We all work the ropes

And steer the rudder

For the compass is etched

On all of our hearts.

– Vagabond Prophet

Ice Machine


He’d painstakingly inched along

From his room, in a wheelchair

So slowly that with each rotation

The world made a rotation on its axis,

He made glaciers look swift.

He was so very old

That time had made knots in his mind,

And knit wrinkles in his spine.

He sat in front

Of that silver machine

And asked me

“How do I get ice out of here?”

Honesty is the best policy,

Or so I’ve been told

So I plainly told him,

“Sir, that’s a blanket warmer.”

– Vagabond Prophet

Malcontent


I haven’t been honest

Since the womb.

Lying about

Why I’m crying.

Not crying about being torn

From my home,

I cried for the world I was born into.

I heard her heartbeat,

Beating in time with her malcontent,

She didn’t even have to say it

I felt it in the blood she gave me.

The world is unsafe

And we’re made for the next one,

Just help some people get there

That’s what she told me.

– Vagabond Prophet

Good Day

I woke up next to her again

To that blooming goddess

Of warmth and beauty.

I woke up to the joyful squeals

Of two healthy children

Just happy for another day.

My hearing degrades

With each new frequency

My daughters voice discovers,

Fearlessly trailblazing

The uncharted waters of sound.

My mind is blown by the fact

That my son of five

Is imagining stories far beyond me,

A natural storyteller.

I have everything I need.

Some days I’m plagued with worry

Doubt and cynicism.

But today,

Today is good.

– Vagabond Prophet

They don’t tell you

The further down you go

The worse the chance

Of your coming back.

The top is just white collars,

The middle chemotherapy

But the bottom

Oh the bottom.

That’s for the radiation patients,

Level Zero

It’s even underground,

I guess to get them used to it.

– Vagabond Prophet

Family


Walking through a hospital parking lot

Perfect white lines outside an imperfect building.

Mercedes to my left

Rusty van to my right.

All that separation

Dissolves on the threshold

When you peruse the catalogue

Of dying people inside.

Your wife,

His sister,

You both drove here

To weep over loved ones.

If the vehicle doesn’t matter

If your class doesn’t matter

If grief is level ground

Then can we all be family?

– Vagabond Prophet