Commitment
Dealing with the adversity
Staring into complacency
The fact that they lie is the majority
The moment the truth is an obituary
We stress to test our humanity
To see if we have morality
But we dont know our own limits
So we underestimate our competency
The severity of your impunity
Derived from the clarity of your immunity
The absence of longevity
The presence of obscurity
The waves are restless in their testimony...
a Winslow Homer portrait of shifting shapes and size.
So utterly rhythmic and mighty in their ceremony
as they swallow the golden shore then form to rise.
The indigo-green waters emerge
into a song of pulsating rapture,
as the afternoon sun filtered through towering spires.
With each cascade of depth and shallow
I resolve to be beckoned and captured.
Break-away caps and peaks
tossed in mercurial motion-
flooding upon my thoughts that speak,
to purge my longings with hope and devotion.
I am transcribed within my aimless search,
a mariner in a rudderless raft of vagrant musings.
My compass has no north star to call its berth
to seek a place or find its shelter or mooring.
The sand shifts and pebbles roll
as to reinvent the changing tide of my emotions
with each movement of the shimmering foam.
Each grain of sand, each rock that exchanges places
atones my soul from its banishment in being alone.
Through this beauty the barriers of freedom open
as my exiled heart has found its home
Memories are expensive
spent on looking back
Unpaid moments lost in time
debts for what we lack
Overdue nostalgia
debiting supreme
Clouded statements left unrhymed
—mortgaging our dreams
(Dreamsleep: May, 2023)
Vagrant thoughts
Hang about the corners
Of my mind
Idly tormenting each other
Daring
At least one
To take hold
Take shape
Cast a shadow
On the unknown.
©4/19/2023
Writing Contest - 'V' Words Poetry Contest
Constance LaFrance - sponsor
During day, mind is clogged
By a thousand thoughts
A pot of marbles upturned
On attempting to sweep them together
They slip and slither
Running this way and that way
At night, after their vagrant wanderings
They come back to roost
......................... if not insomniac!
Of towers and castles this land can account
None can eclipse this Acronian Mount
A donated token from cardinal minds
Fools of their worth, this city reminds
Whose former professors were junkies and crooks
For genius impermanent luck he mistook
Oblivious yet, he outfaced the arena
Th’Academy—nation of pallas Athena
Their reason remote like art to the blind
Discussions ascended, yet he was behind
Potential negated by mere competition
Unwieldy ideas unfit for addition
The knowledge developed, he could not compete
Their language transcendent, his skills obsolete
The scholar responded, although not distraught,
“All that I know is that I knowest not.”
I chanced upon a vagrant word
beside an idle railroad track
its campfire fueled by burning books
it asked:"Is poetry coming back?"
I shrugged, acknowledging my doubt
unable to assuage its fear
we listened in the setting sun
for that distant train not coming near.
Curling in their darkened dream
cindered pages slow took flight
ripped from bindings memory
of humming rails and fevered write.
Two hobos now, a word and pen
inhale the scent of mystery
sing off key a one string tune
of a vagrant words lost history.
John G. Lawless
5/25/2020
Hell's music taunts his hooded lie
Condemns his fingers fretful glee
This vagrant lust that will not die
Nor feed his longing to be free
Cold tremor of long deadened strings
Hell's music taunts his hooded lie
Refutes the truths to which he clings
His voice an empty, faded sigh
Cold wind - a graveyard's soulless cry
Vibrations of death's haunting hum
Hell's music taunts his hooded lie
As through the flames bone fingers strum
Hell's flame his now forever curse
His music it would never die
Decisions based on fame and purse
Hell's music taunts his hooded lie
1/22/2020
Taxied to the terminal. The fare paid,
vagrants begged for alms, some too drunk to care.
Shrunken faces, weather beaten, they played
a sad tune of which I was unaware.
Some had the means, even possessed the fare
to transport them to towns with better care.
I passed the huddled poor, stepped on the bus,
took my seat at a window facing west.
Soon, the highway’s open arms greeted us.
No longer stranger, a solemn house guest.
Believing the ride would force me to test
my endurance, I slept. I’m not a pest.
Vegas came, sponged every cent from my purse.
Should have listened to the driver. He knew
how slots are rigged; still, could’ve been much worse.
Could’ve sold my soul since winners are few.
Back on the bus, we zipped through burgs so new
to me, I ticked them off my map on cue.
Three days passed. Felt like a tree that was felled.
Then I saw my love. So nice to be held.
Urban Sonnet poetry contest: 5/17/19 by Emile Pinet
Child vagrant of the world
Of the parks
Of the arches
Of the wet ravines
You grasp from the wind
Stories and thoughts
And talk to yourself
About what’s not anymore
For friends?
You have the pigeons
And for a roof?
You have the stars
You walk to places
Obscure to us
Your steps guided
By hunger and by the moons
Wandering in the world
You grasp songs and laments
From the wind
And you talk to yourself
Of a love you never had
Your parties?
If others have them
Your clothes?
Always those
Wandering in the oblivion
Creature of the sun
Of the frost
Of the dim lights
Of the decadent joys
You separate yourself from us
Your steps your life
A coin your joy
A future?
You never had one
A past?
Now everything has been
Tell me!
With what hope will you sleep?
Like the fog
She melts
Into the wilderness
Never to come
Back.
Like the snow
She drifts,
Crossing horizons
Settles at
Home.
Like the storm
She floods,
All that is inside,
Comes pouring
Out.
Like the grass
She stays,
Stops,
Looks and
Wanders off.
a vagrant sky nods goodbye — brushstrokes of pink and blue pastels
2/6/2018
Return to me O vagrant Muse,
Inspire my thoughts and don't refuse.
Where is my poet's inspiration ?
I've lost that bright imagination.
No couplet, ode, nor sonnet – gone
My creative spark that drives me on.
Ideas, invention sadly lacking,
No metaphors, I must be slacking.
Did Keats and Wordsworth suffer thus ?
Maybe I'm making too much fuss.
A sea of white, the empty page,
I'm like a monkey in a cage.
There're words out there I cannot reach,
Like flotsam washed up on the beach.
So I will beachcomb for ideas,
And hopefully something appears
To break this awful writer's block,
Then I can write around the clock.
I'm a Zen vagrant
in this world
of a like minded
river overflowing
no thought of banks
To all who thought they had it all.
It is not so much that You saw my need, but, rather, You showed my need to me, then filled it. I stood in riches, yet You created in me a hunger that only You could feed. You reached out for a wretch, foundering in ignorant luxury, never wanting for anything, yet possessing nothing of eternal value. You were compassionate toward one who deserves no mercy. Yet, in my state of unworthiness, You saw value to the degree that You offered a priceless gem in payment of a debt You did not owe. You opened eyes blinded by a sense of self-importance and pride. You are the great Physician and Healer of everything that infects my soul. O Lord, in Your kindness, You touched me before I realized the folly of my life without You. Heavenly Father, all that I am is the result of Your love and mercy. Surely, Your grace is responsible for eliminating the things that made me who I no longer am and I praise Your Holy Name!
Author's Comments:
"This came to me in meditation one day. I was under the mistaken opinion that the world offers so much more than it does...Jake"
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