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Prevost Dec 2021
I spent my last hundred dollars
On a really nice leather wallet

………..
Prevost Mar 2021
inside the bus
the heat is oppressive
it is a stagnant force
that holds you still
bound by air
that was sent by the sun
to remind us of how small
we all really are

time slows to a trickle
the body aches
for the bus to begin it’s journey
and for air
moving air
the salvation of us all
the hourglass sweat
rolls down my neck
Prevost Feb 2021
Heart pulls the lever
The cables run through the senses
And back out again
We are awkward in this restless repose
The cable cutting nature of people
Ever at the ready

She stood there, placed
Severed and alone
Her thoughts refused to grace the past
She wrapped her arms around her heart
“please don’t drift away”
“I may need you again someday”
Prevost Nov 2021
emily tore herself
from a grace
reserved for all things of beauty
sorrowful spirits
garbed in vestments of the
deeper wisdoms
gathered on a plain
of redemption
pleading for her return

she plucked from her heart
the pedals
that had worshiped the sun
looking back
she expelled a breath
that once spoke of love
wrapping herself in her arms
she stepped into a river
that meandered alone

from on up high
the loneliness of her absence
turned the firmament gray
and the gods begged
for the cup of hemlock
that would rid them of their creations
how these humans
refuse to live
with love and kindness
Prevost Jun 2020
It is dark out here
More alone here
Hidden
The rain has left her scent
You are folded back into the earth
Listening to your life... exist
Breathe
Feeling blood’s endless journey
Returning and returning
Sacred silence of self
Alone
In the dark....
Prevost Jan 2022
if we are alone
then live alone
what of you believes
what myth tethers you
to the hunt
is the kiss that deep
what do we betray
when we lay in beds
with lovers we do not know
or can ever know

the voices too thick
the heart too pure
for the war between
alone or not alone
and some cold winds
remind us
that we were all born alone
Prevost Sep 2020
I built a tiny altar
Of sticks, leaves, sage and prairie anisé
It was out East of the house
Not far from Crawford’s old homestead
Where the ghosts of broken dreams
Hung in the breezes
I did not know why I had wandered there
Ñor why I had arranged
The articles of earth
For her

She had come to me
As I was walking
Her presence descending
Warming the day’s chill
I saw her smile
Then I knew
The men who had taken her
Back through the door with the round window
Were not going to bring her back
They could not bring her back

Her smile was the softest thing
I had ever witnessed in the world
Her voice moved through my soul
The world stopped turning
The wind hushed
The prairie turned up her edges
to hold us alone together
“Oh my dear brother,
I’m still with you,
“You know....It’s beautiful here”
When I was five years old my little sister died of brain cancer. These four poems, “Curls” “My Little Sister “ “Hail Mary” and “Altars” revisit that time through an adult’s words. Thanks for reading....
Prevost Oct 2020
Light
Has no equal
Light will conquer dark
Always

Love
Has no equal
Love will conquer hate
Always

Keep
Light and Love
In your heart
Always....
A juxtaposition to “What”.
Prevost Sep 2
As I waddle through the heat
I wish for knees from which to pray
The sun, the progenitor of this fruition
Golden we harvest

The hills whisper an ancient call
I grasp the earth between my fingers
Here the dirt and I are one
I cannot let go of her

The sheaves surrender to the sickle
The soul is sown
The soul is harvested
Ancient mouths rejoice
Prevost Oct 2021
one day I stumbled upon a query….
does the dark keep your soul tucked away
from your tenderness
so ubiquitous and clean?  
she said no….. the dark keeps the light from dying
I thought you knew
I was born an angel of light
but my soul was arrogated by a gang of ******
“I think they refer to themselves as men”
Prevost Jan 2021
The man with a thousand hearts
Smiles slip through the fingers
Of the menial
Burdened the faults of the species
Peeling away more and more
Hearts buried in hearts
The thunderous waves of man
Crash down upon the shores of the soul
If be tatters     then be tatters
Reach down
And pull out another heart
Prevost Nov 2021
a word farmer drinking ***
in a jungle
smiling back at his pain

the ocean pounds the shore
his heart feels her power
and beauty

the trees sway in rhythm
with the hammock
he takes another sip
Prevost Jan 2022
I know *** isn’t going to solve this
but some nights it helps
how do pull yourself out of ten years of caring
for a human whom is now killing you
I think they write books about this ****
but I know it is just up to me
I’m sure that at the bottom of this bottle
I will do what I must
and call this a poem…
Prevost Jan 2021
Magnificent she stood
reaching deeper into the sky
the years upon years she pulled from the earth
the strands she used to weave her fibers
into the towering creature
that gently reigned over all those below

Perhaps she tired of ******
pushing his will across the land
relentless he was through the night
perhaps she was glad to lay down
eager to fade back into earth
to start all over again
Prevost Oct 2020
La tierra está triste
ella está llorando

The bleeding earth asked
In solemn prayer
Embracing the knees of existence
“the human knows not of what feeds,
my wounds are deep
and my life is quickly bleeding away
can you send a gift of knowledge”
So existence bowed its head
And

Humans were sent a message
That a crowned invader
Could touch every human breath
A tie that binds a reality
Of life or death to every drawn breath
That if humans came together
If they learned that they only needed so much
That Brother was Brother
And Sister was Sister
That love is the blood of life
That they share that same blood
That earth and human are a whole
That we could reset this whole madness

Where rivers choke in the excess
Where oceans drown in the excess
Where the land is ***** by the excess
Where the mind is distorted by the excess
Where the human starves in excess
Where love is lost in the excess

And for a brief moment
The madness quieted
One single breath was shared
Brother was Brother
Sister was Sister


And earth said
“now can you see
that we are one”
But the human said
No it is a plot
To rob me of my freedom
I am entitled  
I am the greater god
I love the excess
More than you....
Prevost Jul 2020
A child beggar sitting in the dirt of Guatemala
once asked me for a meal
and for salvation
and still the rain poured down
I split myself
widening the distance
between the warm and the cold
Prevost Aug 2020
It is a pause that allows a summation of
All that you have been and all that you will be
Drawing together every breath and dream
Only at the fingertips of your existence
Not in grasp... but to touch
A knowing
Be this beauty
Prevost Nov 2020
Betrayal

At what decibel does the scream
Awaken the sleepless soul
Betrayed beyond any justice
The millions who’s blood
Drained from their lives
As the world changed
For the better

I am sick at heart
For the sleepless soul
Ignorance the most lethal drug
Offered at despotic discounts
A hundred thousand years from now
Will I finally dance on the grave
Of injustice
Prevost Apr 2021
blank
thoughts
contradicting
concepts
blood
coursing
furthering
days
clouds
hanging
blanketing
us
tears
yearning
blank
thoughts
Prevost Jan 2022
Bob Carrey drank his coffee
out of an old tin can
the faded label said sweet corn
it was a mystery to me
he had this way of acknowledging
and dismissing you at the same time

he lived with Gloria and Richard Hier
all part of the mystery
but young people
needed guidance
I suppose

he listened to the Twins games
on an old transistor radio
he tucked it in his breast pocket
with the cord strung out ahead of him

when I get up to mix another drink
I put my iPhone in my breast pocket
keeping Spotify alive
the cord of my earbuds protrude out before me
I become Bob Carrey
I could give a **** about the Twins score
but Lucinda Williams
well …you know
Prevost Mar 2021
I never drink *** inland
something about the salty air
and a pirates’ soul
swaying in the night breeze
I can hear the waves crashing down
as the seven sisters entice my senses
I am alone enough to part with myself
and let the word farmer
slur his images across the night’s canvas
I leave off a lesser crime
as poetry is left dripping off the page
A couple of years ago “Flor de Cana” released a boxed version of their eighteen year aged ***. It included a booklet of poetry from around the world. Those ******* get it....
Prevost Aug 2020
Walking through the soul of humanity
I weep tears
“the tears of the world are a constant quantity”
and so that endless river flows
never to kiss a forgiving sea

The arrows of time
sometimes turn back
and tear through the flesh of your past
and you are left there bleeding
alone

I split open this
what floods in
is this world
how human twists beauty into the shapes
distorted and damaged

Failing is the I
love and kisses and embraces
never even find
the deepest part of the cuts

Screaming at the worthless I
incapable of sewing back together
the legs and arms and hearts
and dreams and lips and hopes and lives

Walking through the soul of humanity
I weep tears
“the tears of the world are of constant quantity”
and so that endless river flows
never to kiss a healing sea

The arrows of time
sometimes turn back
and tear through the flesh of the past
and they are left there bleeding
alone
For all the broken ones I have loved.

"the tears of the world are a constant quantity" from Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot"
Prevost Jul 2020
Cigarette Burns On An Old Bar

the bubbles rising to a horizon
of aspirations
the air rehearsed
as too the dialogue

each burn dragged across the bar
what instant the cigarette lit
what was it
they were pushing away
Prevost Jan 2021
Last night a young poet’s voice
tore so deep within
that it ripped my soul apart.....

Her words of birds and cages and gravity
and what human does to human
brought me back to wind swept hills
where the was sky blue enough to drown in
and vast enough to blanket all corners of the earth
where I, as a boy, worked and wandered
wandered through words
words spoken in telling
and words raged in rage

As I pulled the implements of grain through the soil
I learned to think
the dust I raised drifted across the land
bringing with it my thoughts
passed horizons, passed the hills
to distant lands
torn by the pains of love, of war, of loss
and
of what human does to human

His rage was the desperation of a soul shredded
by war
by what human does to human
he was caged
between what he had seen
and that he should still posses some hope
between witnessing the destruction of a world
and believing in a world

But deep within him I had always heard a voice
a voice buried deep beneath his rage
a voice..... he could no longer hear
but I
could always hear
“no matter how long I am caged
no matter how long the gravity of ignorance and hate,
the gravity of hubris and destruction binds and
holds down my soul,
I was alway meant to fly,
we were all....meant to fly....”
I published this eight years ago. I thought I would revisit it again.
Prevost Nov 2012
Last night a young poet’s voice
tore so deep within
that it ripped my soul apart.....

Her words of birds and cages and gravity
and what human does to human
brought me back to wind swept hills
where the was sky blue enough to drown in
and vast enough to blanket all corners of the earth
where I, as a boy, worked and wandered
wandered through words
words spoken in telling
and words raged in rage

As I pulled the implements of grain through the soil
I learned to think
the dust I raised drifted across the land
bringing with it my thoughts
passed horizons, passed the hills
to distant lands
torn by the pains of love, of war, of loss
and
of what human does to human

His rage was the desperation of a soul shredded
by war
by what human does to human
he was caged
between what he had seen
and that he should still posses some hope
between witnessing the destruction of a world
and believing in a world

But deep within him I had always heard a voice
a voice buried deep beneath his rage
a voice..... he could no longer hear
but I
could always hear
“no matter how long I am caged
no matter how long the gravity of ignorance and hate,
the gravity of hubris and destruction binds and
holds down my soul,
I was alway meant to fly,
we were all....meant to fly....”
I published this eight years ago. I thought I would revisit it again.
Prevost Apr 2022
unearthed from the wood
witnessing the light the bleeds into the soul of man

in the fragrance of earth and bone
I tasted the distilled essence of we

bitter and alone the blood wine stood
the tongue shuddered at the knowing

distant heartbeats roared
the fallen still laying there

at every crest
at every nightfall

and we
both abhorrent and beautiful
grew calluses and moss
crawling back amongst the wood
Prevost Oct 2020
Beneath her skin
Striated lines of time
The the calm resolve
Of fiber reaching fiber
I kneel at her roots

Tossed distant
To a beckoning wind
Where we collide
Will against grace
And the molten heart

The scent of reflection
Turning the pages
Hieroglyphic languages
Untether a soul
I breath

The furrow aches
The breezes grasp
Peeling away thought
Seeding fruition into the fold
I calm
Prevost Feb 2021
Her light travels into me
what gods arranged our intersection
I am the blood of myth
gathered tales that justify
more the seeking
than fruition
ignorant authors
casting our will into the heavens
we paint our stories in the skies
but as her light falls through my flesh
she whispers
“I can never be possessed”
Prevost Nov 2021
the banister was the barrier
looking down on my world dissolving

my progenitors
at war with themselves
and the entropy of the world

but then
the rising sun offered some promise
mistrust becomes a drug
repudiation sustains

was it arrogated
or torn

a thousand thousand years from now
will the pain exist
and ten trillion years from now
will existence still exist
Prevost Nov 2020
Pulling out and sorting out
The memories embedded in this flesh
What I was and what I was not
Peel away to an essence
Equal in measure
To a past and to a future

We are not clocks
Ticking measured segments away
The scales and rulers
That we portion our lives with
Fail at the feet of Infinity
The god of all time

I will cast myself
Out into this day
Holding open time
Pulling from my sea
Less what is measured
Than what is
Prevost Dec 2021
Coffee grounds
Grounds for divorce
Ground up bits of your soul
Offered up in trade
For your freedom
Prevost Aug 2020
What color will I paint my soul
Walking into this room of rooms
Bitter biting brusk belittling beggars
Hold you taught
Between yourself and a faux image
of you
Such redemption in condemnation
Drives you to a center
Where
All you got..... is you
Severe the soul from the image of a soul
And paint
with the purest
Colors
Prevost Feb 2021
Thoughts drip from the edges
splattering across the morning
swaying in a breeze I cull
those who feed
from those who eat
my soul
Prevost Jan 2021
perhaps a heart desolate
is a gift
i’ve grown weary
of the concept of love
Prevost Jul 2020
The soul shudders
In the corridors
That connect
Love with hate....
Prevost Jan 2021
The split feather tatoo
I got in Chicago back in 97
I knew the artist from Sturgis
The year James forgot the “R” in Sturgis
And the guy went home with a “Stugis 95” tattoo
After she finished pounding the ink into my skin
It was well after midnight
And the endorphins were all played out
We went out for breakfast

A diner that the cabies used
Along with all the rags of people
who wandered through the night
Life tore off the edges
And replaced it with another at the center
Every few seconds
The hackneyed threadbare sullen
Surfeit in their staggering surrender
To an existence metered in minutes or millennia
All those souls falling into each other
Filling the poets veins

For the Lakota a split feather signifies
“Many Battles “
I had died enough but never died
I was no longer pretty
Or whole
To assuage that what kills
Just to stay alive
Sipping my coffee
Looking through the windows
Out into the collage of  concrete and humanity
It all made sense

Back out on the plains
I spit out the residue of my journey
The sun was setting
And my dust softly settled back to earth
I rubbed my new tatoo and smiled
As I sewed another page into my heart
A coyote sang his lonesome song
Somewhere behind me.....
Prevost Jul 2020
For Bukowski

rough ragged creviced whiskey soaked
smoke inundated telling
wrapping his arms around the world
laughing with the wicked and the pure
ragged edges
bold enough to split you open
revealing how beauty is best viewed
from within the shadows
Thomas w. Case/ Bukowski challenge.
Prevost Sep 2020
Her curls were blond
Softer than the world
She had entered

The last time she came home
The sutures were pronounced in
reds and blues

She would sit and stare
I would try to make her stuffed animals
Bring her back to life

Her curls were blond
Softer than the world
She left
When I was five years old my little sister died of brain cancer. These four poems, “Curls” “My Little Sister “ “Hail Mary” and “Altars” revisit that time through an adult’s words. Thanks for reading....
Prevost Jan 2021
Loneliness is a self contained world
Yet we arrogate it’s walls
With the need
That spawned the loneliness
.....Vicious....
Or just simply being human

Filling the void with yourself
Only works some of the time
Knowing thy self is to know the void
But after all
We are just creatures in need
of the human touch
Prevost Jul 2020
Beat rhythm heart
Tender tethers taught
Spanning the breadth
Pulling ancient dust
From the heart of your soul
Dance dance
Abandon random pounding
Breathing breathing
Alive in rhythm
Body soul heart
Dances with Gaia
Dances within Gaia
Beat rhythm heart....
Prevost Jul 2020
they stand bold
against the bold
neither the subject of either
this ballet reaches within
each wave a grating caress
moving the unmovable
the increments
in a quantity that thwarts perception

had those waves
ever touched them before
are they lovers
each longing to return
touching what they once were
are we not all
old lovers  

as they rise against
and above
some quantity of breath
is drawn
what pulls from within
the eye tethered to the soul
the majesty
watching time unfold
Prevost Nov 2021
Some hearts are deserts
Prevost Nov 2021
refuge my heart
the storm drives me
piercing
this world of love and pain
am I hungry enough
to thirst for truth
do her heartbeats still
reverberate within the walls of my soul
am I desiccated enough to
forget her
refuge my heart
Prevost Jul 2020
It was never clear
how a poor farm boy
could pull his roots from the soil
and
fly away

Someone in Paris could not have known
that someone dreams
why
do poets cry
and life seems so sweet
somewhere

The turning of the soil
like the folding of a soul
within the cry of hungers scream
he could always hear
them
scream

And dream....dream
of some life somewhere
where beautify was so seldom
crucified
and fathers loved their sons

was it there in the streets of Paris
where they danced to beauty
and held on tight
to sons
was it somewhere beyond
where that sun went
every night

with the dust of the land covering his face
he would wonder
and dream.....
Prevost Nov 2021
I used to sit and watch them drink
the prairie had sculpted lines in their faces
that told tales of time and its erosion
and how every dry wind
became the sculptors chisel
their dirt stories resurfaced as a
prelude to old scars and pain
and some of the things I heard… hurt
they kept pushing money across the bar
and drank more than whiskey back
I order another for my old friend and I
he drinks his quickly as if it were something precious
then he tells me an old ***** thirties story
he heard in the old bar
the one that stood here before this one
he talked until the wind outside made him mad again
I dug out a box of old poems today. I wrote this back in 87 during a drought in eastern Montana.
Prevost Jul 2020
She reaches
In her dance with the breezes
Gathering, gathering, gathering
The life of light and breath
Letting it descend
Through her
Past what she had been
Flowing back into
The earth

She pulls me away
To the blessed simple
Where time and the mechanisms of human
Are cast away
Life.... is descending through me
I feel myself flowing
Back
Into the earth
Prevost Jan 2022
I was gentle in my dust trodden world
but the echos of the treachery of living
filled the unheard
both gravedigger and poet held a tether
suspending me in the aether
between my flesh and my spirit

calmer when winds blew
and echos were pushed across the hills
to a distant chamber
the taste of the dust was truth to me
I played with the poet
and set my spirit free
Prevost Dec 2020
A gentle rain
In dry season
Liberating dust from leaf
Set free
Washed clean
Back to earth
Prevost Sep 2020
I imagine poets drinking coffee
In the morning
Maybe tea, or whiskey, or ***
I imagine paper curled on edges
A pen laying at angle
The dust of the page’s fibers floating
Through the shaft of sunlight that
Traveled ninety three million miles
To pause a poets thoughts
And to reveal that dust
Is a poem
Prevost Jan 2021
Listening for the echoes
Of distant songs
That erode the canyon walls
Wandered in search of self

Rhythms and dances
To the rising
Held high in light
To celebrate one’s self

Words and chants
Drumming up the call
An ancient summons
Bringing back.... self
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