"gravediggers" poems
OUR POVERTY HAS COLOUR
Alexander K Opicho
(Eldoret, Kenya; [email protected])
Most illusive and elusive
Like the devils of Congo forest
Is the impish poverty
Permeating all seals with vicious wily
Into the midst of callous humanity
Biting country men and country women
With carnivorous dentalities so ruthless
Putting man to a forlorn shame
As the wife looks in desperate flaggerbastation
Putting matriarchal womenfolk to humiliation
As the expectant sire wallow in the askance of looks
Condemning communities to status ad absurdum initio
Thinning man from man, culling woman from woman
Eating flesh by flesh social koprpers of man
Eating the native flesh in the farms of Brazil
Tearing the ***** steak into ghetto lacerations of Chicago
Whizzling sombre morning tunes to the Zulus in the black tundra
Cementing pale casted clusters for the Patels of India
Commanding suave drills to poor (wo) menfolk; left! Left! Left! –abouuuuturn!
With its accomplice Mr. Hunger son of starvation, they both command drills
For black factory workers, Maids and gravediggers to dance
Watchmen, thieves and prostitutes to match
In the hinterland of Africa all the riff-raff in deep despair
Dance in a tandem to the irritating drills of the duo;
You come on! Left! Right! Left! Right!—fowaaard match!
Backward match! Left! Right! Left! Right! Sharpp uuuuuuuturn!
The duo communiqué; Go home and wait for your pay announcement.
Surely; what colour is our poverty?
Nov 29, 2013
Nov 29, 2013 at 11:13 AM UTC
The reapers flock
To the edge of the dock
At the glitch in the glock
On the gravediggers clock
Aug 8, 2018
Aug 8, 2018 at 5:53 PM UTC
Five months on the front
Between Arras and Albert
Both sides hunt
For the other
Redcoats and Frogs side by side
Putting away their hate
Both filled with pride
To fight
Drain the Fritz of their resources
Push them back as far as they could
But the enemy observes
And are waiting
Huge frontal attack, approached on foot
Ordered by General Haig
The Germans stayed put
And killed from afar
July 1st was day one
November 18th was the last
When all the guns
Were dead
It was the bloodiest battle anyone saw
Over one million deceased
No mortal law
Ruled here
13 Kilometers were gained
Using tanks and heavy gear
Reserves were drained
Yet no one cared
Friends, fathers, husbands, brothers,
Fought and lost their lives
For the children, sisters, wives and mothers
Who were left behind
Only gravediggers make money here
Jan 24, 2014
Jan 24, 2014 at 12:28 AM UTC
“Woman does not emerge from man’s ribs. Not ever. It’s he who emerges from her womb.” Nizar Qabbani.
1. In the beginning
God asked himself a question and only made half the answer.
The Bible says
That when the Lord realised the world needed a woman
He searched through man, took a rib, and made her.
2. Eve, all apple and velvet.
I know you didn’t come kicking and screaming.
You, grafted onto man like a prize fruit
then cooked up like a red wine sauce all acid and hiss.
After the Bible took away the one thing it thought you were good for in the first place
it had you hold hands with the devil,
all flirtation and fashion,
made you sound like your body was empty of anything else.
Eve,
Mother of mothers.
Carved yourself from the rubble the same way David pulled himself from the stone.
Don’t tell me a woman is ever a safe place to rest.
Don’t think Eve ever let herself be an after thought.
3. On the third day
before the flood and the fire and the rubble,
God made himself a garden and called it Eden.
Or Eve.
Or something.
He stopped, closed his eyes and finally smiled because at last he had made something holier than himself.
He tried every fruit, spat the seeds like broken teeth.
Over the next few nights Eve kissed her life into Adam’s ribs,
told him it was
all good.
When The Lord finally moulded Adam from the clay of the garden, the wind whispered and knew.
4. People say that a great woman is just like a fine wine - full bodied and getting better with age.
Tell that to your mother.
Tell that to every woman who has ever fought for a cause.
A woman’s blood is worth so much more than communion but men just love a commodity.
5. I close my eyes and I am standing in a garden.
Her name is Eve:
her hands are ripe fruit;
head a forest fire;
body sinking under the weight of a great flood.
I say: “Eve how do I think myself into forest?
Will you show me how to become forest fire? All skin and bones and burning map.
You perfect absolute.”
6. So I turn back. Pull her name from my ribs like I was the first and I came from her.
And then my hands, gentle gravediggers.
And later I looked up and there was nothing except earth and light and earth and light and her
and it was over again.
So I sat down. Took a breath - the first real breath, hands shaking like the corners of pages.
7. I looked for the first time and I could see for miles.
I could see for miles.
Oct 5, 2014
Oct 5, 2014 at 5:22 AM UTC
Each swing
of the
pendulum
brings closer
the gravediggers pit.
Oct 30, 2012
Oct 30, 2012 at 8:58 AM UTC
Today you saved an earthworm
stranded by the rain.
You picked banana strings
from my soggy cereal,
and told the ducks by a frozen lake
not to worry, Spring’s sun
was dawning soon.
Today you were a hero.
You smiled upon waking,
worried I let my limbs go
numb and tingly, knowing
I wanted you to sleep,
and I just smiled—
I wouldn’t wake you
for the world.
Today, you are a hero,
because you buried love.
Today I’ll be a hero too
digging right beside you.
So today we are heroes,
fighting for our hearts
bracing for the hurt
barely breathing
passed the dirt.
Heroes.
May 3, 2011
May 3, 2011 at 10:41 AM UTC
The country lost their beauty queen
The same day passed the Prince of Pleasure
Televisions will capture the red eyes of gravediggers
And the dried
The prunes and the oppressed
Smoking cigarette butts down to the ground
Mutiny will be on layaway
Shooting in streets and dying local band posters
The road lion growls
Police stay home, your brothers in arms will die.
So it goes. How useful is that?
Up came the sun, down went the stars.
The water calmed still, and loud were the cars.
English Translators dance in Russian studios.
Loudspeakers play the silent songs nobody knows.
The woman in the yellow beaded necklace plays with her silver rings rolling across her white fingers.
Wafting down the black nighttime cool air you can hear the rhythm choir of a thousand black children
singers.
That’s my town.
Isn’t great.
I’ll show you the strangest kid I know.
Purple, red, fast and yellow.
Feb 28, 2012
Feb 28, 2012 at 5:49 PM UTC
When someone works as a gravedigger, He never gets scared anytime Simply because his heart is made of iron Although he is a human being anytime ... Digging graves is not any work ,but It's a work to those who make it as a career To themselves and to their families anytime ... Dead people need gravediggers to bury them,so They get permanent houses for themselves ... Death is inevitable anytime , Then a suitable tomb must be ready For the dead people anytime ............. Without gravediggers,then There will be no tombs for the dead ...
Mar 11, 2015
Mar 11, 2015 at 8:22 AM UTC
there was a girl sitting at my grave in the middle of the woods at night
she looked like she was born to live under the moonlight
I came up from behind and told her that it's alright, to dance on my grave
'cause I'd rather laugh about all those times we were told to behave
she asked me how I died, said that the train rider wanted me dead
he had an empty dollar figure reward on my head
I turned around and showed her the knife in my back
came around full circle and said, let's never look back
'cause I think too many people say that and never mean it
yet for some reason I believe I mean it when I'm looking at you
'cuse I think about all those times, I told my gravediggers to beat it
yet somehow when you stomp on my grave, I feel new
it's why I came out from underneath my tombstone
'cause I felt something that reminded me of home
it was nothing more than a vibration
a sound I was within, where I've always felt alone
sorry if my boney hands frightened you
as they clawed their way up from underneath the dirt
sorry if my dangling eye ***** made you feel uneasy
I was only trying to flirt
she told me that she thought she knew me
never saying a word
and when she opened her mouth
out came a blackbird
as if to say
hey
I think I get you
as if to say
hey
I'm grey too
yea the black of the black bird clashed so beautifully
against her white teeth
I think I knew that this girl most definitely
came from that place beneath
that place which seemed at first like Hell
a place that seemed so far away yet so close
a place that feels
as familiar as the haunting of a ghost
yea this girl was braver than those I knew most
braver than the Devil
braver than Jesus Christs most daring boast
when he died on the cross
and said it was God who he loved most
yea, she started laughing
yea, we were dancing
we were dancing on our grave
laughing about all the times we were told to behave
Jul 30, 2013
Jul 30, 2013 at 7:33 PM UTC
I almost slit my pulmonary artery
and I almost tasted bleak ** drops.
But I escaped the morticioner's needle
I refuse to have my eyes sewn closed
and my lips clasped tight.
Freedom only comes by the light of ultrasounds and x rays.
I can see now
better than before.
And it's all thanks to the gravediggers
who replaced the phlamalderhide
with breastmilk.
Aug 11, 2013
Aug 11, 2013 at 3:57 PM UTC
Bored living in the tombs
Those turned to names of cities
Where we live and visit until
Too many of them are carved on stones
Openly standing books
Echoing our names on the bills
Sent by devil or in Dave's name sometimes
Street signs, silent police?
Scary if you know they were those
Underground names now holding posters
Directing you to your tomb home
Until a square-meter palace is sold to you
These revolutionary thinking reformers
Who called themselves gravediggers
All names have to be digged out now 'cause
They are running short of lands to continue
Urbanization. Hear what they say:
You could die eternally but this cemetery
Can only be used for 70 years, legally
Your cinerary caskets will be displayed
In sky-high buildings, closer to the heavens
Lucky if yours is made of sandalwood
Carved and painted as Red Mansion where
You could have wonder-ful dreams
Your friends and enemies could smell
The phosphorous glowing in the wind
Feb 17, 2016
Feb 17, 2016
Feb 17, 2016 at 1:58 AM UTC
the grave diggers son
rises before the dawn
out into the cold morning
out into the vast fields of the dead
this is not the future he saw
for himself
a farmer of the macabre
he plants them
firmly underground
but nothing grows
nothing good comes of it
this vast architecture of finality
this field of mourning and tears
this cold place of death
a place that others would rather forget
yet they build miles of marble
and years of art
in this quiet foreboding place
afraid if we dont honor the power
that can ****** the
life from us at any time
then perhaps it will come seeking vengeance
the gravediggers son
his hands ache from all the death he must
touch
from all the loss he sees and feels
this is not the life for me
he swears to himself in a whisper
as he has every day for thirty years
i will escape this place
dont plant me in the fields of the dead
May 5, 2013
May 5, 2013 at 6:39 AM UTC
nine … dark angels to herald my passing,
eight … lost souls to guide my spirit,
seven … robed priests to intone my story,
six … pallbearers to shoulder my coffin,
five … old crones to wail and moan,
four … gravediggers to prepare my tomb,
three … black cats to ward off evil,
two … black crows my spirit to bear,
one heart broken: love unbound …
Dec 22, 2012
Dec 22, 2012 at 12:12 PM UTC
I cast my words away like children cast stones over dark waters on a summer's sunset soon faded.
Torn between a direction none with many promises of hope but surely chaos in hand with devil's grip.
One is never good enough and twelve is but a taste of a speeding train soon to derail.
My message is a as murky as the air that swirls in his barroom of empty ness I call my existence.
Tortured genius and drunken buffoon often share drinks of a sandy nature in an oasis of torment.
Beaten in thought and charred in reason I'm seldom at home in this crowd.
Stones that skip often no matter the distance sink into the dark waters
of empty ness.
We are moments shared in logic of other's shattered in fragments.
No attempt seems to clam my efforts only drown my hope.
It's written upon the page will you ask or simply ignore ramblings in
a staged tragedy. I seldom seem real.
Stones were once part of boulders aborted by mountains.
So after the fall what is left but fragments?
Maybe I'll pull it together if only for a moment.
I'm slipping in sanity and drowning in the depth of a hollow existence mocked by my own words
like a prisoner left too long within the hole.
I shout only for my voice's comfort.
To long I've rambled I've begun to sink.
A sunset's embrace is but a epitaph of envy in a gravediggers diary and I am but a blank page.
Nov 20, 2011
Nov 20, 2011 at 2:28 PM UTC
This is our first date
I didn't know where to take you
So I took you to see my grandma
She was always the life of the party
Funny how life works sometimes
I have been planting flowers around her grave
Because the gravediggers don't quite understand how much she was worth
The man that went to war and came back without his legs can't come see her because their only child is a good for nothing
Yes I'm talking about my father
He tried his best but something in him just didn't click
The only thing he could think of money and how wet he could get his ****
If this isn't coming right
Let me try again
Your hair reminds me of the flowing of our bodies when we are intertwined
Skeleton bones will be undug to walk amongst us again
Your smile reminds me of hers and oh god do I feel so warm
Being up on this hill with you
Fingers laced in one another
Your blue eyes beaming at how beautiful this meadow is
I hope that I can lay here with you
May 31, 2016
May 31, 2016 at 4:39 PM UTC
it is to the crossroad i bid you
that forbidding place
where i have come to await the coming day
where i take food and wine
ease my weariness
rest my bones
there at the crossroad
the drumbeat of war once shook the earth
and the choirs of the chosen
made dizzying heights from
stone that inspired the soul
and a dry wasteland of fertile field
there in the lightly falling snow
in the passing of good and true
in the final breaths of brave and kind
good men have passed to shadow
that others should rise to take
up their swords
i linger here
i know not why
the light snow has given way to driving storm
and while warm shelter lay near at hand
i only draw thin veil of cloth to my shoulder to fend off
the bitter wind
why linger at this cold unforgiving place
at this unbound and and unblessed
crows haunt
where the cold country priest
counts his handful of silver
and it is the gravedigger who
ponders the true song of the soul
for the true saints
are the ones who knew the
path leads not to riches
but to peace
that brotherhood and love
are far more precious than jewels
i have waited for such men
i have hoped to be a student of such nobility
i think i have not have had the privilege
and will not till i enter the gates of the kingdom
but i linger here at the crossroads
suffer the price to pay
suffer the crucible of soul
for to pass the gates
you must be of known mettle
for once he comes
i shall be there to paint the swirls of smoke
and the banners and flags
i shall be at the hill
waiting to meet him
with my pen
i echo that question
i have sat that waiting
have buried that treasure
and seen the handiwork
of artisans and seekers
know the presence
but i as yet do not understand
i think perhaps
that a master of tongues
or a scribe of the sky
could not decipher the simplest word
after even a thousand thousand years
i shall wait here
at my crossroads
content with my food and wine
content with this light snow
and the company of the gravediggers song
of the soul
Sep 26, 2013
Sep 26, 2013 at 9:37 PM UTC
(a conversational tone, because I'm sick of being mature)
I have resorted to living under the four gray walls and ceiling
because even though this room still reminds me of you,
It reminds me of a lot of things.
therefore, this room isn't primarily of your memory...
****
Last year around this time I'm sure you were still prodding around
I revisited the place I was on my birthday when I got a text from you
you said I was being an attention *****
but then you proceeded to ask to come over
you were weird.
the field of the festival
where we escaped for a second to breath
the graveyard we went to
and there were two headstones, side by side
that had my name, yours
we laughed about it,
you joking that we were going to burn each other out so much
that the gravediggers dug our ditches early
i drive past your place all the **** time
how is that good for my mental health?
mental health
I've been thinking about my mental health a lot lately
it shouldn't be healthy that after almost two years
i'm still hurt by you
my friends don't say i'm crazy
but i see it in their eyes
the shallow glances they give each other
i know i'm losing it;
one simple push away from a mental breakdown
lol, it's coming
once i fall, i'll fall back to you
who knows if you'll be there to catch me after all these months of not talking
of you wanting me dead
of me wanting to be
of you finding other lovers
of me not
of me knowing you're out there, that you're in my head
no,
how do i recover from that
when my entire head has been dedicated to the galleria of memorabilia from a lover I can't seem to get over
Feb 28, 2017
Feb 28, 2017 at 10:17 AM UTC
words are weapons
it’s a sad truth
but so are shovels
and gravediggers need words too
the world doesn’t stop beating
children awake to the light
i sit here and listen
to your mood music
and i forget again
Feb 27, 2012
Feb 27, 2012 at 11:16 PM UTC
In Ulzana's Raid,
the Native- and European-American concepts of property
ownership and rights
are incompatible and irresolvable. McIntosh
had no illusions about that. He said hating Apaches for killing
whites
is like hating the desert for having no water.
I suspect the movie's not a good source of anthropological
data
and overlooks the commonalities among human communities
to focus on just a few bold characters
as all art must.
I consider McIntosh fortunate
to have died commensurate with the way he lived his life,
rolling a final cigarette, nothing between him and the desert,
and no gravediggers waiting, jesting, defecating. Also,
he is lucky to have had one last, dispassionate friend
to whom there is nothing left to say, the Chiracahua tracher
Kah-ti-nay.
Last night's performance of Beauty and the Beast
may have been the most victorious, ecstatic, cohesive
moment in our little school's history. Emily was Beauty, a
filament of energy
who doesn't like to be touched and has been known to punch
boys hard. She had memorized her lines until she was hardly
Emily but only Beauty in a blue dress unselfconsciously
hiking up her tights between the Beast's advances.
Is this done in every American town and the world
over so there's no need to feel lost or lonely
ever?
There is no context for a man
outside the platoon or raiding party, home or shop.
When violence comes to the neighborhood,
the hierarchy of communicants will hold or fold
it is then the peace work proves relevant. I noticed McIntosh,
grizzled as he was, accepted the given hierarchy, a raw
lieutenant's orders,
as he did the desert and Apaches, with a shrug and
foreknowledge
of the outcome.
If there's anywhere with no Emily or Beauty
we should bring them such blessings at the point of a
gun. But there is no place without Emily, not
the least-known prison in deepest space as long
as we do not hate or hurt or shun
the Beast.
Aug 10, 2015
Aug 10, 2015 at 6:41 AM UTC
Oh Fools!
The pain, the unheeded advice-
Oh Feste, oh gravediggers, oh Fools!
Hiding behind the garb of jesters,
I hear your truth.
I know the fate sleeping in the riddle.
Alas! Poor Yourick knows it well.
For that which lives must die,
And that which dies has no tongue,
No verbage to warn.
Whilst the kings laugh
At morbid jokes,
The Fool sheds a tear,
For behind all good jests
Is a terrible truth.
Apr 1, 2017
Apr 1, 2017 at 5:55 PM UTC
There are jailbirds who dig holes
to secure an escape
There are gardeners who shape holes
to plant a treescape
There are pirates that make holes
to bury a chest
There are gravediggers who fill holes
to lay souls to rest
There are thieves that drive holes
into banks kept shut
just like lovers (like you)
that leave a hole in my heart
Feb 9, 2022
Feb 9, 2022 at 9:50 PM UTC
Death tolls increase and Gravediggers are wanted Simply because those ugly wars Sweep and reap more innocent souls Here and there ... Life is getting worse and worse Simply because man kills man Anywhere and everywhere ... More graves are needed everyday For those new dead people ... Wars or infighting never stop Here and there For many reasons ... All corpses are still in the streets and Inside those destroyed buildings Here and there .............. Life is unbearable and ugly For many reasons .... There are no more gravediggers Simply because everyone died ... That's our world now ... Where are we ?! _______________________________________________________________
Feb 5, 2015
Feb 5, 2015 at 10:14 AM UTC
Oil
O I L
On your knees and toil
***** little citizens
Drill it from our soil
Trade
TRADE
Paid and displayed
Only in our dollars
Why are you dismayed?
Rules
RULES
Nuclear war tools
Only safe in our hands
Not those other fools
Tension
Attention
Downed "allies" jet
Spilling over borders
The old existential threat
Triggers
TRIGGERS
Billions of figures
Streamlined explosives
BOOM the gravediggers
Presidents
Prime Ministers
Scratch each others backs
With the severed hands
Of poor souls in the barracks
00 00 00 00
The End
Nov 26, 2015
Nov 26, 2015 at 5:20 PM UTC
Lawrence Hall
[email protected]
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
Graveside Service on a Blustery Day
“The old order changeth, yielding place to new”
-Tennyson, Idylls of the King
The widower assisted to his place
Mourners in unaccustomed dresses and suits
A bible, leaflets fluttering in the wind
And gangly teens unsure what they should do
February clouds roiling and boiling
Even the officiant’s words are blown away
Prayers lifted into silence by the wind
They may have fallen by the gravediggers’ tractor
Or were blown through the leaning chain-link fence
Into the deeply darkening Grendel-woods
But still – in back –
a boy and a girl shyly touch hands
Feb 17, 2025
Feb 17, 2025 at 9:08 AM UTC