"ragamuffin" poems
O LOVE! O LOVE! WHY ARE YOU EVER DEVOID OF LOGIC?
Alexander K Opicho
(Eldoret, Kenya; [email protected])
Mankind in its pathetic folly entice you in a dint of stupor
Knowing not your true colour and texture
Endeavoring to achieve glory in your mastery
With the so limited human capacity
In grey faith that you are a cradle of bliss
But O love! Why are you ever crooked?
Young men and women in strength of their sinews
Toil day and night in ******* of humanity
Praying and whining incantations with the hope for optimal love
Ornamenting their bodies with diamond and bronze
Fibre and silk ornamented to helm of providence
In the foolish quest for love equillibria
But in full stretch of your vice, you impish love
You catapult all away to the shifted goal posts
O love! O love! Why are you ever ruthless?
You hate the learned but you favour the strong
You hate professors but you favour the soldiers
You hate the rich but you favour the agile
You hate the lawyers but you favour the footballers
You hate the pastors but you favour the ruffian
You hate the whites but you favour the Negroes
You hate the groomed but you love the ragamuffin
You hate the chaste but you favour the mistress
O love! O love! Why are you ever illogical?
Love, I revere you for wickedness and irrationality
In all of your history you scored sum *** laude
In the duo as blend of your domain, Look;
You never dwell in a genuine companionship
You like where the couth will interject;
Amidst fornication between married and single ones
Amidst adultery in the triangle of foul compassion
Amidst miscegenation between black and white
Amidst infatuation between the whole and the lame
Amidst conjugal appetite between the old and the young
Amidst concupiscence between house master and houshelp
Amidst immorality of married master over the wallowing servant
Amidst libidos between literate teacher unto the peasant pupil
Amidst disordered passion among the sly lesbians
Amidst impious ********** among the suave gays
O love! O love! You are the most wicked force!
Love I am told; your colour is red
You may be red or you may not be red
But all in all, you deserve poetical veneration
For your herculean ability to bend the most wise;
In your force you made sagacious Shakespeare to bend
In your force you made Princes Diana to bend and bend
Bending downwardly stooping for Afawoyed the moor,
In your stupefying dint you made Napoleon de Bonaparte
To bend and bend downwardly stooping for Josephine
Josephine a famed she-Casanova in the gone Paris
Among the then humanity and the then animality,
In your impairing machinery you set sons on their fathers
In the roman empire of Antony and Ceaser
In the scramble for Cleopatra, the Egyptian queen
Beauty of her aquiline nose heavily hovered perhaps
In the eyes of the Roman beholders
The father and the son only to sent the empire
To the love forlorn smithereens!
Dec 3, 2013
Dec 3, 2013 at 5:08 AM UTC
Nowadays, I don't even write nearly as much as I used to. Not for the reason that I don't want to, but I just have so much to say. By the time I get it written down on paper I find myself blank. Grasping for straws with nothing meaningful to say. I've been so caught up with life & all it's let downs that I never sit to actually write them out. Yet, here I am 10 PM at night on my couch, writing.
I am pondering the meaning of my existence. Wondering, does God have a plan for my life, does He even hear my prayers? I'm quite positive I am not the only one who lays up at night thinking these thoughts.
However, I know one thing is for certain. I wasn't put on Earth to get the extravagant house or even the nicest & fastest car. Those are merely toys that break down & have to be fixed every now & again. Kinda like our lives.
We head down a path that seems to be great, then we get there & realize it wasn't at all how we pictured it. See that's what scares me the most. Having got so far into life, but still have yet to get anywhere meaningful.
After all, that's what we're intentionally striving & searching for is meaning. If we weren't, then why try so hard at school or working to get the next BIG promotion. Reminds me of the story in Solomon (which I have yet to fully read.) It explains that he had it ALL yet in the end he says, "it's ALL just meaningless, meaningless."
Which leads me to ask, where should we go from here?
Nov 15, 2016
Nov 15, 2016 at 6:27 PM UTC
There's always a beginning
There'll always be an end
And no matter how you play your cards
You won't see round the bend.
For tomorrow is another day
The morning sun will shine
And the layer of potentialities
Is arrayed for yours and mine.
In looking back a long time
A little boy in jeans,
Check shirt on a pushbike
Amid the in betweens.
Nothing really mattered,
Each day came and went
and before the realization dawned
The infancy was spent.
Mother died of cancer
The agony in eyes
Just 43 years of age
In alcoholic lies.
The Old Man was likewise
Collapsing in my arms
He passed away at 43.
Evaporated charms.
Adolescence came and went
Forced to join the race
Of madness in the unknown
The world's a violent place.
Decision ****** upon in spades
Cut and ****** in life
It's Papua or Vietnam
Instead, I took a wife .
Disaster in the making
A sidestep in the way
I left the complication there
And coldly strode away.
Changed the whole complexion
Altered how it planned
Ended up with knapsack on
Afresh in New Zealand.
Strangely how it re-aligns
The order falls in place
Confusion dissipates to let
What clear defined, creates.
Somewhere I turned the corner
Took it all in hand
Built an actuality
Of promise in this land.
Pride and hard ambition,
defy the odds and graft.
Visualize a rainbow
From inspiration's craft.
Build it with your own two hands
With sweat upon your brow
And know, within your very depth
You're on the right path now.
Lady luck was with me
Somewhere along the way
I found myself a sweetheart
In chance creation's way
Then ragamuffin boychilds
Scrapping on the rug,
Engendered that which matters
In life's eternal shrug.
You touch upon the beauty
You taste the honeyed wine,
You walk on fields of flowers
In the nectar of your time.
Tenderness and kindness
Essential to the mix
Should you wish to be of value
In the blended world you fix.
Some you win, some you lose
Sometimes you just laugh
For as the years meander
There's humor in the task....
And a gentle satisfaction
In the way it all pans through
And in my eighty year reflection
I'll just throw a smile to you.
[email protected]
Mar 9, 2025
Mar 9, 2025 at 5:00 PM UTC
Weird in his outfits of a late ragamuffin
Reflecting strength of character and soul toughness
Contrasted by dreadlocks on his pykitonic head
Giving him a look of an African amorous ogre,
In the tough stunt for *** with a tectonic girl,
Veneered by mastery of his pen and keyboard
Following after his *** starved ancestor
The muzhik; Vladimir Nabokov the ****** lover,
Swimming in enviable freedom to *********
Afro-English words in his road to the burning church
That barely roasts the peasants for tribal reasons,
A ****** ground for Mochama’s humour
That will hold you glued and captive to the pages
Until the he goat of Abagusii goes through
The second round of its ****** act
Basically forming education for Smitta
The smitten rock of African literature.
Jun 13, 2014
Jun 13, 2014 at 6:11 AM UTC
Dear Abba,
To spiritually photoshop, or not to spiritually photoshop: that is a recurring question. I’ve gotten pretty good at cropping and resizing to keep an impressive façade, but the emptiness behind it is the telling thing, telling me that something about the life I’m living is off the tracks. I’m not the biggest fan of mirrors but I realize they do serve a purpose: showing me the reality, the real me. I’m a ragamuffin, always have been, and yet You love me, the real me. Amazing.
Aug 1, 2016
Aug 1, 2016 at 2:16 AM UTC
The frumpy ragamuffin is discombobulated
And throws together an out fit
She dawns a fur coat in the middle of July
And begins to eat Alpo
She exfoliates her feet with a cheese grater
The top notch tuba player with a hook for a hand suffers from bed sores and an over active pituitary gland
I ask him what the difference is between reasons and excuses
He seems to be dancing around the question
But answers in a round about way
Implying that one is organic and natural while the other is genetically modified and man made
It's zero hour
As I look at the broken coo coo clocks
And the rainbow colored rocks
The ragamuffin presumptuously tells me that no one benefits from doubt
Then calls my friend a bed wetter
And tells us she must go to feed her Venus flytraps
She storms back towards her laboratory
I wonder what she could possibly do in there
I'm dying to know
I'm on the edge of my seat
With one foot in the grave
The tuba player returns wrapped in an electric blanket
He tells us he's just suffered from sleep paralysis
"It's a dead zone, can't get a signal"
He goes on to say that blind faith is is a stepping stone to the truth
A game of William Tell, a stab in the dark
A round of Blind man's bluff with Marco Polo
Testing the waters is a building block of wisdom
And a clean bill of health is corner stone of a happy life
That you have to pay for out of pocket when playing the field
And we are the choices we've made incarnate
Now, the ragamuffin and the tuba player come once more
To tell us the mind is as incorruptible as the soul
But the body will bow to time and wither away
They then walk backwards, back to where ever they came
Jun 8, 2014
Jun 8, 2014 at 8:52 PM UTC
By: Cedric McClester
Lindsey Graham should be ashamed
For saying Trump’s unfairly blamed
In this inquiry, as he’s claimed
Though to him it’s all the same
Lindsey’s Trump’s favorite acolyte
Pretending everything’s alright
But what’s done in the dark of night
Will come out in the daylight
Linsey Graham’s now full of stuffing
See these days he doesn’t stand for nothing
When he criticized Trump, was he bluffing?
Like your average ragamuffin
Lindsey Graham once had some pride
Now he doesn’t, but you decide
Should he be reelected or denied
When good judgement is applied
Graham’s not who he used to be
And that’s plain enough to see
So if he’d get up off his knee
Maybe then he would be free
But Lindsey does like his golf
Ask Guiliani, as in Rudolph
Who has bitten more than he can chew off
So now we view him as screw-off
Lindsey Graham has gone crackers
Just the same as most Trump backers
And I guess that directly factors
In the thoughts of his detractors
He’s clearly not the senator
That he used to be before
An idiosyncrasy we can’t ignore
Let me stop now, although there's more
Cedric McClester, Copyright © 2019. All rights reserved.
Oct 23, 2019
Oct 23, 2019 at 4:45 PM UTC
Time eats away my truth
I have let the world shape and do its bending
times have come where I can try my own mending
afraid I am at my own work, how it falls so far
from the original, from what I was, is the never ending?
Painful fire heals me
my work, my currency, build it up for the last exchange
this I must, this I need, it says so in the Book right?
what else I do if not thinking of my long-range?
fear are my sights they help choose my end aim
neat and tidy this path of mine, hard is this change
A healthy hospital
come anew have I, to find true church meaning
having seen my own dark makes it light all brighter
rest I find at the end of my endless demeaning
people too healthy to know of sickness, come here not
they keep trying, ever in search of their false cleaning
I not what I be
angle I have not become since that day’s encounter
no longer feeling bad over my good, over what I am
Jesus put His place in my pieces all are on His counter
Grace has turned my life into a second chance, again
Simply turning around was enough for that encounter
I have let the world shape and do its bending
But in His loving arms will be grace’s mending
Based off ‘the Ragamuffin Gospel’
Nov 27, 2011
Nov 27, 2011 at 10:29 PM UTC
The hardest way
It came to my head,
If a linchpin doesn't fit
The axle,
It is as good as dead!
An honest man
Amidst many a ragamuffin
Is just like one the last nail
Is hit on whose coffin!
Jul 28, 2016
Jul 28, 2016 at 10:15 AM UTC
sometimes I wish to be a kid again
Jesus was simpler during that time
for now I see we made a mess of Him
trying we are to place human limits
sometimes we seek to win God’s favor
because we feel bad about feeling good
thinking too much about it lead us away
from receiving it like candy to a child
someones are not transfigured right away
we want God to work on our terms
yet we can’t do that our very selves
our ideal of failure is God taking His time
someones push God away with science
when it should only bring child’s wonder
madly we use His words as weapons
sadly this show we’re missing the point
someday we will discover God’s un-shallowness
then we can stop trying to dazzle Him
and also figure out gifts to be gifts
determined not by personal virtue
someday we will accept His grace
not just in theory but in practice
like an unself-conscious child
taking what is given freely
sometimes I wish someones to be a kid again
Based off ‘the Ragamuffin Gospel’
Dec 5, 2011
Dec 5, 2011 at 4:41 AM UTC
called we are back into God’s loving arms
therefor let us rejoice for His incredible longing
go fast to the Father, never will He say no
the King of kings waits for us, why the prolonging?
you keep in the house of sin, God’s only foe
truth you do say when you tell of all the wrong
but truth you forgot of the new life that comes free
do you not feel the amazement of this deep grace?
forgiveness comes ever, better than wishes of three
please take Him up! Don’t think you missed space
To you my church filled, going friend, GET REAL!
you **** like the rest of us here, no more, no less
thinking you have done all there is to be saved
no you fool! Salvation is not a game of chess
realize that state your in, we’re ALL depraved
do not worry comrade, your fear may seem great
take your funk of death, life and world’s end
place it in the Lord’s deep hands, He’ll take it
but I must warn you, the love that you’ve penned
cannot stay still, or measured, even with your wit
I tell you all, grace is ever more and more abounding
it leads us to know our true sin filled lives
but that’s not all! There is more, often left out
it points to the mercy of human’s chosen strife
this crazy love, just given without a doubt
Jesus' death made us free from our harms
called again we are back into His loving arms
Based off ‘the Ragamuffin Gospel’
Dec 5, 2011
Dec 5, 2011 at 3:55 AM UTC
He lived in a fine old country house
Befitting a man of means,
With everything a Victorian Squire
Could aspire to, in his dreams.
He owned four-fifths of a colliery
In the days when coal was gold,
And topped that up with a Brewery,
But the mean old man was cold.
For Benjamin John Fortescue ruled
His house like a would-be Earl,
His son had never felt welcome there
Since he’d married a country girl,
The mother had gone some years before
Who protected, in his youth,
But now, the **** of his father’s whims
The lad found out the truth.
He treated them like the servant class
Expected to fetch and bring,
But paid a pittance to keep them there,
His purse on a miser’s string,
‘I keep a fine roof over your heads
And you eat each day for free,’
He’d say, whenever they asked for gilt,
‘What more do you want from me?’
Their toddler Tim wore cast-off clothes
And was made to play outside,
‘I don’t want a ragamuffin’s mess,’
He’d say, till the mother cried.
‘You don’t seem to love your grandson,’ said
His son, his head in a whirl,
‘I would if he had some parentage,
But not from some country girl.’
As time went on there was something wrong
For the father suffered fits,
At first it would start with a seizure,
He would seem to lose his wits.
He’d lie for days in a sort of haze
And would scarcely draw a breath,
And Caroline would look hard it him,
‘It’s as if he’s caught in death!’
It happened enough to make him plan
Should the doctor be deceived,
‘I don’t want the fools to bury me
Alive, so I’m not retrieved.’
He bought a coffin with space inside
And a tube, out to the air,
With a little bell he could ring as well
If he found himself in there.
‘Be sure to follow instructions if
You think that I am dead,
Affix the bell to the tube as well
With a cord down to my head,
Then check the grave for a week or more
To see if the bell should ring,
Then hurry to dig me up, and I
Will give you anything.’
The day came that on the seventh fit
They could swear that he was dead,
‘There isn’t even a breath of air
And his eyes are up in his head.’
Three doctors came, and they all concurred
That his life was now extinct,
‘It had to happen,’ the couple heard,
‘He’s been living on the brink.’
They laid him out in his coffin, and
They fitted the tube to breathe,
Attached the bell, and the cord as well
Before they rose to leave,
But Timothy stayed to play that day
As he did, down in the Dell,
And a week went by till his mother cried:
‘Where did he get that bell?’
David Lewis Paget
Apr 5, 2015
Apr 5, 2015 at 8:01 AM UTC
Should wedding bells chime in a dream you have, I pray the man, miming affection near the altar is not me. I am ragamuffin; a butcher with no cleaver in his shadow,
instead a bouquet: Clenched in my silhouetted hand flowers turn into torch. I burn as a filament in a bulb half-expired. I have smoked through my pocket money in order
to scatter cremated angels from my throat. I am cloaked by anguish my grief poorly sheathed a tattered nerve. I have only learned how to praise darkness.
Light is painful as it shimmers against frost: grass gleams in steady growth discolored
scars healing. Here I am letting out a blood-letter addressed to you, wondering if I send a snip of my own vein will it remind you how one missing piece from a whole can forfeit the future. All any future is: a motion into the next moment, its pending indecision none can envision. We can’t help but revise malleable pasts. Memories flux rippling water and enough light changes it’s refraction with each new ripple. I cannot be a lover if love is not static humming at least from its hymnal.
I write this letter in calligraphy mourning, like most poets do – rending heart rendering this broken universe – with bone and feathered quill. This feather is from my wing, the pair fallible love clipped the first chance you took to kiss my darkness.
I’m charting learning a path to winter in an opposite sky:
one only I can fly.
Feb 17, 2017
Feb 17, 2017 at 2:36 PM UTC
He came
indeed He walked this earth, the thing He made
for a time, long enough to comfort those afraid
and those with disease saw the light in Him
and those with power saw not a worth prim
that’s not all He came to fix, no there was more
He saw
the bending of holy minds under worldly power
turning worship into insurance with hearts of cower
leaders condemning the good for breaking the bad
not know Jesus’ mission of love or His big dad
believing He had turned into their greatest chore
He showed
hot too often our dearest works are for human reason
that we may gain for our selves, God’s highest treason
telling so, of the sick not healthy in need of help
going to anyone, anytime on just the sound of a yelp
healing deeper to the heart, past the outward sore
He fixed
though sinners He dined with, ***** He loved with
cutting down any and all social class with grace’s scythe
freeing the religious slaves, guiding them along the way
to those who trust Him, the offer is still good today
not caring when you choose to come in His door
He loved
indeed He walked the earth, the thing He made
with untold love, He made sin’s biggest trade
Based off ‘the Ragamuffin Gospel’
Dec 5, 2011
Dec 5, 2011 at 2:27 AM UTC
I take it that a spray of Sun occults your face,
like watching in a squalid cinema, something a slapstick would
conjure a stylistically dumb image, or the prattle of
bunkum hubbub drowning loudspeakers in plazas.
You know there is a part of you that goes missing
every time you hear me pass carefully under the care
of toppled light, and there is a part of me that engages
the dark in this straining mutiny. This is such a troubled time
on the hardline; a martinet on the other cheapened end
of a totaled horizon hollering at gentrified space, eyes sternly
fixed on the mattress, conspicuous in urbane manner, something
shadows bade with hands, lifts up all the ragamuffin days:
to capture you in such moment, such oneness, of no complication,
like a clean Yamazaki on the house, or a metropolitan district
augured with rubicund crisscrosses, streets sidereal in measures,
an aggressive ********** at the end of the curb, the spanked curve
of the mordant asphalt, and the rise of body heat from yesterday’s swelter;
something only I could have thought of in white thighs of little ladies
and peering birds for collarbones: look at this, maddened, retaining
nothing but age.
Feb 2, 2016
Feb 2, 2016 at 9:34 PM UTC
from the doctor's lightsome bed
after being examined in the bone
to my side of the lenient road
we are in the heat
of assault.
no dead lampposts
no macabre of alleys
harbinger dampened silence.
only this thing of us now
deconstructed to you
and i with no relevance
believing nothing but the
instantaneous rupture
of any thrown word
in the neighborhood of parks.
slam on the dashboard
and the groan of the engine:
hurtling at speeds faster
than any ******
across the knobby knee tawny
slivered burgeoning words
escape compartments ajar
objects unkempt
dissipating on the svelte ragamuffin
linen, faded masquerades of feeling
trying to destroy the riddle
lunging with uproarious wordlessness
like a den of lions set loose
here speeding 110 kilometers
in arbitrary roads finding each other
again, this time
making furious love.
Oct 31, 2015
Oct 31, 2015 at 2:41 AM UTC
tonight the moon hides itself
shly peeking out
from behind ragamuffin grey clouds
the stars are a'twinkle, twinkle
on indigo blankets
clouds dash to and fro
i gaze upon the heavens
and briefly wonder
if others elswhere also gaze
and ponder about the nature
of the sky
and the nighttime flying by
or do they sigh and
give no thought
to why the moon
is shy
Apr 1, 2016
Apr 1, 2016 at 8:52 AM UTC
the ghosts of many days.
here are the many eyes insidiously cutting through insides, gutting them out of their poisons and their moribund steps, assuaging none.
before the step was the flesh,
and before flesh was the emptiness,
keen with its marble eyes
like sizing down an already
thwarted opponent.
these pallid-faced buildings
peer through the sleepless concrete
like fathers searching for children.
like crows scavenging for
truths behind myriad lies of death.
here comes the marauder thieving
again, the gutter's chagrin.
underneath stirs the deathly
**** of rats, the deep inset
of petrichor hiding behind
the overcast of a death foretold.
streets continue to emblazon
their nameless turns:
George Street bayoneting through
Pitt as a ragamuffin dog slithers
past Castlereagh, scrounging for
bones with forgotten pains.
the ghosts of many days
weaving the loom of sky
tender with sound of labyrinthine
flapping through the hollow
of dawn as my fingers
clash in battle, rearing this nailed triumph.
apparitions tracking me down,
chasing me with vivid light
through uneventful avenues
forking without meaning
past the hammered cinders,
away from the frozen barricades
in stiffening cold,
ghosts of many days
coming back with unprompted tongues
and their pertinacious susurrus.
Sep 26, 2015
Sep 26, 2015 at 12:15 AM UTC
This ragamuffin schleps with leaden gait
weighted down like Atlas of yore
like that Greek titan upon massive shoulders
the worldly wide web he wore
if a corporeal being incarnate,
would be friended on social networks fig ure
especially mythological creations exiled,
reviled and sent to river elba shore
the lowest watermark of Napoleon,
and one exemplifying the je nais say quor
my life and hard times as if concocted
from mind of Charles Dickens or
another deft writer with an abysmally dim,
groveling vagabond less o more
who experienced rejection
at every turn muttering to join canine korps
wonder why in this tar nation,
he got saddled with prestigious title of warrior
truth be told suffered psychological
stress disorders at veep fog hatted
Alberts’ epistemological environmental
global germinal garrulousness galore,
whose hoped friendship glued, clinched,
billed as storied AA Milne’s eyore
whose jarring inscrutably heavy
glum footsteps exerted downtrodden chore
impressing mental state with angst,
whence Hades and river Styx did allure!
Jun 6, 2018
Jun 6, 2018 at 9:00 PM UTC
Only scarecrows crow about the things they
think they know about
while the ragamuffin rooks keeps schtum.
I played in the arcades as the ghost train rolled away
and the one armed bandits clapped their hands on
the pier of my holiday.
these are the nightmares we can't run from
the fears that we all face
the men of straw that we become and
the memory we erase.
Long after,
when the crops have gone
and the frost lays on the naked
earth the scarecrow still
lives on.
May 9, 2017
May 9, 2017 at 11:55 AM UTC
this ragamuffin schleps with a leaden gait weighted down like Atlas of yore
like that Greek titan upon massive shoulders the worldly wide web he wore
if a corporeal being incarnate, would be friended on social networks fig ure
especially mythological creations exiled, reviled and sent to river elba shore
the lowest watermark of napoleon and one exemplifying the je nais say quor
my life and hard times as if concocted from thee mind of Charles Dickens or
another deft writer with an abysmally dim, groveling vagabond less o more
who experienced rejection at every turn muttering to join the canine korps
wonder why in this tar nation he got saddled with prestigious title of war ior
truth be told suffered psychological stress disorders at veep fat alberts’ gore
whose hoped for friendship glued, clinched, billed as storied AA Milne’s eyore
whose jarring inscrutably heavy glum footsteps exerted downtrodden chore
impressing mental state with angst, whence Hades and river Styx did allure!
Jun 2, 2017
Jun 2, 2017 at 8:54 AM UTC
*
Circumstance-severed ties
Shine like fugazi
Labor under lies
Instead of being, set free
Smothered in shadow
Beneath that Giving Tree
Struggling to let go
The aftermath of deceit
Falling for the untrue
Failing my destiny
Calling out for proof
Smoke-signaling my sanity
*
Jul 5, 2021
Jul 5, 2021 at 6:33 AM UTC