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Alexander K Opicho Jan 2014
IN DEFENCE OF HOMOSEXUALITY-SCIENTIFIC PERSPECTIVES
Alexander K Opicho
(Eldoret ,Kenya ;aopicho@yahoo.com)

On 13th January 2014 Dr. Wafula Chesoli of Mt Kenya University, at Lodwar campus in the north western part of Kenya published a scathing attack against homosexuality in the Neighbourhood, a daily circulating paper of the River Delta state in Nigeria.Dr Chesoli justified his contumelious position against human homosexuality by basing his stand on the scriptural citations of the Bible. The Bible which  Dr. Chesoli has operationally defined as the word of God in  this article that he entitled Strong holds of Homosexuality ;Biblical Persapectives.Chesoli’s argument has a depth of Biblical groundings, however I beg to differ with him in principle, given the  scientific scintillations on humanity of homosexuality from the recent researches of health education and psychology.
Firstly, I humbly remember that about three years ago I also published an article in the East African standard which harshly condemned social and behavioral position of gay and lesbian marriages. This was when the Anglican archbishop Dr. Eliud Wabukala of Kenya had in a similar tone lambasted the archbishop of Canterbury for suggesting that there was need for the office of the gay Bishop in the Anglican Church. I strongly supported Wabukala in that I even called gay and lesbian behavior as cultic and satanic hence to be condemned with all forms of capital nemesis. Some of the contents of my article in which I condemned homosexuality are here;
Let us support Wabukala stand on gays and morality
(January 13th 2011 at 00:00 GMT; By Alexander Opicho, Eldoret)
Practice of psychology and Christianity operates on a universal principle of unconditional positive regard for all. However, there has been a twist in this convention when media in Kenya at the start of this week carried a story that depicted moral fortitude of Bishop Eliud Wabukala; who has out-rightly dismissed the idea of establishing the office of a gay bishop in the leadership of the Anglican Church. Wabukala has come out boldly on this against the strong currents in support of gay marriages from his superiors in the Church. The efforts by Wabukala befit all manner of felicitation from all of us who believe in morality as a basis of humanity. The basis of gay relationships is legalistic and political. African culture conscientiously discourages a cult of gayism. And in Kenya living as a gay is living in contradiction to the Constitution. These collectively fall in an agreement with basic teachings of Christianity. Gayism, lesbianism, celibacy and trans-species ****** behaviour are admonished by Biblical teachings. Gayism is social deviance that originates from degradation in ****** behavior; it is a state of ****** depravement. Read more at;
http://www.standardmedia.co.ke/?articleID=2000074879&story;_title=-Let-us-support-Wabukala-stand-on-gays-and-morality.­
Little did I know that as I was publishing this article two percent of my friends and my family members are victims of ****** behavioural disability, which we are calling homosexuality in the above juncture. As university teacher in the departments of social sciences where student populations is usually high, I again came to discover sometimes later that ten percent of my students always have disordered ****** or gender conditions. I found these to be substantial revelations that provoked me to carry out both desk research and investigative *** socialization researches into this bamboozling human phenomenon of homosexuality and other related disordered ****** behaviours.
The order of explanation would first require a position which posits that; religions both Christianity and Islam don’t have any intellectual nor social machinery to carry out a socially ameliorative process in relation to disordered gender and ****** behavior in any society. Their approach have been and would still be parochial in the sense that the only outcome to be achieved is prejudice, bigotry and discrimination with full harassment against Christians or Moslems with ****** or gender disability. Thus religion should pave way for other competent social players over this matter.
Dr Chesoli’s Position that the Bible is the word of God and the Quran is the word of Allah and hence those with physiological conditions in contrast to the word of God and Word of Allah are satanic, only to face wrath of God on the judgment day is simply devoid of modern logic. I want to sensitize Dr Chesoli on the fact that not every thing in the Bible is the word of God neither   every thing in the Quran is the word of God otherwise called Allah. To support my position before I just explain scientific position of homosexuality, I want Dr. Chesoli to learn that; 159 psalms in the Bible are poetries of Kind David, Kind David whose leadership was full of Machiavellian tricks just like the current leadership of Yoweri Museven of Uganda. The book of Job is theatrical and poetical literary creation of Moses. But not the word of God. This is so because the land of Uz in which Job lived is pure fiction. All papyrological surveys have never established geographical evidence of this land. The last part of the Bible is made up of 21 epistles or letters of Paul the benjaminite. Paul’s writings display eminence of intellect as a lawyer and a person schooled in the Greek classics of Homer’s Iliad and Odysseus as well as Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex.The idea that the words which Paul wrote was the word of God is not founded ,perhaps the last stage of Jewish casuistry.
Homosexuality has to be understood as lameness or disability like any other animal or human disability. I am aware that Dr. Chesoli belongs to the old school which only appreciated the fact that lameness is limited to physical, mental, eye and hearing impairment.However, this position is now scientifically obsolete. Humanity is now understood to be sometimes a victim of ****** lameness, intellectual lameness, emotional lameness, racial relational lameness and other plethorae of lameness to be uncovered, courtesy of science and research.
Like the condition of ****** disability can be heterosexual disability or homosexual disability. Heterosexual disability can be indicated by misfortunate human ****** conditions like; early *******, erectile disfucntion,oversize *****,undersize *****,frigidity,phobia of opposite ***, oral ***, **** ***,****** appetite for your own child, ****** appetite for your sisters, brothers, uncles or aunts, frigidity, small ******, abnormally big ******,insatiable libido or insatiable appetite for ***.
But on the other  hand  homosexual disability are often indicated in the perverted ****** behavioural positions like male to male *** also known as gay and female to female *** also known as lesbian, or female to male to female to male *** also known as bisexuality. We also have other ****** phenomena like celibacy, voyeurism, *** with non human creatures, *** with inanimate objects, *** with ghosts and *** with spiritual creatures like the one accounted in the Bible between Mary the mother of Jesus and an Angel Known as Gabriel. There is also *** with dead family members. Dear reader just accepts that the list in this line is long.
Now labeling above positions as satanic or ungodly can be misleading in the modern sense. The motivation for all the above behaviours is sensual satisfaction. But the physiological cause of the behaviour is few and far between. Some of these conditions are caused by genetic misprogramming or mutation; some are due to body malformation. Like having female reproductive system in a male human casing or male female reproductive system in a female human casing. But the sorriest part of this human experience is that victims of these conditions always feel that they are right human creatures in the wrong body from which they struggle to jump out but they have never succeed.
This is why the Journal of Pan African Voices known as Pambuzuka news has a platform for anti – homophobic journalism, which actually purport to promote social and intellectual awareness among the Africa societies about matters relating to ****** and gender disabilities. This journal strives to minimize homophobic positions like the one taken by Dr. Chesoli in a smokescreen of Christianity or Islam which will ultimately only end up as heinous violations of human rights.
An empirical position has facts that gender and ****** disability conditions is rampart in urban areas than rural areas and more rampart in industrialized or developed countries than peasant rural based countries. Thus logic will tell you that we have most gays and lesbians in America and United Kingdom than in Kenya or Malawi. This is why President Barrack Obama in an imperial stretch conditioned the govermenent of Uganda to make a legislation that favour gays and lesbians. This was also reflected three years ago in the United kingdom when David Cameroon warned the government of Ghana that if they don’t make a legislation that appreciate homosexuals then United Kingdom would not give economic aid to Ghana.Contextually,both Cameroon and Obama were wrong. We don’t use vents of desperate imperialism to manage a misfortunate social condition. We first of all begin by educating our people, then socializing the idea among our people then we finalize by positioning the idea among our people. Thanks for your audience.
Alexander K Opicho, is a social researcher with sanctuary research agencies in Eldoret, Kenya.He is also a lecturer for Research Methods in Governance and Leadership.
Continue reading...
Alexander K Opicho Apr 2014
OTHELLO AT THE GRAVESIDE OF SHAKESPEARE
In the last months of March 2014,
Soldier Othello the Moroccan moor
Was in Stratford-upon-Avon at the graveside
Of William Shakespeare the English bard,
He was observing the anniversary
Of Shakespeare and his European brother Cervantes,
He had in his pocket another charm and amulet
Given to him by his paternal grandfather,
This time round not a charm for love portion,
But a mystique totem to raise the dead from dusts,
As Othello himself has hitherto over-matured
Above the painful torture of *** with aristocrats,
He has left it for the Jewish aristotrash; Frantz Kafka,
Whose torturous appetite for *** with German women,
Was the sorriest eyesore of his thespic efforts.

Like Jesus at the grave of Lazarus
Othello groaned by shouting; William the son of John!
No response, he shouted again; Shakespeare the bard!
Then the mystique powers of Othello’s amulet
Electrified Shakespeare back to life,
What is your problem you black moor,
The ***** of Morocco, the soldier
Who beguiled Desdemona into betrothal,
Not because of glory of your work,
But due to charms of your love portion
Bequeathed to you by your witch mother,
What brings you to my sepulchre,
For only to perturbed my purgatorial peace,
What brings you!?
Questioned Shakespeare the bard.

Am no longer the moor, blackness is class
But not the race, as race is bankrupt,
I come here to salute you with good news,
That your European brother, Alfred Nobel,
Currently rewards thespic bards like you,
Whether black or white, blue or green,
The ***** bards from the natural forest,
He also rewards, so wake up and pick the prize!
Retorted Othello in virtue of truth,
And also tell me the native bricks
Of your beautiful architecture;
Where and how did you mold thy bricks?
Your brown English bricks that walled your culture;
*****, clown, leapfrog, mercurial, oxymoron,
Falsitafity, Shyllocking, colleaguery and window,
Cauldron, graymalkin, woo, betroth, infatuation and so on.

From underneath his sepulcher Shakespeare broke
A violent gaggle of laughter as if he was ten English skeletons,
You Othello you are still a beautiful moor
Whose foolishness time has not condemned to oblivion,
You are as a fool as I created you ; I will only teach you
One brick, the window , that you go and put on
Your wind disturbed African huts,
Put the wind door on your hut,
And be flexible in your tongue
To give it English elegance
Combine and shorten wind and door
To get your cultural brick of; window !
Continue reading...
Alexander K Opicho Feb 2014
toxic valentine
Alexander K Opicho
(Eldoret, Kenya;aopicho@yahoo.com)

Here is a toast for valentine
Valentine in all seasons perennial
Where angst of money for love  
Cradled utopian capitalism,
It is once again in the city of Omurate
In the south most parts of Ethiopia
On the borders of Kenya and Ethiopia
Where actually the river Ormo enters Lake Turkana,
There lived a pair of lovers
With overt compassion for one another
The male lover was an origin of Nyangtom,
A cattle rustling Nilotic kingdom
While the female lover was a descendant of King Solomon
The Jewish children which King Solomon aborted
Because their mother was an Ethiopian African
They now form substantial part of the Ethiopian population
Their clan is known as Amharic, they speak subverted Yiddish,
These lovers were good to one another
Sharing secrets and all other stuffs that go with love.

Both the lovers were fatherless
They had lost their fathers through early death
They only had the mothers, who were again sickly
Their mothers coughed a whole night with whoops
And when in the wee of the night, when temperatures go low
The mothers breathe with wheezing sound
Like peasant music from African violin,
They didn’t eat with good appetite
They always left irritating chunks on the plates,
But they all puked mucus from their mouths
And of course with a very sickening regularity.

The menace of sick mothers intervened with love freedom
Among the inter-compassionate lovers
They did not have time for real active love
I will not mention recurrent missing of ceremonies
Fetes that are bound to go with valentine day
The lovers were bored to their teeth
They don’t knew when gods will come to unyoke them.

Especially the male lover, was most perturbed
His mother looked sorriest
With a scrofulous look on her old aged African face
She looked like a forlorn erstwhile cattle rustler
She ever whined in pain like a trapped hyena
Her son the male lover even began apologizing
To the female lover for such environmental upsets
Hence an African proverb that;
No love is possible with impaired judgment.

One day in the wee of the night
With no electricity nor any source of light
Darkness engulfing each and every aspect of the city
Confirming the hinterland of Africa
The female lover woke up from the sleep
And she never heard the usual wheezing breathes
That her mother often made in such hours,
Feat of suspicion gripped her
She jumped out of her bed to where her mother was
On feeling her, she found her dead, cold like a black member
She was already past the rigor mortis stage of death process
African chilliness had frozen her like a poikilothermic creature.

She wept but not in the uproarious groan
In that instinctive Jewish shrewdness
She did not announce nor inform her lover of her mother’s death
She only washed and groomed the cadaver of her mother
She made a headscarf around the head of dead mother
She even placed reading glasses on her face
On her mother’s dead torso she wrapped a dress
The most expensive of all bought from Egypt,
In the same wee of the night
She carried cadaver of her mother on her shoulders
The way a poor Nigerian farmer would carry a stem of banana
And walked slowly by slowly for a distance of a hundred kilometers
Down ***** into Kenya towards the city of Todanyang in Turkana County
Todanyang was a busy city, but silent and minus people in the night
The king of this city was called Lapur the son of Turkanai
And the law that Lapur passed in this city was archaic
It was; an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a Jew for a Jew
A pokot for a pokot, a samburu for a samburu
It was simply the law with nothing else
Other than clauses of measure for measure
And clauses of *** for tat instantaneously administered,
On reaching the market she placed her mother standing
Being supported on a sign post at the bus stage
In pose similar to that of an early morning traveler,
She sat a side like a prowling spider awaiting foolish fly
They way an African ***** exposes its red ****
And when the hen comes to peck
It traps and closes the head of the hen
Deeper into its ****,
At that bus stage there was a hotel
Owned by a Rwandese refugee
From the foolish clan of the Hutu
He had ran away from the genocide
In his country, he was also the perpetrator
And thus he was a runaway from the law *** hotelier
His name was Chapuchapu, meaning the quick one,
When Chapuchapu opened the hotel for the early customers
The female lover walked into the hotel
With innocence on her face like all the Jews
She placed an order for two mugs of coffee
And two pieces of bread
When Chapuchapu had placed food on the table
The female lover shrewdly instructed Chapuchapu
To go and hold the hand of the woman standing at the sign post
To bring her into the hotel for morning tea,
Chapuchapu in his unsuspecting charisma
With a mad drive to make money that morning
He dashed out as instructed with his foolish notion
That the customer is the queen, which is not
He grapped the standing cadaver with force
On pulling her to come along
The cadaver tumbled down like a marionette
Everything falling away; headscarf and glasses
Chapuchapu was overtaken by awe
The female lover was watching
Like the big brother in the Orwellian satire, 1984.
When the cadaver of her mother fell
She came out of the hotel
Screaming like a hundred vehicles
Of St John Ambulance
And two hundred Kenyan vehicles of fire brigade
And three hundred Kenyan cash transfer vehicles,
She was accusing Chapuchapu for being careless
Careless in his work that he had killed her mother,
Swam of armed humanity in Turkana loinclothes
Began pouring in like waters of Nile into Mediterranean
Female lover improved the scale of her screaming
Chapuchapu like a heavyweight idiot was dumbfounded
Armed people came in their infinite
Finally king Lapur arrived on his royal donkey
That his foot soldiers had only rustled
From Samburu land a fortnight ago,
The presence of the king quelled the hullabaloo
The king asked to find out what had happened
Amid sops the female lover narrated how
Chapuchapu the hotelier had killed her mother
Through his careless helter skelter behaviour
The king sighed and shouted the judgment
To the mad crowd; an eye for a……….!?
The crowd responded back to the King
In a feat of amok value;
For an eye you mighty Lapur son  ofTurkanai,
The stones, kicks, jabs began rainning
In volleys on an innocent Chapuchapu
Amid shouts that **** him, he came here to **** people
The way he killed a thousand fold in Rwanda.

The sopping female lover requested the king
That his people wait a bit before they continue
Then the king waved to the people to stop
Chapuchapu was on the ground writhing in pain
When the King asked the female lover what was the concern
She requested for pay from Chapuchapu not people to **** him
Chapuchapu accepted to pay whatever the price that will be put
Female lover asked for everything in hundreds;
Carmel, money, Birr, sheep, goats, donkeys, cows
Name them all they were in hundreds
Chapuchapu and his family were saying yes to every demand
And they rushed to bring whatever was said
The payments exhausted Chapuchapu back to square zero
The female lover carried everything away
The cadaver of her mother on her shoulder
She disappeared into the forest
and buried her mother there.

When she arrived home she found the male lover
He looked at her overnight change in fortune in stupefaction
He didn’t believe his eyes, it was a dream
Sweetheart, where have you gotten all these?
Questioned the male lover
Sweetie darling there is market for dead women
At Todanyang in the Turkana County of Kenya
I killed my sickly mother and carried her cadaver
As a trade ware to Todanyang
Whatever I have that you are looking at is the proceed,
Can my mother fetch the same? Asked the male lover
Of course yes, even more
Given the Africanness of your mother
African cadavers fetch more than the Jewish ones
At Todanyang market,
The male lover was now overtaken
By strong urge for quick riches
Was not seeing it getting evening
That day for him was as long as a whole century
He was anxious and restless more tired of a sickly mother
When evening fell he was already ready with the butcherer’s tools
He didn’t have nerves to wait till the wee of the night
As early as eleven in the evening he axed his mother’s head
Into two chunks of human skull spilling the brains in stark horror
Blood streaming like a rivulet all over the house
The male lover was nonchalant to all these
He was in the full feat of determination
To **** and sell his mother to  get the proceeds
With which he could foot the bills of valentine day.

He stuffed the headless blood soaked torso
Of his mothers cadaver in the sisal bag
He threw it to his bag
And began going to Todanyang
The market for human dead bodies
He went half running and half walking
With regular whistling of his favourite poem;
Ode to my Jewish lover
He reached Todanyang in the wee of the night
No human being was in sight
All people had gone as it was late in the night
He then slept in the open with dead body of his mother
Stuffed in the sisal bag beside him
Wandering night dogs regularly disturbed him
As they came to bite at smelling curdled blood
But he always scared them away.
As per the male lover he overslept till five in the morning
But when he woke up he unhesitatingly began to shout
Advertising his ware of trade in foolish version;
Am selling, the body of my mother, I have killed,
I killed her myself, it is still fresh, come and buy,
I will give you’re a bargain price,

When the morning came
People began crowding around him
As he kept on shouting his advertisement
Also Lapur the king came
He was surprised with the situation,
He asked the male lover to confirm
Whatever he was shouting
The male lover vehemently confirmed,
Then the law of an eye for an eye
Effortlessly took its course
Lapur  ordered his people, in a glorious royal decree
To stone the male lover to death
And bury him away without ceremony
Along with his mother in the sisal bag
In the wasted cemetery of villains
The same way Pablo Neruda
Had to bury his dead dog behind the house,

On hearing the tidings
About what had befallen her lover
The female lover had to send out a long giggle
Coming deep from her heart with maximum joy
She took over the estate of the male lover
Combined with hers,
All the animals and everything she took,
She made her son the manager
The son whom she immaculately conceived
Without any nuptial experience in the usual Jewish style
And their wealth multiplied to vastness
And hence toxic valentine gave birth to capitalism
Continue reading...
Alexander K Opicho Sep 2014
*A ***** DISPUTING WITH HIS ******
Why are you stretching around?
Like a crazy creature, stretching
And erecting at every bossom’s sight
Don’t you know this to be vile?
Behavior so uncouth and basest
That all men on earth dislike,

Leave me alone master, leave me alone
Show me a happy man without a ****,
I will show you the sorriest point on earth,
Which woman burst not with ecstasy?
On taste of my nature, which woman?

Shut up you sly creature
And manage you mandibles,
You always stretch and stretch
As if you want to lacerate my muscles,
Don’t you know that you put me in risk?
*** is all over and you stretch like crazy,

Leave me alone and let me stretch,
Don’t fear disease and risks,
For *** is now impotent
***** blood is now natured
Above any nonsensical vice
Like *** and his brothers,

Stop stretching or I chop you off
I don’t want any burden of next kid
I am not in any pocket fitness,
For one more mouth and one more ****,

You are a foolish coward
You fear even your success,
Who told you kids are a burden
And parenting a curse?
Beautiful liars taught you these,
Can’t you see china and Islamic State?
Declaring their muscles and mighty,
For no other reason but children
Surest quivers needed in your arch,

For sure don’t stretch, calm down
And stay balmy or I tear you off my torso
Where will I get land in this world?
To contain the useless proceeds
Of your raucous *****?

I am tired of cautioning you
Or I dare you and dare you again
That perhaps I am on the wrong body
Those who are few need land,
But those who are populous need not,
For their victuals come from tertiary means,

I am finally tired of your rudeness,
If you stretch again I will be irate,
As it will be uncouth act of mannerlessness,
For you surely know that my wife is aged
She shares not in your school anymore
If you stretch again know then that you’re vile,

Look again at your thoughtlessness
Who told you that I am condemned forever?
To be feeding on old women, harridans and *****?
I no longer want them on my ****** menu
Feed me on the young wenches in a polygamous fit,
For the elders like you and many others on earth,
will only renew their  old sinews
By merely feeding on the French chicken,

Then you persist in one line like the possessed
Are you possessed by the ****** devil?
I don’t have any ****** energy for your business,
You only put me into a desire for what I cannot eat,
Leave me alone by quitting your vicious *******,

Fear not at all for how you will eat,
You fail to enjoy because of your ego,
You focus on the finish line alone,
Remember  the process in coition,
Tighten you **** to delay *******
And here you will cogitate with gusto,

Negroes! Negros! All over the world,
Again you want me to make more Negros,
Be aware that your melanin is an eyesore
The world looks at you but in pain,
Suppliers of blinkers cannot quench,
The thirst for these wares,
With which the world can put on,
To ward off the pains in the look
At the skin of the *****,

Fear not Negros don’t create themselves,
They come from the supremo of deities
All creation is beautiful in wisdom’s eyes
Whoever that hates creation hates the self
No other act can then match the wickedness.
Continue reading...
Sarah Ann Brown Sep 2012
Liar, liar, pants on fire.
Your hand brushed against mine, heat slithered up my thigh,
A python of mystery and allure, temptations offering more.
I tried to avoid your eyes, to avoid facing all those lies,
But I wanted us to burn, deep into the sheets, igniting skin,
Skin on fire, liar liar, pants on fire.

I wanted nothing more, than to send you up in flames
Smoke dancing around your lungs, tightening your chest
The way I couldn't breathe, when you played such cruel games.
I longed for your eyes to sting, in a way you couldn't rest
Eyes on fire, liar liar, pants on fire.

And when we come up for air, with sweat upon our brows,
But not enough to put these flames out,
I hope you inhale the way you made me feel
And I'll watch it lick you, the way I didn't any more,
Into the sorriest ashes, smouldering on the floor,
Skin on fire, liar liar, pants on fire.
Continue reading...
Christina Rossetti
Monna Innominata: A Sonnet Of Sonnets
1

Lo di che han detto a' dolci amici addio.    (Dante)
Amor, con quanto sforzo oggi mi vinci!    (Petrarca)

Come back to me, who wait and watch for you:--
    Or come not yet, for it is over then,
    And long it is before you come again,
So far between my pleasures are and few.
While, when you come not, what I do I do
    Thinking "Now when he comes," my sweetest when:"
    For one man is my world of all the men
This wide world holds; O love, my world is you.
Howbeit, to meet you grows almost a pang
    Because the pang of parting comes so soon;
    My hope hangs waning, waxing, like a moon
        Between the heavenly days on which we meet:
Ah me, but where are now the songs I sang
    When life was sweet because you call'd them sweet?

    2

Era gia 1′ora che volge il desio.    (Dante)
Ricorro al tempo ch' io vi vidi prima.    (Petrarca)

I wish I could remember that first day,
    First hour, first moment of your meeting me,
    If bright or dim the season, it might be
Summer or winter for aught I can say;
So unrecorded did it slip away,
    So blind was I to see and to foresee,
    So dull to mark the budding of my tree
That would not blossom yet for many a May.
If only I could recollect it, such
    A day of days! I let it come and go
    As traceless as a thaw of bygone snow;
It seem'd to mean so little, meant so much;
If only now I could recall that touch,
    First touch of hand in hand--Did one but know!

    3

O ombre vane, fuor che ne l'aspetto!    (Dante)
Immaginata guida la conduce.    (Petrarca)

I dream of you to wake: would that I might
    Dream of you and not wake but slumber on;
    Nor find with dreams the dear companion gone,
As summer ended summer birds take flight.
In happy dreams I hold you full in sight,
    I blush again who waking look so wan;
    Brighter than sunniest day that ever shone,
In happy dreams your smile makes day of night.
Thus only in a dream we are at one,
    Thus only in a dream we give and take
        The faith that maketh rich who take or give;
    If thus to sleep is sweeter than to wake,
        To die were surely sweeter than to live,
Though there be nothing new beneath the sun.

    4

Poca favilla gran fliamma seconda.    (Dante)
Ogni altra cosa, ogni pensier va fore,
E sol ivi con voi rimansi amore.    (Petrarca)

I lov'd you first: but afterwards your love
    Outsoaring mine, sang such a loftier song
As drown'd the friendly cooings of my dove.
    Which owes the other most? my love was long,
    And yours one moment seem'd to wax more strong;
I lov'd and guess'd at you, you construed me--
And lov'd me for what might or might not be
    Nay, weights and measures do us both a wrong.
For verily love knows not "mine" or "thine;"
    With separate "I" and "thou" free love has done,
        For one is both and both are one in love:
Rich love knows nought of "thine that is not mine;"
        Both have the strength and both the length thereof,
Both of us, of the love which makes us one.

    5

Amor che a nullo amato amar perdona.    (Dante)
Amor m'addusse in si gioiosa spene.    (Petrarca)

O my heart's heart, and you who are to me
    More than myself myself, God be with you,
    Keep you in strong obedience leal and true
To Him whose noble service setteth free,
Give you all good we see or can foresee,
    Make your joys many and your sorrows few,
    Bless you in what you bear and what you do,
Yea, perfect you as He would have you be.
So much for you; but what for me, dear friend?
    To love you without stint and all I can
Today, tomorrow, world without an end;
    To love you much and yet to love you more,
    As Jordan at his flood sweeps either shore;
        Since woman is the helpmeet made for man.

    6

Or puoi la quantitate
Comprender de l'amor che a te mi scalda.    (Dante)
Non vo' che da tal nodo mi scioglia.    (Petrarca)

Trust me, I have not earn'd your dear rebuke,
    I love, as you would have me, God the most;
    Would lose not Him, but you, must one be lost,
Nor with Lot's wife cast back a faithless look
Unready to forego what I forsook;
    This say I, having counted up the cost,
    This, though I be the feeblest of God's host,
The sorriest sheep Christ shepherds with His crook.
Yet while I love my God the most, I deem
    That I can never love you overmuch;
        I love Him more, so let me love you too;
    Yea, as I apprehend it, love is such
I cannot love you if I love not Him,
        I cannot love Him if I love not you.

    7

Qui primavera sempre ed ogni frutto.    (Dante)
Ragionando con meco ed io con lui.    (Petrarca)

"Love me, for I love you"--and answer me,
    "Love me, for I love you"--so shall we stand
    As happy equals in the flowering land
Of love, that knows not a dividing sea.
Love builds the house on rock and not on sand,
    Love laughs what while the winds rave desperately;
And who hath found love's citadel unmann'd?
    And who hath held in bonds love's liberty?
My heart's a coward though my words are brave
    We meet so seldom, yet we surely part
    So often; there's a problem for your art!
        Still I find comfort in his Book, who saith,
Though jealousy be cruel as the grave,
    And death be strong, yet love is strong as death.

    8

Come dicesse a Dio: D'altro non calme.    (Dante)
Spero trovar pieta non che perdono.    (Petrarca)

"I, if I perish, perish"--Esther spake:
    And bride of life or death she made her fair
    In all the lustre of her perfum'd hair
And smiles that kindle longing but to slake.
She put on pomp of loveliness, to take
    Her husband through his eyes at unaware;
    She spread abroad her beauty for a snare,
Harmless as doves and subtle as a snake.
She trapp'd him with one mesh of silken hair,
    She vanquish'd him by wisdom of her wit,
        And built her people's house that it should stand:--
        If I might take my life so in my hand,
And for my love to Love put up my prayer,
    And for love's sake by Love be granted it!

    9

O dignitosa coscienza e netta!    (Dante)
Spirto piu acceso di virtuti ardenti.    (Petrarca)

Thinking of you, and all that was, and all
    That might have been and now can never be,
    I feel your honour'd excellence, and see
Myself unworthy of the happier call:
For woe is me who walk so apt to fall,
    So apt to shrink afraid, so apt to flee,
    Apt to lie down and die (ah, woe is me!)
Faithless and hopeless turning to the wall.
And yet not hopeless quite nor faithless quite,
Because not loveless; love may toil all night,
    But take at morning; wrestle till the break
        Of day, but then wield power with God and man:--
        So take I heart of grace as best I can,
    Ready to spend and be spent for your sake.

    10

Con miglior corso e con migliore stella.    (Dante)
La vita fugge e non s'arresta un' ora.    (Petrarca)

Time flies, hope flags, life plies a wearied wing;
    Death following ******* life gains ground apace;
    Faith runs with each and rears an eager face,
Outruns the rest, makes light of everything,
Spurns earth, and still finds breath to pray and sing;
    While love ahead of all uplifts his praise,
    Still asks for grace and still gives thanks for grace,
Content with all day brings and night will bring.
Life wanes; and when love folds his wings above
    Tired hope, and less we feel his conscious pulse,
        Let us go fall asleep, dear friend, in peace:
        A little while, and age and sorrow cease;
    A little while, and life reborn annuls
Loss and decay and death, and all is love.

    11

Vien dietro a me e lascia dir le genti.    (Dante)
Contando i casi della vita nostra.    (Petrarca)

Many in aftertimes will say of you
    "He lov'd her"--while of me what will they say?
    Not that I lov'd you more than just in play,
For fashion's sake as idle women do.
Even let them prate; who know not what we knew
    Of love and parting in exceeding pain,
    Of parting hopeless here to meet again,
Hopeless on earth, and heaven is out of view.
But by my heart of love laid bare to you,
    My love that you can make not void nor vain,
Love that foregoes you but to claim anew
        Beyond this passage of the gate of death,
    I charge you at the Judgment make it plain
        My love of you was life and not a breath.

    12

Amor, che ne la mente mi ragiona.    (Dante)
Amor vien nel bel viso di costei.    (Petrarca)

If there be any one can take my place
    And make you happy whom I grieve to grieve,
    Think not that I can grudge it, but believe
I do commend you to that nobler grace,
That readier wit than mine, that sweeter face;
    Yea, since your riches make me rich, conceive
    I too am crown'd, while bridal crowns I weave,
And thread the bridal dance with jocund pace.
For if I did not love you, it might be
    That I should grudge you some one dear delight;
        But since the heart is yours that was mine own,
    Your pleasure is my pleasure, right my right,
Your honourable freedom makes me free,
    And you companion'd I am not alone.

    13

E drizzeremo gli occhi al Primo Amore.    (Dante)
Ma trovo peso non da le mie braccia.    (Petrarca)

If I could trust mine own self with your fate,
    Shall I not rather trust it in God's hand?
    Without Whose Will one lily doth not stand,
Nor sparrow fall at his appointed date;
    Who numbereth the innumerable sand,
Who weighs the wind and water with a weight,
To Whom the world is neither small nor great,
    Whose knowledge foreknew every plan we plann'd.
Searching my heart for all that touches you,
    I find there only love and love's goodwill
Helpless to help and impotent to do,
        Of understanding dull, of sight most dim;
        And therefore I commend you back to Him
Whose love your love's capacity can fill.

    14

E la Sua Volontade e nostra pace.    (Dante)
Sol con questi pensier, con altre chiome.    (Petrarca)

Youth gone, and beauty gone if ever there
    Dwelt beauty in so poor a face as this;
    Youth gone and beauty, what remains of bliss?
I will not bind fresh roses in my hair,
To shame a cheek at best but little fair,--
    Leave youth his roses, who can bear a thorn,--
I will not seek for blossoms anywhere,
    Except such common flowers as blow with corn.
Youth gone and beauty gone, what doth remain?
    The longing of a heart pent up forlorn,
        A silent heart whose silence loves and longs;
        The silence of a heart which sang its songs
    While youth and beauty made a summer morn,
Silence of love that cannot sing again.
Continue reading...
Nat Lipstadt Dec 2013
Cusp
Cusp

Once I wrote these words:

Place your ****** hands upon thy chest.
Let them melt thru and come to rest,
Inside, the battle ongoing, under thy breast.
Watch, eyes open, knowing, fearful.
Swiftly, with no hesitation, from within,
Rip open your body, exhaling the best,
And the worst of what you got.

The cool air rushes in,
Stirring the inside stew of:
Infected grime, shameful desires,
Secrets that should not have been exposed,
The ***** stuff of about your life
that you alone know exists.

Contact with the atmosphere makes
Self-pity dies, blue blood turn red,
The TNT tightness explodes,
Ashamed, you have only one escape hatch.

Now, you are ready to write.
(http://hellopoetry.com/poem/now-you-are-ready-to-write/)

so here I am, hands on my chest,
so unready, incapable of writing,

the battle site changed,
sledding to the top of my head,
moved northwards, mush, mush.

just don't have what's required
to melt that mush open,
just don't have the anymore
to finish this Iditarod race
called my Idiot life.

nobody knows the silences
kept in my treasure box.
nobody knows the nail-beds
slept, bloodied, by this
mthrfking depression,
unexpectedly returned to sender,
unable now,
to write, free and clear.

suffused, this words reappears,
you don't get it, the twilight twinkies
below laughing, twinkling,
middle ******* me,
so not suffused,
nah nah nah nah
you don't got it,
you got nothing.

the words supply, torn and  tired
reappears, now escapee prisoners
before flatlining, crashing
as I am currently 20,000 feet over
somewhere above the Eastern Seaboard;

we may land smooth,
but not in any groove
that fits me anymore.

Here's the sorest, sorriest laugh,
what you are about to read
was eons ago born, and today
birthed.

Happy M.F'ing  Birthday #0
don't even, can't complain fresh,
reusing unused words that never got
devoured, so now, used up too,
like me.

cut by thicket's branches
(that in their defense, maim only to self-protect)
calluses of experience
not enough to survive
what is now needed,
new chapters required.

choruses of repetitive choirs fresh,
inspire but land on surfaces
heart-hardened by fear contagion.

who will know and
who will care and who
will make them all go away,
but me...

so touch my self,  
reminder to self is emailed,
beat the odds so man-many times,
one more time, what's the big deal?

fresh differences,
maybe,

words that are new
not in my vocabulary,
maybe.

Struggle, long lived,
is the status quo,
** **, don't you know,
nobody tole ya?

world's axis is tilted
you can fall off
a familiar horse,
get off course,
so east easy
a gravitational force so subtle,
clueless you're drowning
till the riptide
has liberated your
pockets possessions,
pathetic borrowings
of unoriginal thoughts
you thought you actually owned!
now you realize
new inspirational how to books
keep getting writ,
published for experienced suckers
like you.

so here at the pointed cusp
a crescent shaped tangent,
lines crossed, intersection of a curveball
turning inwards, retracing prior paths,
familiar but tho the forecasts predict
being on the cusp of something,
crystal ball reveals nothing at all.

I fold the little have learned
into a handkerchief
folded three times over,
tied cusp to cusp
with a trefoil knot,
which while
mathematically correct,  
is too easy as my hanky is almost empty
and hobo heart journey scary is thinking
done.
Cusp:

point, apex: as
a :  a point of transition (as from one historical period to the next) :  
turning point; also :  edge, verge
b :  either horn of a crescent moon
c :  a fixed point on a mathematical curve at which a point tracing the curve would exactly reverse its direction of motion
d :  an ornamental pointed projection formed by or arising from the intersection of two arcs or foils
e (1) :  a point on the grinding surface of a tooth (2) :  a fold or flap of a cardiac valve
Continue reading...
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Vain Virtues
What is the sorriest thing that enters Hell?
None of the sins,—but this and that fair deed
Which a soul’s sin at length could supersede.
These yet are virgins, whom death’s timely knell
Might once have sainted; whom the fiends compel
Together now, in snake-bound shuddering sheaves
Of anguish, while the scorching bridegroom leaves
Their refuse maidenhood abominable.

Night ***** them down, the garbage of the pit,
Whose names, half entered in the book of Life,
Were God’s desire at noon. And as their hair
And eyes sink last, the Torturer deigns no whit
To gaze, but, yearning, waits his worthier wife,
The Sin still blithe on earth that sent them there.
Continue reading...
Alexander K Opicho May 2014
GUN-SHOTS IN LODWAR
In one bright, rainless, warm, non-sombre and cloudless morning of April 2014,
Skirmishes began at ten in the morning, among the roaming street children
As if they were only playing hopscotch among themselves, and their mates,
It was an unfolding in the dust filled non tarmacked streets of Lodwar town,
Town located in the savannah desert belt of north western Kenya,
A non local police man who was on patrol shot dead a rioting local,
A hungry local had attempted to ****** a shot-gun from the policeman,
He shot him twice in the head, scattering whitish brain tissues all over,
He shot another local sympathizer of the riot in the leg, in the heel,
The remaining riff-raff of rioting locals took off on their heels, like rats,
Once picturized in the word-smithing power of James Herbert,
The hoards of local rioters, most of them motorbike riders, rushed back,
To their places of abode, known as Manyatta,
                                                  or poor hamlets, more sorriest than ghettos,
They pulled out their fellow manyatta dwellers
For military reinforcement
They came back in throngs
All armed with rusty guns
Swearing to **** all
By the brute guns,
All the non locals
Not from their tribe.


They rampaged a whole town
Mercilessly looting and plundering
Each and every shop, business vessel, all outlets
Of the non-locals, all the migrants; black and white,
Chinese and Arabs, Indians and Somalis, Just but to mention,
They looted while singing tribal war songs, shooting all the non locals
Identified by differences in outfits; especially loincloths, Ekijolong, etc
They shot non local women, children and vandalized their trade wares
Those with guns holding the police station hostage, those without guns looting shops
Some tried ******, but their uncircumcised ***** proved a snag in this satanic venture
With a sardonic remorse they stopped the terror of **** against womenfolk of non natives
Women folk of non local ethnicity, but still not safe as shooting followed without ruth,
Puncturing the *******, ****** and bladders, spilling and splashing blood on each gunshot,
Human wailing, crying, hysterical running, farting, falling, and brute of the gun’s cannon
Gripped the town in a flower of curling dark smoke from burning tires,
Gunmen walked from door to door in a feat of amok anger,
Asking names of each person on their way
To decipher out the tribe or the clan
Lest they mayhem a native son
Instead of the non- local
Which they are bound to ****
By dutifully releasing
Deathly bullets
Into the head
Of emoit.
#and #is #enemy #wooden #emoit #ekijilong #mobile #stool
Continue reading...
Misadventures of Crow Aug 2016
That Awful Itch
When writing about oneself
ceases to scratch that awful
self-absorbed itch,

and the heart realizes
that writing about others
and what they've done to us
is the same itch masked
in a fresh disguise,

the trail of words
leads away from "I"  --

   like breadcrumbs
   dropped at intervals
      for poetic feet
         to follow --

            -- at last finding the untamed

where one is more than a mouthpiece
for sorrow or rage,

   for ignorant opinion or
       self-righteous argument  --

where the horizons are bounded
not by fear but imagination --

The irony: what one keeps thinking about,
one keeps thinking about
convinced that integrity depends
on never letting go.

Egotism
fettered by a soul
feels sorriest for itself.
Ruminating about oneself and one's problems creates the habit of unhappiness. What we think about shapes our perceptions.

If we think about nothing but ourselves - our comfort, our entertainment, our disappointments, whether others please us - should it be any wonder that life is unfulfilling?

My advice to all seekers of self-knowledge, wisdom, happiness, and truth:

Believe *only* what makes you laugh.
#poetry #mental #health #habits #egotism
Continue reading...
Isadora Feb 2011
Glum
Alas afront standing before thee, brave
Cowish, unable to ask thee outright
Bewitched by thine beauty, oh humble knave
Oh whose virtue doth bloom roses anight

So elegant, set agaze even love
Drawn so, ah that love might set me aflight
To be carried by the wings of a dove
Standing tall with passions affect tonight

Oh, ready to sooth thy sorriest grief
To have seen thy don thy answer sincerely
To have heard thee breathe a sigh of relief
Fain heart o'mine, and let eyne see clearly

Cowish, cowish no more, fain for thy *****
Awaiting thine sweet roses answer, glum.
A sonnet from a year ago, wrote in English class.
Continue reading...
Louis Brown Jul 2014
BOEHNER WILL BE A DISAPPEARING ACT SOON
There was a House Speaker named Boehner
Who went forth without any honor
He did his best to hurt Obamacare
To damage the folks with no hospital care
He killed every bill that came to the House
He's sorry you'd say like the sorriest louse
Then Obama's army got ready to roll
Barach showed us methods we all could extoll
That got the people insurance at last
Poor Boehner he cried like he's done in the past
Then he fought every tax to help people on high
To get all their votes when November comes by
But there is a Father in Heaven above
Who whispered no man can win without love  
Then Boehner tried suing  and shamefaced us all
Voters said Boehner  was losing his *****
Then he failed to effect immigration
And stifle the strongest of nations
He flunked with each program he wanted to win
Soon Boehner will be on the streets once again
So all will be well in the dear U.S.A.
There'll be no Boehner to get in the way
he...he...he
Continue reading...
sweet leigh Jan 2014
Cue the Violins
I’ve yet to
Yet to
find the reason.
Find the sorry explanation,
find the
******* pathetic argument for
why you
Why you’re still here
still in my head dancing.
Still ******* here.
Still flitting thin wrists
beautifully on soft soft sheets
bare skin on soft sheets tangled
with me bared so horribly
achingly bare and it hurts
It hurts
to see you dream
Want you
not really no
not really wanting you
but missing
always missing
******* missing you and sweet lips
kissing gripping teasing licking missing
still ******* missing
and it’s so sorry sad
so sorry tragic
In the sorriest saddest sense of the word
And I am quite
quite pitiful I realize
I know pitiful when I see it.
I can see it on me like a bruise
never quite
quite fading away and I wish
I do truly wish it would
would fade and I could
Heal
could mend
could move
I want to move.
Want to be moving

moving on.
found this little angst muffin in my ramblings from months past.
Continue reading...
Alexander K Opicho Sep 2014
The Parable of A good yellow Man
one time in the land of poverty and starvation
where hunger loomed like the spirit of God,
Even Itself starved itself often on the thin vials
of the black stomachs,colonies and esophagus,
of these poverty crashed men and women
denizens of this land ever wondered  why ,
hunger and challenges where their stuff?
they had nothing at all to stake the selves,
mothers were beggars as fathers did,
pangs of hunger even made them dark
in their skins  with excess melanin,
These conditions made their foster mother
to yap her white beak cacophonously ,
in the ecstatic syndrome of colonial glory
she was happy as they suffered, day in and day out,
she even made the  possibility food
for these foster children of hers  an illusion,
she forced them to speak her tongue
as a magical secret to have enough food
they tried the tongue but they could not make it
because prime motive was colonial tricks,
not salvage of any standard nor measure,
the foster mother came again with a new ploy,
that she could give them food or Ebola drugs
if only their men had to marry fellow men
and their women must marry fellow women,
they tried and they shrank in numbers
a new opportunity for the foster mother
to become metaphysically a colonial mother,
Only to loot the minerals , wood,land and slaves
slaves taken on vicious green card lottery boat,
then their chanced a yellow man , but not as foolish
as the one Dalai Lama, the poet of prolixity
He empathized with the black poverty ,
he felt for the Nation of this beggars,
he cried Woooooo! these people are suffering!
This poverty is pathetic and sorriest !
he took all the Ebola patients and hunger victims
to the herbal medical clinic  nearby
He also gave the beggars of  that nation
iron horses on which they ride as they beg
hence the saying that;Behold the last wonder,
kings are walking of food and slaves riding
kingly horses.
Continue reading...
Alexander K Opicho Sep 2014
Ode to the Mind of a European
One day I was in the rural areas of Turkana County,
walking up and down perfidiously ,
in a style of  the devil when visiting
Job  the son of Amos in the land of Uz,
It was in fact in the Northern region of the County
near a town known as Small Spain,
it is bushy and full of wild animals,
i was  on assignment by a certain NGO,
to give food,*******,drugs and clothes
to the dwellers  of this desert region,
All over a sudden I pumbed into a riff-raff
of  peasants, wearing scrofulously lugubrious faces,
one of them , a young man was on the ground
reeling in pain from the snake-bite,
he had been biten by a deadly desert snake,
A yellow Mamba in fact, it left its fangs in his muscle,
it was pathetic and sorriest, as there was no clinic nearby,
the nearest hospital was one thousand miles away,
and  you know,there is no road,no vehicle nor bicycle,
no horses nor water boats, only Carmel,,donkey and goats,
were there plus few emaciated native cows,
Luckily enough a white man  who stayed nearby,
surfaced from nowhere, he also owns a small aero-plane,
He spoke Italian,Spanish,Swahili and Greek like a native,
so I don't knew which country of Europe he came from,
he picked the snake bite victim to his home,
he asked me to come along
we boarded his plane to Kitale,
where we have a government hospital,
We flew across the hills of Turkana land ,
thousand and thousands of miles,
it was i, the white man  and snake bitten man,
three strangers on one another in the aeroplane,
Bound strongly by human love beyond identity,
Our patient began getting worse and worse
In fact  he had began getting dull and motionless,
we landed in Kitale, the white man bought a taxi,
we rushed to the hospital, all us panting frenetically,
we got at the hospital found nurses having lunch,
they were slow and relaxed, as if death is their dish,
the African nurse who came was all but un-started,
she began asking  for the age and the  tribe,
The tribe of our snake bitten friend,
She also asked for where he works,
And where he often goes to clinic,
worst of  all, she asked where he goes to church
she again demanded for seven hundred shillings,
the white man gave her the money,I was broke as usual,
He gave her a bank note of  one thousand shillings
she declined , she instead  wanted loose money
she ordered us to look for her the  loose money
before  she could begin treating our friend,
before we got the loose money  our friend died
of heavy poisoning of the blood, snake bite
He roared like a bull in the slaughter house,
on his painfully preventable death,
the white man was very disappointed
the white man wept, he went back to his plane.
In a similar stretch with a case of  a referral hospital
in Eldoret, also another town in Kenya, it is big,
it is called Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital,
it has the largest cancer management unit,
in the whole of east and central Africa
from Congo to Seychelles is the only one,
it was build by tax payers money,
but local politics as influenced it otherwise,
workers and Nurses are substantially locals,
in fact from one clan, now they speak strangely,
patients from alien clan are never treated,
they must bribe to be treated,
if not you  go back sick and eat your tribe,
or if you are introduced by a local politician,
you be lucky to be treated your cervical cancer,
they charge medical fees exorbitantly,
but once you pay no doctor will come,
in fact patients who are admitted for in-patient,
rarely come out  alive, if they are one hundred,
eighty of them will die,twenty will go home,
only to come back after a while and then die,
out of this despair another white man from Germany,
has established a modern hospital , just nearby the referral,
it offers absolutely free cancer treatment services
as Africans keep on facilitating death of their own kin,
Blessed be the womb that gave birth to a European.
Continue reading...
Alexander K Opicho Mar 2014
POETIC DESTITUENCE
Alexander  K Opicho
(Eldoret,Kenya;aopicho@yahoo.com)


It is moral duty of poetry to throw away ***** power
Often formed by political snobs out of selfish extension,
Poetry without arms and ammunition have been there
Ever creating social and political power un-violently,
Planting moralized empires that cannot away be washed
By the snobbish currents of constituent powers that be,
Show me all the social powers formed by poetry
That ever oppressed the poor or the weak,
You would have given me glorious pedestals
On which I will firmly stand and stretch my arm
To show to the world a blind philosopher,
Even Rudyard Kipling in his prime of colonial poetry
Had the Indian kidimadiggar, sorriest of all coolies
As the constituent pith in his racist hearty
Where blended colonial urge and poetical altruism
Into humane conscience for destituent social power.
Continue reading...
Alexander K Opicho Mar 2014
WHO KILLED THE MINISTER ?
He was found lying dead, in the fresh pool of blood,
Oozing from diverse punctures over his muscular body.
His eyes wide open, as if he must look to die
Hairs of his head freckled ***** in plasma dye.
His shoes a distance away, gorging in mud,
Redolent of his demise struggle with killing the mad.
His deep blue Brazilian made suit, waning in a whiff of freedom,
That came to sweep out of Kenya a cult of thralldom.
Several Packets of ****** spilled over and nearby,
Inspiring apt quizz; did lethal *** happen to pass by?
He had only given democratic legs and hands to his government,
Amid virtuous selflessness and people-centrism his prime indent.
A polity virtue which irked corrupt cacotopian powers that be,
To lethal turf of politics; imaginative vices dominant on human bay.
Packaged in the apex of local beauty of the nation,
Her stowaway; sorriest death of the law in the reign.
Leaving all of us agape in remorseful and  foolish quixoticity;
Dudes in the political caucus, who killed the minister?
Continue reading...
David Lewis Paget Jun 2015
The Final Solution
He was walking along the tramway
On the other side of town,
The lines had shone in the darkness,
There wasn’t a tram around,
The road from the rain was glistening
Reflecting the roadside lights,
Then the man stood still, and listening
On this coldest of winter nights.

It had been so still and silent
Once the shoppers all had fled,
Out of the city centre,
And heading on home to bed,
But he was one of the homeless
Adrift on the city’s streets,
And prey to the wind and weather
That the homeless people meet.

His coat was ragged and weathered,
His boots were holed in the soles,
He hadn’t managed a shave for days
So his beard looked grey and old,
His pants, held up by a piece of string
Were the sorriest in the town,
And his face was racked with misery,
For he looked just beaten down.

But now as the lights of the bedrooms died
On either side of the street,
The dark was becoming palpable
As he dragged his weary feet,
But still he stuck to the tramway lines
As the quickest way to the docks,
Hoping to find a brazier’s heat
To dry out his sodden socks.

But still he stood and he listened
For sounds in that dreadful night,
It seemed that animals snapped and snarled
Beyond the reach of light,
The homeless went with a rumour
There were wolves out there in the dark,
For many a trace of blood was found
By day, out there in the park.

And there in the dark of alleyways
He could see the eyes a-gleam,
Waiting for him to pass them by
Before they would pounce, it seemed,
He shivered under his ragged coat
And pulled the collar up high,
Thinking it might protect his throat
When they came for him, by and by.

The wolves then bayed at the crescent moon
As they watched his figure pass,
They saw him shaking in fear and gloom
Like walking on broken glass,
But suddenly there was a rumbling
And the lights of a late night tram,
He moved aside then as if to ride
When a wolf tore at his hand.

Then suddenly there were three or four
In a fury of rip and snarl,
Tearing apart a bag of bones
Of the man who was known as Carl,
His blood seeped into the tramway tracks
As the tramway driver stopped,
And watched as they tore the man apart
With one of the city cops.

The council workers came out at dawn
To clear up the grisly mess,
They’d had their orders from City Hall
To dispose of homelessness,
The keepers, out from the city zoo
Recaptured the wolves out there,
But ready to let them out again
When a killing was in the air.

‘We have to clean up the city streets,’
The mayor had long opined,
‘Get rid of the homeless, nice and neat,
The residents sure won’t mind.’
The street’s a virtual jungle when
The lights in the streets go out,
And all you’ll hear is the scream of fear
When a homeless person shouts.

David Lewis Paget
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Jeffrey Pua Jun 2012
Is My Heart...
...the sorriest thing
When you left me
For leaving you so long,
Or was it yours?

If it is mine,
Then leave it broken.
Leave it broken.

But if it’s yours,
Then let me say to you,
At least,
That I am sorry, uncertain
Of your return.

And then tell
Your close friends
That it was me
Who begged for you
To stay.

© 2010 J.S.P.
#love
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Erom elims Oct 2014
Dreamnotebook
Dreams stealing my reality I’m unbeknownst
Sleeping,
she creeps into my realm of make-believe
Her hands interconnect with mine while the eager winds howl like coyotes
We look deeply into each pupil and she says,
Your soul is beautiful as the glowing seas at midnight
I could hold you until every star in the universe explodes
I would wait eternities to be with you
I’d battle giants or travel stary oceans to hold you near
Just take my sorriest thoughts and let me forget
Make me sanguine, lost in time with you

She walks into a glimmering flower bed with the morning chorus ringing
Stepping barefoot on arching shining blue grass cushioned under her toes
The meadow scents whirling with the botanical humming of insects
She sees me once again
Sitting in the shadowy embrace of a tree
As the sun shining a million times brilliant, brings godly light to her path.
Her rhythm of voice comforts me
A soprano serenading making planet life dance with awe
Our eyes meet across the multicolored plane
I stand up
Cheering smiles heighten for miles
A clarity of something gorgeous
Flowing hair smothers touching faces
Butterfly kisses in the field of organic aura glowing
Sweeping you off your feet into plumes of clouds blanketing overhead
We lay into the germinating grasslands in imaginative solitude
Feeling the pulse of hearts and our blood rushing in love.

Night falls and celestial bodies are seen deeply engrained in the sky divinely painted
Voids peaking out from darkness frosted with elegant designs of ancient filaments
Supported by forceful invisible strings and elegant rivers of stars, blues yellows and reds
I hold her closer as the dream begins to fade into obscured fantasy

She waits in my subjective reality
my mind gently diminishes the pixels of her image
I caress her face cursing my admiration in the precursor of the ending chimera
A fixation which corralled seemly from nowhere coherent
I glared into her darken umber eyes grasping her pearly skin
As the reverie ends
I'm speaking her name as the crisp morning chorus chatters at my window
Eyes open
#love
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Bus Poet Stop Jul 2020
That bus still stops
at my stop,
but very few getting on,
even fewer getting off, all
on account nobody feels
like going anyplace anyway

I don’t mind,
like stretching out,
and the big picture
sized windows mine,
now all to myself, got
fantastic view of
empty streets

the bus drivers don’t
kick me off at the last
stop anymore, happy
for the company, even
though the drivers are
the sorriest sad sacks,
crying quietly under
the masks that don’t
hide all that much
#busstoppoet #stops
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Gabriellegarza May 2018
Firecracker
Broken girl, Broken life **** me now grab the knife. As I look at myself I look back at what I once was and now I hate myself just because. I don’t feel pretty I don’t feel good I feel as ****** as someone could. Not because I’m insecure not because I’m depressed but because I’m not what society suggest. Build me up just to break me down weeping at night trying to not make a sound. As morning creeps upon me as I awake I pray the lord for my soul to take. Mirror mirror on the wall who’s the sorriest of them all. Is it me? Or is it my man? Dealing with a broken person the best that they can. I have come with no manual just as life didn’t either if I had to deal with me I think I wouldn’t neither. Mama mama can’t you see what this ****** up life done did to me. Flashes of anger mad for no reason darkness surrounds me fall seems to be the only season. Dark all day but not as in dusk to dawn but as in a literal state of my soul being gone. Do you know what it’s like to walk around body mind no soul just imagine seeing life with no color just Gray and Dull. Certain things just make turn you cold world on my shoulders hoping I don’t fold. Picture perfect, life without despair but when I wake I’m gasping for air. Not because it’s a bad dream or because I’m frightened but because I really thought when I awoke my load would’ve been lightened. Keep it all in and just put on a grin because life is unfair and in the end no ones  really there.  One man army it’s sad to say all alone day by day. Psychotherapy supposedly makes you see a way out but when you’re trapped inside your own mind all you believe is doubt. As I Look in the mirror to see my reflection I go to picking out my flaws human dissection. It’s Wednesday another day has gone by but I’m still in this ****** up world living a lie. Why can’t my misery pass just like the days, just one day I’d like to see some sun rays. I’m tired of the storms I’m tired of the rain what did I do to deserve all of this pain.  Dancing with the devil, he comes during my lows he doesn’t miss a day it’s like he always knows. I don’t own a crucifix, I can’t even get away when I’m the one that he picks. Ticking time bomb just waiting to blow, it will come sooner than you know. So many emotions I get lost in what to say , firework girl firework girl I’m soon to let you out to play. - Gabrielle
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J Jul 2012
I love you, friend.
When I saw your breath at the harbor
swirling fantastic hues of blue
and the cold froze our bones to the marrow
too jaded for love to warm us,
what made me stay by your side in the silence?
I saw the fog on the windshield
I took my hands and with frozen fingertips
I formed a heart for you.
The whines and growls of the engine,
more snarl than purr anymore
woke me from listless semi sleep,
and I remembered slamming your door
again and again.
I remember your surprises
when I'd get inside, sheltered from the california rain
and my soul hid away behind traces of tears.
There on the seat, your good tidings and
upon your lips, the smile I waited to see
after a long day of nothing.
We'd pull away from the curb,
your tight grip on the wheel
and mine upon my prize.
Drink up, you'd say with a smile
and I would smile in return,
as heaven's sweetness awakened me from my stupor;
As my stars shone brightly, sweetly singing sorrow
from the sorriest of lips.
I turned to you to speak and say,
I love you friend.
I remember the curve of your canine smile;
I love you friend.
And here in the dark with the memory haunting me,
I can still think nothing of you but friend,
warm embraces and childish pranks
and the time I passed out on your couch and woke up
with my face squished under your pillow.
How can I possibly miss you more?
When they say best friend I think of you,
the little sister you never had,
and the grip of your hands on my shoulders.
When I say best friend I think of you,
Drink up;
I'll always love you, friend.
written july 18th 2012
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