ladylinda
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Post by ladylinda on Jul 19, 2014 16:59:13 GMT -5
The Roma challenge to the gadji world:
if we were given power and trust like you you'd be amazed to see what we can do; Jacks, Jills, of all trades: masters of a lot, given the chance we'd show you what we've got!
maybe you know it too within your heart, and that's why you always try to stay apart from the likes of us, in case we show you up: much safer to pretend we'd sell you a pup
so without further beating about the bush I'm going to give it to you straight, old mush: we're just as good as what you think you are, with equal rights to travel near and far
all our demands are easy: treat us right, give us the same shake that you give the white and black and brown; fairness is all we ask, not such a rocket science task!
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ladylinda
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Post by ladylinda on Jul 19, 2014 16:59:40 GMT -5
Construct:
within me lie memories of thousands of years, fused into my soul, my very being with the certainty of vitrified rock, substance of blood and tears, remembering still the burnings of Sigismund, the torture chambers of the Inquisition, the slave plantations of the West Indies, the long voyage to Botany Bay, and of course the welcoming ovens of Auschwitz, always ready to welcome me and evaporate me from the face of earth
through blazing sun and torrid cold I have wandered across this earth, sometimes welcomed, sometimes tolerated, mostly driven out and persecuted
as in the lands we dwell within slowly the beauty of our language changes from the pure essence of granite as we assimilate the words of others
so it is that Romanichal - the tongue my people speak in my native land - is like the coat of many colours Dolly Parton sang about
upon our stony Sanscrit base Persian, Arabic, Turkish, Russian, Albanian, Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Greek, Basque, Spanish, English, Irish, Welsh all sewed into the rich jewel of our tongue to create Romanichal
even the mountain of our language a patchwork quilt
our ethnic DNA primarily goes back to the Banjala tribes of India
but of course along the way we've married among those of different blood, so like our proud language and our (mostly) dusky skin our flowering's partly hybrid
constructs, constructed out of the stones of our prisons, out of the ashes of our burnings, but the stone within our heart remembers still as does the ash of our sackcloth how we were built to be the eternal scapegoats for the dwellers in perpetual stasis, fearful of change and motion, locked without pity into an eternal ice age, never considering the possibility of melting glaciers, sleeping in their fevered cloistered darkness, afraid, unwilling to open their eyes and see us true and whole as we dance for joy in spite of all our pain, singing of harmony and love, willing a world of acceptance into birth
another distance too far to be measured, another failure to grasp our outstretched hands, another fountain of hate erupting around, demanding for us death or at least our disappearance
so it is we move on again, we, the progressive ones, our wheel spinning forever, and even in the distance the shadow of our passing makes the cave-dwellers shudder
we are the same as you: we are all human, each one of us as capable of good or bad, love or hate, kindness or cruelty as you are
because we drink bitter water of tears does that please you?
because we tread the fields do you wish they are always barren beneath our feet?
because we have found you and come among you are either of us thereby lost?
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ladylinda
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Post by ladylinda on Jul 19, 2014 17:00:36 GMT -5
Race
alone, so utterly alone, walking in silence, almost in a trance, through the distorting mirror of distance and time, I seek somehow to atone for the sin of being simply what I am, the dark heresy of my forbidden blood, trickling slowly into the dead mud while no one round me gives a damn
if I'd been born in another land and not such a far-off time: thirty-three years before my birth, the crime of being who I am would see me banned from everywhere except the camps of death, and to their bitter chimneys I'd be taken, like my relatives, utterly forsaken as the gas chambers stole my breath
I gaze around, and everywhere I see - for all the fake smug smiles worn on each face - each one condemns me simply for my race, and without a thought would all have murdered me.
(This was written out of yet more anti-Roma hysteria and made me remember my visits to the death camps some years ago)
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ladylinda
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Post by ladylinda on Jul 20, 2014 7:16:10 GMT -5
Invitation
1)
not on any altar of stone or wood do I place the gifts I offer you, nor with any roll of drums or fanfare of trumpets do I announce their coming, nor with the stink of incense waft them across the air
2)
I invite you to walk among my forests, to hear the music of my singing, my hands will lead you even through the dark safely across my wood, no need for words or arguments or reasons: here the fresh flowers welcome us with their perfume
3)
I invite you to share the open door of my home, the warmth of my fire, the welcome of our 'pliashka' and our 'scran,' the laughter of our children, the songs we sing, the tales of our wanderings, our loves, all these I offer up to you
4)
I invite you to share the cloudy ramparts of our imagination, the bitter agony of whips and chains, the stench of our deaths crying out to the moon with our guiltless blood, the suspicion of every face when they see us
5)
I invite you to sample the wisdom we have garnered down the years, the skills we've learned, the harmony with earth we've learned to master, the deep ravine of our aching souls always open to the sky above
6)
I invite you to share the lightning-rod of our truth, the cleanliness with which we wash ourselves inside and out, the lips whose smiling gaze of endless summer blows away the dead shores of carrion mocking as they part the cobwebs of deceit
7)
I could invite you to share so much more with me but that would require you to turn away from the hissing flame of hatred inside your heart and instead speak only softly and without judgement, accept that you, not I, needs to seek forgiveness, and that you, not I, are the author of wrongs
8)
I will not burn you at the stake for your offences, but pour out all my kindness in a rainy shower to wash away the contamination of hate so that your heart became pure and clean and there is an end of the howling gales, the crashing waves of hate upon the shore
9)
There is nothing in the whole world which I could not invite you to share, if only you came with humility and tolerance, no need at all to cross my palm with silver, or seek to flatter me with golden deceit: a pure and honest heart is all that's needed
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ladylinda
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Post by ladylinda on Nov 20, 2014 17:32:22 GMT -5
Just in case there's the slightest doubt this is NOT about this forum or any member of it! It's me getting wound up by something that happened on a poetry forum I belong to where I'm in a collaborative contest and they've basically substituted their own total crap for what I wrote (and last time round I was the ONLY member of the 'team' who wrote so if it wasn't for me we'd have been eliminated in the previous round!)
On deciding to become a back seat driver:
When you work hard and give your best you've got a right to feel depressed when you get dissed for what you've done, kicked out the race before the starting gun, treated like what you've done was lousy, treated like you were just some blowsy bimbo slapper along for the ride, stupid enough to feel some pride in what you've done but still put down like you were a worthless moronic clown, your handiwork trashed, slung in the bin like you'd committed an immortal sin, well, what I say is - stuff this caper! I'm through with wasting pen and paper.
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Post by beth on Nov 21, 2014 1:54:30 GMT -5
Just in case there's the slightest doubt this is NOT about this forum or any member of it! It's me getting wound up by something that happened on a poetry forum I belong to where I'm in a collaborative contest and they've basically substituted their own total crap for what I wrote (and last time round I was the ONLY member of the 'team' who wrote so if it wasn't for me we'd have been eliminated in the previous round!) On deciding to become a back seat driver: When you work hard and give your best you've got a right to feel depressed when you get dissed for what you've done, kicked out the race before the starting gun, treated like what you've done was lousy, treated like you were just some blowsy bimbo slapper along for the ride, stupid enough to feel some pride in what you've done but still put down like you were a worthless moronic clown, your handiwork trashed, slung in the bin like you'd committed an immortal sin, well, what I say is - stuff this caper! I'm through with wasting pen and paper. You'd think people would feel embarrassed by doing something like that. Childishness.
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ladylinda
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Post by ladylinda on Nov 21, 2014 11:30:16 GMT -5
I wouldn't mind but in the previous round everyone left me in the lurch and I had to write and enter the 'collaborative group' post entirely on my own.
But I'm bowing out of the next round; maybe I'll go in for the one after but I'm so angry that they treated me with such total disrespect that they binned all but two lines of my poem without even telling me!
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ladylinda
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Post by ladylinda on Dec 2, 2014 20:16:21 GMT -5
Eirenicon
I seek no converts, wish to cause no pain, nor in wild slanging matches to engage where each successive breath grows hot with rage, till reason's buried under a terrain resembling a war zone. Let calm prevail, mutual restraint and willingness to listen rather than fronds of flame that dance and glisten among the fallow fields awash with shale, and let serenity become the norm rather than weather of perpetual storm; let peace break out upon the shrouded hill, a sea-wall stopper all the tidal waves and turn them to a placid water-mill where useful current flows, but never raves
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ladylinda
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Post by ladylinda on Dec 9, 2014 15:23:26 GMT -5
Bride of the Earth
nothing of you remains
though you were not old,
the auburn of your curls has withered now,
rusted to mould,
only the bones of you are left,
inert and cold
boxed in the earth, in the snivelling plains
of a burial plot;
green eyes shut, the pink rose on your brow
utterly shot,
fled from this earth of ours, utterly bereft
but never forgot
sleep like a baby if you will,
let your love bring you peace,
lie quiet and still,
your dead mouth find release
as it drinks its fill
till all motion cease
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ladylinda
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Post by ladylinda on Dec 9, 2014 15:24:21 GMT -5
Identity
after your birth, without complaint I nourished
you with my dark breast milk, and so you flourished
within this English land I call my home
till you had grown rich as my country's loam
this is my land: I've walked its rugged hills,
gathered herbs, roses, plants and daffodils,
slept in its forest, climbed down into its caves
and let its sea wash me with foaming waves
my skin is brown, yet I'm a British girl,
and proudly I the Union flag unfurl,
or the St George's flag; I praise my fate
in being born within my present state
half-breed I may be,, with my Roma blood
and Irish father, but, like any bud
I grow into a blooming British flower,
proud of my nation, steadfast as a tower
though others curse me for my foreign race,
and mock me for my dusky foreign face,
I'm British through and through, and proud to be
a citizen of the land of the free
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ladylinda
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Post by ladylinda on Dec 9, 2014 15:25:12 GMT -5
A Birth
tonight as the star hovers in the east
above a stable where the straw suffices
for bedding, and the distant shepherds
leave their flocks, haunted by that light
pulling them onwards. Oh, the wind is still,
its unruffled peace softer than ebbing tides,
no storm clouds occluding their vision,
towards that manger they made their curious way
greeted by a great light shining through
the normal darkness, rending its veil
so they might see with their blessed eyes
the face of ultimate compassion,
God made man, born like us to die,
but not in the bed of straw on which He lay,
rather a wooden cross on a green hil,
His life the ransom for our countless sins
the shepherds bend before the bairn,
processional for all their humble state,
out of their simple lips wise words appear,,
unforced, a sudden blinding revelation
bursting upon them. As they saw His limbs,
His gentle face that held within
the wisdom of all space and time
they knew they stood in the presence of God
unto us a child is born, a son is given,
His name shall be Immanuel,
and within the vastness of his boundless love
the shepherds were enfolded, gathered in
like lambs to the pen by the Lamb of God,
the certainty of eternal life
contained within this miracle of birth
touched them, and very soon, all this our earth
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ladylinda
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Post by ladylinda on Dec 9, 2014 15:26:15 GMT -5
Brown-skinned woman
brown is the colour of my skin, the colour of the earth, our origin; brown is toil, brown is soil, life that bubbles to the boil; brown is who and what I am, so from Assam to Amsterdam let's hear it for the girls in brown, give us renown! brown is copper shining bright, brown is a falling leaf in autumn night, brown is feeling you can fly, a miracle that makes you laugh or cry; brown is wisdom, understand? brown's our own designer brand brown is the sorrow in our heart, freedom denied, cast apart; brown is power, brown is joy, a beauty that can never cloy; don't you listen to their lies: brown is perfect in our eyes
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ladylinda
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Post by ladylinda on Jan 7, 2015 17:10:46 GMT -5
The Certainties
Hunched in fear under the anything but tentative assaults of dogmatism, how can light enter into a room with shuttered windows, barred doors, ears stoppered against the entry of unwanted sounds? along the street, clustered like bunches of grapes, the mob of civic-minded, right thinking and oh so abundantly certain prepare to attack all dissidents sure in their unctuous rectitude and knowing nothing but believing all truth lies within their knowledge and their compass, no matter what contrary facts reveal happy within their castles of indolence, praying to their sainted money, indifferent as the stars to those whose aching limbs toil and strain to build their comfort, feed their smug fantasies feeble, yet like any bully eager to strike at those they perceive as weaker than themselves; everything the fault of others, personal responsibility shirked, callousness praised for all their presumptions, pretensions and condescensions, all their vaunted claims to infallibility and perfection of judgement, logic escapes them, as empathy does nourished on acid, wormwood and gall, their spirit bitter with envy and rancour, full of sorrow for all their smug pretence of self-assurance and contentment, escape into reality impossible: truth would destroy their blighted vision
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ladylinda
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Post by ladylinda on Jan 12, 2015 15:34:50 GMT -5
The Massacre of Paris:
The sadness and the waste, the endless bitter taste of hate that chokes each throat as the assassins gloat over their cowardly attacks - many shot dead in the back - all in the service of a lie for which they wish others to die
Wimps and bullies, fakes and liars, choosing not roses but thorns and briars, evil thoughts and evil deeds bloody their path of endless weeds, destroying others out of their fear that allowing people freely to hear dissonant voices, make free choices, they would choose love, they would all shove away the lies and hate they peddle so in their blinded eyes murder cuts through the muddle, killing wins the gold medal, the death of innocents the way to paradise
freedom, tolerance, compassion, all the virtues needed to fashion a world that's just and fair and true are alien to the likes of you
oppressors, liars, cowards, scum, run to the hills and hide: freedom will never be struck dumb however many died
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ladylinda
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Post by ladylinda on Feb 12, 2015 17:09:16 GMT -5
Different
You gypsies always have to be different; face it, whatever you might try to be you're always going to be different. It's your fault, of course. you could be a dangerous bad boy all the women swoon over but never marry; they can't hack your freedom you could be a romantic anachronism, your colourful dicklo making you look like a bandido fighting an endless battle but always losing you could be a rich Roma, make it on the gauji scene like Django, surrounded by your cult of adoring groupies and selling your soul for bestipen you could fix cars, scrub floors, wait tables, work in a bar: but nobody wants a gypsy like that you gypsies always want to be different - crazy, right? I mean, just being a gypsy makes you different so what to do? go to uni and get a degree, learning English and history but knowing none of your own language and past you gypsies always have to be different - dressing that way, dangling your ear-rings with chunky bling, minding your own business then come the gavers and either cart you off into stir of move you on. you gypsies always want to be different, not seeing just being what you are always makes you different. It's all your fault, of course
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