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Post by Deleted on Nov 18, 2016 12:13:16 GMT -5
The cave I am a cave, warmed at times with the flame of wood, within me, now and then, dwellers, human and animal, the humans wrapped in skins on the roof and sides of me the humans create art, later generations will discourse in vast tomes of criticism about their meaning and their origin my dwellers, when the day is hot, sweat as they hunt or gather, or, when the weather is cold,. hug each other tight as they shiver I remember all the sights and sounds passing within my enforced residence here, thousands of years have passed yet little changes humans still huddle against the cold or sweat in rasping heat, they still hunt and gather, even if no less often for the necessities of life, instead, greedily ferret out money there were no crooks and con men in the days when I gave life and shelter, no prisons, armies, the good earth tilled and tended, not violated, built upon to create fripperies and vanities in unrelenting insanity a woman enters me, a tourist I am guessing, a man walks at her side sister, I will speak to you, just as you are washed each month with blood so too the blood of the living and dead who dwelt within me once, still haunts me though I am old, I am no more eternal than you are, I have as little faith in the future as in the past I trusted life and death both flourished, children were born and nourished within my sepulchre and temple sister, my body is rock, there is no softness in my nature; you are born of gentle, yielding flesh, even your body partly a cave that love may enter you endure the monthly bloody tied, the nine-month labour of your pregnancy, the pain as your cave opens upon the world with a cry of new birth out of our different caves the world of my cold stiff endurance and your passionate embrace of life, even in spite of all its pain, the warm humanity of you salutes my aged soldier of rock, perched in magnificent indifferent solitude Author notes I'm pregnant again - my third child will be due in June next year. Maybe it's made me more reflective but it's certainly lifted my spirits after a few months of gloom and despair. The metaphor of the cave of course stands for the literal cave in which humans once dwelt, the female genitalia, the dark womb of society when it goes wrong and the matrix of the spirit and God's mysterious power that shines through the world's darkness and brings light and comfort to the troubled and despairing souls. Thank you for explaining the imagery, as if it's not obvious. I still hope that your pregnancy goes well.
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ladylinda
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Post by ladylinda on Nov 19, 2016 11:59:10 GMT -5
A bookie speaks:
Pascal, old son, you think you know the odds? Let me tell you something you might not understand.
You've been trying to mystify folk by making out there are seven options when it comes to your bet on God (if he exists or not)
but let me tell you for free you're stacking the odds fiddling a false favourite
the truth is, old son, either God exists or he doesn't
so the REAL odds either way is only 50-50! Nice try but the wrong SP!
Author's note: written for a contest where the prompt was Pascal's 'wager' about the existence or non-existence of God.
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ladylinda
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Post by ladylinda on Nov 19, 2016 12:00:18 GMT -5
Ladders to the horizon:
I thought if I looked hard enough I could find a real good stocking filler for coming Christmas
but I guess the stockings would only be laddered like me!
(Written for a contest with a picture prompt of ladders facing the horizon)
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ladylinda
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Post by ladylinda on Nov 19, 2016 15:11:53 GMT -5
An oxymoron:
cruel to be kind, he said but I only saw cruelty without kindness
(Written for a prompt from a Rupi Kaur poem)
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ladylinda
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Post by ladylinda on Nov 19, 2016 19:10:24 GMT -5
Born a Woman
1) we are cups, waiting to be filled, empty inside unless we receive the temporary completeness of our cup running over
2) we are cupboards, waiting to be opened, tunnels of potential love, waiting to be discovered
3) like Snow White, we have eaten the poisoned apple; all we can do in our enforced slumber is to await our wakening by some prince
4) the prince is out of town, away on his vacation in a yacht, partying with movie stars, looking for an heiress to boost his coffers
5) so instead of him we have to make do with men who charge in like a Sidewinder missile exploding inside our cave
6) we're almost a toilet wall: they write graffiti on our bodies as they invade our sex; groping clumsily at the hills of our breasts, drenching us with slobbering kisses
7) we smile of course, even if it feels like a ten-ton rock bearing its weight down on us, even if it feels more like an electric shock than a mystical experience
8) of course they talk of love, and some of them even mean it; they bring you flowers, (expecting YOU to put them in a vase with water), or give you chocolates or jewellery
9) But when it comes down to it even the tenderest among them harbours at least a fantasy of us, naked and being raped
10) I don't entirely blame them for that; even within my heart I know rape without love is at least sincere, and at times, weary of men dwindled into wimps, desperately pretending to be feminists, forcing me to fake orgasms for them, I welcome the brutal honesty of rape
11) broken in body and spirit, trampled on, called names, abused, called slut or whore if I do, teaser if I don't
12) whatever crime they accuse me of I am always guilty, simply because of what I am, a woman
13) I am condemned by an accident of birth to monthly rides on my menstrual cycle, doomed by the innate passivity of my body - born to be used, not to use; born to be thrust into, never to thrust - and 'being on top' just means you do all the work while he lies back relaxing
14) I try to sing, keeping myself afloat in this dusky river
15) I rise up from this sea of troubles, soar somehow, drenched with the spume of the ocean, and grow the talons of an eagle, flying above the shocked land, seeking the mountains of stillness and solitude
16) then I return to my prison of flesh, the roots of returning pain running so deep even the corrosion of acid still choking my spirit at times, cannot cauterize the cancer within, making me drown in myself
16) my breasts become two flowers, blooming in spite of the darkness around, but who will tend my garden?
17) the pain of giving birth, feeling an alien life you've dragged around inside you for nine long months, finally exploding out of your useless hole, leaving you dazed and exhausted
18) who told the moon not to shine her light upon you any longer?
who asked the dirt to gather itself together and challenge me to a cleaning contest?
19) even within the nest I built I fear the imminent arrival of cuckoos
Author notes
Prompt - thoughts on being a woman; I am British (though some of my countryfolk don't reckon I am on account of my being a Romany gypsy!)
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ladylinda
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Post by ladylinda on Nov 20, 2016 11:22:40 GMT -5
Wrong:
It's wrong to live in cloudy fantasy, Pretending the ideal can be the real; By doing that you lose sight of humanity, Become hard and inflexible as steel.
The branches of the willow have to bend Before the avalanche of tousling wind; We humans too should learn to seek for truth, Look on our dreams as part of our lost youth.
Accept that life is hard; sorrow and pain Will be with us forever. Our best shot Is to alleviate the endless strain And say, we did our best; that's all we've got.
It's lies to say all obstacles will fade In an imagined future, brightly planned In your wild head by your excited hand: Soon we'll be prisoned in your dream's stockade.
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ladylinda
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Post by ladylinda on Nov 27, 2016 18:50:00 GMT -5
I wrote this for a contest on trailer park trash. I'm not one but I've known some and I can relate to them.
The song of the trailer park trash girl
trailer trash ain't got much cash folk call me brash and try to bash
me every chance they get treat me worse than a stubbed-out cigarette and so what if I got Tourette syndrome? I got a right to live, which they don't get
just on account of how I'm poor they see my face and slam the door call me a worthless whore threaten me with the goddamn law
trailer trash walk free and proud never one of the sheepling crowd trailer crash just ain't allowed in all them acres rich folks plowed
folks that live in fancy places think that they hold all the aces to them we're just empty spaces semi-human big disgraces
but we're as good as fancy folk and just cos we are always broke don't mean we got to take the yoke they want to put on us - the smoke
of our free spirit rising high into the unregulated sky a middle finger till we die to them that want to pass us by
trailer trash walk proud and free in our despised poverty but rich folks envy us, you see: we're the true symbols of our liberty
Author notes
Prompt - trailer park trash
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ladylinda
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Post by ladylinda on Nov 27, 2016 18:55:39 GMT -5
We should all be Sisters (and Brothers) of Mercy
the cracked bell rings out the fear of impending hell here and now
we will not bow our heads before our oppressors, nor will we mistake our foes for father confessors
life is give and life is take
some only take while others give
we, the victims, can only forgive
without the darkness all around how could we hear the gentle sound of light exploding in our mind, teaching us not to be cruel but kind?
Author notes
Prompt - written as a tribute to Leonard Cohen for a contest based on one of his songs
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ladylinda
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Post by ladylinda on Nov 30, 2016 11:27:52 GMT -5
Heroes:
carved in stone or bronze, feted and praised, isn't it sad?
now you are securely dead, unable to intervene or be obstructive you are deemed safe enough to be a hero
your living voice, though powerful and seismic, disturbed and challenged
now you will gather dust in the museum of approved names whose life meant so much yet canonised to nothingness in death
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Post by annaj26 on Nov 30, 2016 14:51:36 GMT -5
This is a very nice one, Lady Lin.
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ladylinda
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Post by ladylinda on Dec 5, 2016 17:48:10 GMT -5
In praise of moderation
easy to set a fire, harder to quench the flame
crazy to admire the arsonist's ardour rather than blame
lust for destruction cold hatred of life misanthropic resentment
dust we are, in traction between joy and strife, defenestrated contentment
so when we confront evil's banality cold indifference
though, to be blunt, we prefer finality, its evasive pretence
truth, (pace idealistic youth) is complicated, infinitely variegated
dogmatists deride those who prefer to step aside rather than err
things fall apart, Yeats said it truly, but the centre - the heart - must hold fast against the bully
Author notes
We live in an increasingly polarised and intolerant world where dogmatism, hatred and prejudice are becoming more and more prevalent.
As a moderate, centrist person who believes in the liberal values of freedom, tolerance, fairness and compassion that saddens me.
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ladylinda
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Post by ladylinda on Dec 7, 2016 15:48:58 GMT -5
The Conversation of Silence:
We are so tired of speeches, the endless rhetoric, spin, media hype, deliberate suppression of positive news and "warnings" falling like rockets
only when we are asleep - the endless babble of background noise banished to attics emptied, not of ourselves, but of meaningless clutter
pnly perhaps then, at that still point in time, when our spirits are not artificially charged with the venom of prejudice, certainties of ignorance, can we truly talk
in our silent listening we may uncover what remains hidden behind the choking smog of disinformation, the cancer of fear and distrust
come into this forest, dark and quiet, yet teeming with unseen activity, even in this cold winter leafmould and streams testify to life
forget the brash neon, the gaudy facades of the endless mirages dazzling, blinding your eyes in the megametropolitan circus, forget the incessant rancour and propaganda
here you can see life at its most primal, intimate, fundamental, life that matters, not life as presented to us by fawning admen and "reality" TV shows
there are no borders here, no boundaries, nothing to hold you back from embracing life, joining its passionate dance of freedom, equality, toleration, mutual respect and love
walking alone in the woods - but you are never alone - an owl, a bat, a squirrel, even nocturnal insects, all around
here, where you might feel lost, is where you truly find yourself, here, in the waking sleep of silent music, true conversation can begin at last
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ladylinda
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Post by ladylinda on Dec 7, 2016 15:51:00 GMT -5
In search of freedom:
were we ever free? who built the ziggurats of Mesopotamia, the pyramids and sphinx of Egypt?
in Athens, the helots toiled to build the Parthenon; in Rome, the slaves laboured to the "glory" of its empire
then it was not enough simply to own our bodies: the church of Rome resolved to own our minds, (an example other oppressors quickly followed)
heretic after heretic tortured and burned alive to the glory of their imitation God
the shackles of slavery borne for too long, the scars of the whip never truly gone
so too, though we rise out of the ashes of Auschwitz, we remain charred forever
and freedom seems to be always slightly out or reach, over the next hill, in another town
sometimes people tell you, I can bring you freedom, I can set you on the right road, I can take you to the palace of crystal
but it's always the same, somewhere over the rainbow; in the here and now they starve us of freedom
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ladylinda
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Post by ladylinda on Dec 16, 2016 12:01:04 GMT -5
Misperceptions:
your counterfeit anger is so misplaced, yet, like the phoney tears you cry, you try to trick the times into confusing your acting with passion while the truth is, you're so cold inside, you haven't realised your whole body and soul stand frozen into a living ice statue
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ladylinda
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Post by ladylinda on Dec 16, 2016 12:02:54 GMT -5
False hope:
emptiness fills any space you let it, like the uncaring banish empathy to safely dead and distant stars
the fire glows, almost as if the coals were real, but it's only imitation, a trick of the light
like so many of us, you are stretched out in stasis, hoping (in spite of all experience) for the train to Utopia someday to pull in and stop at your abandoned station
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