ladylinda
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Post by ladylinda on Jun 4, 2017 11:57:07 GMT -5
I think it's fairly obvious why I wrote this piece in the early hours of Saturday morning.
Cheap Thrills:
You get a cheap thrill out of being bullies Not recognising you’re a bunch of wimps No balls no brains no honour and above all No love no empathy and no compassion
You get your kicks from bigging yourself up Unable to face the total wuss you are Living by choice in a stinking midden Pretending a dunghill is sacred truth
You know nothing and understand less Brainwashed by rote into following falsity Blaspheming God and worshipping Satan Doing only the work of the deceiver
You with your smartphones and Twitter feeds You who simplify the world Through a distorting lens in which Only evil is good
Dosing yourself with whizz and coke To make yourself believe you’re some kind of hero Rather than the total zero You are in spite of your drugged-up mind
Your brain is emptier than a drained pool Unable to think or to perceive the world Doped on your Satanism you get cheap thrills From the crystal meth of your sick perversion
You hear but never listen You see but perceive nothing You touch but do not feel You speak but only gaseous wind escapes you
And people worth a million of your sort Die because of you You get your cheap thrills out of knowing You’ve brought more needless misery to life
I am a simple soul Trying to feel the rhythm of the earth Feeling the heartbeat of each star and planet Touching each quark and quasar with my mind And the vast harmony of the celestial spheres Plays its delicate music within my spirit
What good is it giving birth To a life you hope to hold and nurture Suckle and love and cherish When all you offer a child for its future Is the eternal absence that is your presence
Each breath you draw poisons the air around Each second of your existence turns the world To a perpetual winter; your excised heart Seeks to entrap the world in a crust of ice
We who are human remain alive In spite of the frozen tundra to try to throw over Our free and compassionate world of love We will not lie beneath your duvet of frost
You are bland and bleached Ossified and calcified utterly Lead runs in your veins rather than honest blood You fakes you poseurs you hypocritical wimps
You only kill the defenceless Those unable to fight back All braver than you Dying for something that matters Not for lies and hatred But for simply joy and truth
Across the poisoned air Clouds drift in the heavy sky Mountains of passionate love Their shed tears irrigating the earth you scorched
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ladylinda
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Post by ladylinda on Jun 5, 2017 10:14:42 GMT -5
A more hopeful poem.
Great Expectations:
the earth is green and brown and sometimes black: only when snow covers it with its sheet does it display true whiteness. The deceit of calling 'white' what's really 'pink' takes you aback with the audacity of what's been said, the implication being pale's the best; as I prepare my coffee-coloured breast to nourish the small fruit of our marriage bed with milk of love and life. Against the cold I'll press my body, not let my baby shiver a single second after they deliver new him or her to our expanding fold.
no choir of angels gather, nor will a star shine in the east to send a guiding light, nor will the angels with their robes of white sing hallelujahs to us from afar.
yet he or she shall have a bed of straw to guide them safe into life's treacherous shore, and love enough to fill the ocean wide flood over them, even when we have died.
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Post by deyana on Jul 18, 2017 22:12:57 GMT -5
Really like all these poems, LadyLinda!
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ladylinda
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Post by ladylinda on Jul 20, 2017 16:00:16 GMT -5
Thank you, Deyana!
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Post by Deleted on Aug 10, 2017 15:40:19 GMT -5
Lately I have been writing some new poems. Most are deeply personal and I may or may not decide to share them on here.
In the meantime here are some that are not inspired by personal aspects of life.
The first one is one of three that was inspired by the recent discussion on here about hell.
Divine tragedy:
Since I was dead at last I descended to hell, A place of perpetual night yet with blazing fires, Each part of the bodies there incandescent with flames, Whether the flesh of whores or murderers It was all one, a spectacular firework display With the dead as human Catherine wheels.
I came there from the solid earth, Green trees, woods churned up by mud from rain, And distant sunlight giving light and warmth And where I had known love and kindness.
I tried to talk to the other denizens of hell But nothing but silence and the occasional scream Came by way of answer. I looked around, In search of imps or even Satan himself, But all that met my eyes was darkness and flames.
A sign was carved in blood over this place, Reading: ‘There is no love here, no dishonesty, Nothing of joy or kindness; all is dark. Do not forget: the reason you are here Is because a God of love Enjoys the spectacle of your eternal torment.’
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Post by Deleted on Aug 10, 2017 15:41:28 GMT -5
Goodness and truth:
All that is truly good Comes out of love and kindness, For our survival we require food But beyond that, only wilful blindness Prevents our hearts from seeing what is right: Right remains what it is, and is NOT might.
Trick out your baubles in the fancied bling Of custom, convention, decorum, all the rest Of all the world’s unnecessary things In the name of which the gentle are oppressed.
All the illusions spun from vanity – Heaven and hell, earth’s privileged position – No more than pious dreams, to rule humanity Through an endless quest to submit to prohibition Rather than choose the natural path of love; Instead, gaze, fearful, at the skies above.
Dreams, imagined fancies, hopes and fears Too easily deceive the mortal brain, Which aches when it thinks, when the honeysuckle clears And all’s seen properly, the legerdemain With which spellbinders seek to snare us in; Those who see truth have the discipline To walk the way of love and intellect: All other paths we simply must reject.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 10, 2017 15:42:53 GMT -5
Thoughts on hell:
As a non-believer Those who imagine their conjectures Are irrefutable truth, dogmatically dclare All who reject the faith Are damned forever, Doomed to eternal suffering At the hands of a supposedly loving God.
Where is the sense of proportion in that, Or even the remotest approach to justice? If God can torture me for endless ages Simply for my unbelief, In what way is he distinguishable from Satan?
Not even the tiniest of tears – Enough to melt the heart of a caring human – Can move this imagined being from his purpose Of wanton cruelty. If he knows all, Knows the future before it even happens, He knows by definition that all our actions Are beyond our control, predestined utterly.
If he is all goodness Yet evil persists in the world It is either according to his will – In which case he cannot be good – Or contrary to his will – In which case he cannot be all-powerful.
Of course his defenders raise the excuse of free will, And leaving aside the question of whether we DO, Does God give earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis Free will, a licence to kill?
Whichever way I look at the dogma The idea of God torturing people forever Makes him a sadist, anything BUT A being worthy of worship.
I may not BELIEVE in a God of love But at least I can understand WHY He could be an object of admiration and love.
How can anyone with normal human feelings Regard the God of hell-fire As anything but a monster, or look upon him With anything other than Contempt, disgust and loathing?
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Post by Deleted on Aug 10, 2017 15:43:38 GMT -5
Questions:
Are you so sure of all your certainties, Wishing to condemn all who do not share Your self-enclosed vision? In this vast universe Is the third planet from our mortal sun Really so special? Far beyond us lies A world of other planets, distant stars, Remoter galaxies than our Milky Way, And yet you claim your God has chosen us.
The endless illumination of the skies For infinite distances blazing through space Is what? A kind of cosmic decoration? A waste of time and space, and to what end?
Yahweh, God, Allah, whatever name You give to the being you imagine cares More about us than anything, Why should he bother with so insignificant A rock, rotating round our tiny sun?
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Post by annaj26 on Aug 10, 2017 17:00:46 GMT -5
Wow Mike! These are really good!
I like yours, too, Lin.
I'm usually in too much of a rush to stop and take a look in these threads.
Thanks for posting your poems.
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ladylinda
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Post by ladylinda on Aug 27, 2017 14:56:27 GMT -5
Elegy for Anna
millions of dead festoon this earth of ours; even among the ones I know and love too many have since passed beyond my sight
though I, like you, believe and trust in God's great mercy, promise of eternal life, still, the absence of you in flesh troubles me
the illusion we imagine to be the world we strive to inhabit belongs to both of us. You touched my heart with your warm kindness, often made me laugh with your cartoons, your images, your sayings
your death broke on me like a snapping wire, a tumbled-down pylon. How was it possible that you, so seemingly indestructible, amazingly cheerful always, should be laid low by the assassin cancer?
have you abandoned our world of make-believe for the solid realm of eternity? are there new dreams to delight you in that world?
I am bewildered that you, such a solid thing, should be removed from us. Surely gravity will pull you back into the living world again, so we may laugh and disagree about politics, race, religion, Irish history, and the conspiracy theories popping out from under your tinfoil hat?
a lady, prudish even, sometimes shy, yet full of mischief, not above implying you swung both ways in your relationships
the thief of death stole in to your pure soul and robbed you of your precious life
the end of all our wrangling, all our flirting, the river of affection suddenly silted up, your sudden absence an aching vacuum inside the blackest hole of the universe
I hope and pray and trust that God will lift you high up, among the sparkling stars illuminating the sky above our night-time world with your radiance, your passion, your sincerity
a part of me has died along with you; it is always so when death claims one we love, and the remaining soul must try to navigate their course, with one less familiar trusted landmark by which to steer our mortal ship of fools
perhaps your fragrance lingers on the airl if so, I long to breathe in that perfume, spray it upon myself, so that at least a fragment of the scent may linger on, even in your absence
just as death gathers up life within its net, so too we live in both sides of the looking glass, the inner and outer world
which (if either) of these worlds is real we cannot say; all is illusion, every self-portrait a study in artifice
if you would come again we'd need no words to cast their shadows between us
each of us knows there can be joy even in pain, love and empathy even in separation
we have both raged against the things we saw as unjust, evil, even if they were not always the same things
I have wrapped around myself the sheet of your laughter to form a kind of keepsake
you have been torn out of our world of bodies and desire into a landscape with infinite curved space and at most the mass of a neutrino
now your sundered selfhood charges itself with the energy of the universe, the broken fragments of you fashioned into the kaleidoscope that is the cosmos
in the midst of life, in the midst of death, your giant heart spills out its life blood more powerful than millions of seeds planted in loamy soil
can we make the return journey from death to life to conception, travelling back into the womb and be again no more than the swimming tadpole or receptive egg, that once we were?
you wove your tapestry of dreams and hopes out of words and images, carved out upon the world your thoughts, desires, threading into life your vision of the world you longed for
I have shed tears for you, dear Anna, said prayers for your soul in three languages - German, Romanes and English - yet all my tears like the fountain of words flowing from me, now that I write of yu, are dancers at a wake. Te soves misto, may you sleep well, meine schwesterlein, du, wie Heine sagt, bist sowie eine Engel
if I could call you back again, breath on the embers of your extinguished fire and blow it back once more to radiant heat I'd gladly do it
the glittering stars possess you now
schlaf wohl, pislikurja!
Author notes
A friend of mine died of cancer a week ago. I wrote this tribute to her. I used a few foreign words in here - 'te soves misto' means 'may you sleep well' in Romanes; 'meine schwesterlein' means 'my little sister' in German; 'du, wie Heine sagt' means 'you, as Heine said, 'bist sowie eine Engel' 'are so like an angel; 'schlaf wohl' means 'sleep well' in German and 'pislikurja' means 'darling' or 'sweetheart' in Romanes.
Anna was German though she spoke brilliant English.
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Post by Dex on Aug 27, 2017 15:57:33 GMT -5
I'm sorry, Lin. It's hard to lose a good friend.
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ladylinda
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Post by ladylinda on Aug 27, 2017 16:37:20 GMT -5
Thank you, Dex. Yes, it is hard.
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ladylinda
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Post by ladylinda on Sept 11, 2017 16:38:32 GMT -5
Hurricane Irma
the wind sucks up the waters, emptying itself in a vast regurgitation on the already battered land
birds enter the eye of you, your dark spiral of wind and water changes direction, losing and gathering speed
there is no malice in the wind, no anger or hatred in the onrushing waters, simply leaving their footprints on the land, breaking apart the locks and walls we fashion, battering the world in its path as the earth is ravaged, swept away all our temples of greed and pride, gouged out by wind and water
purged, delivered, from the vanity of hope, all our sophistication and technology nothing before the raw power of the storm, and neither anguish nor remorse will save us
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ladylinda
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Post by ladylinda on Sept 12, 2017 14:35:41 GMT -5
Birthdays: For my mother:
Each year that I survive I grow a little older, Though strangely, when my birthday comes It’s only one day on from yesterday, Yet I’m a whole year older
I know, Mum, I’ve been a difficult child, Rebelling against chapel, Going off the rails And into crime
I know it shocked you When you found out Just how bad I’d been; A whore, a junkie, a mugger, a thief, In spite of the morals you tried to instil, In spite of the beatings you gave me Out of love
Two proud Aries girls, Mother and daughter, Both stubborn as mules, Each one determined to get their own way
Neither one has said often enough ‘me cam tu, pislikurja, Tu sa mandi’s camlo, komi’ [I love you, sweetheart ; You’re my darling, always]
Like you I’ve sung all three of my kids To sutturs [sleep] with Brahms’ Lullaby; In spite of my screech-owl voice It still seems to soothe them!
You gave me (and I thank you for it) Your strength, your passion, Your love and caring, Your hatred of all that’s sham, Your matchless courage
You kissed and cuddled me When I was young, And then again, after my repentance, Forgave me. Miri dai, fordel, fordel! [Mum, forgive me, forgive me!]
Even though when I told you I was in love and planned to marry And you disapproved of the age gap between us You still made us both welcome, Accepting each one Into your welcoming arms And your big heart
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ladylinda
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Post by ladylinda on Sept 12, 2017 14:36:17 GMT -5
First meeting:
I held you closely, safe in my strong arms, Hoping you’d like my freely offered charms – My youth, my breasts, my long legs. We embrace, And I gaze deeply into your dear face.
I felt my lips form words I never thought I’d speak again. You, in polite retort, Unclasped yourself from me with a sad smile That made me wonder if I was so vile In your blue eyes, gazing on my brown skin, Or was it that you sensed my life of sin?
Upon your face I saw mistrust and fear; You grew more distant each time I drew near. So I began to plead my case with words, Knowing each one I uttered was absurd, And you, unmoved by all my heartfelt please, Moved further from me. Like retreating trees Blown backwards by fierce gales, it seemed you felt We were twin icebergs that could never melt.
I cursed the life of shame I’d lived before – Junkie, delinquent, mugger, thief and whore. Perhaps the sins engraved upon my face Made you resist my efforts to embrace.
Dark skin, dark deeds, dark heart: somehow I knew I’d found my Mr Right, and he was you, Standing before me, bashful, shy and hurt As I thrust myself against you, cheap and pert.
You were a gentleman, not like the men I’d known Who’d used me and abused me. All alone I’d walked in loneliness for three long years, Too numb inside me even to shed tears.
Back to my room I took you, then began To wake the lust that lives in every man; I started stripping, offering my flesh In hope that soon our bodies would enmesh Upon the bed, our mutual joy we’d find In union of body, heart and mind.
Yet you got up and turned away from me; You left, and I, rejected, did not see It was not that you did not feel desire But you were still trapped in the grimpen mire Of numbness, fear, unwillingness to chance Your injured heart to the eddies of romance.
Later, a little slower, we resumed Our meetings. I knew now that I’d presumed Too much upon my youthful charms. Instead We talked, and minds grew warm – and so – to bed!
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