Original poems 2018

[ladylinda]

Seventy Years of Israel:

how long ago it was when you
were granted nationhood again,
out of the chimneys of hatred
the smoke of your murdered souls flew free

for all the pain of your bruised lips,
your battered faces and weary bodies
you, Phoenix-like, arose out of your ashes,
and planted flowers in the desert

your new land, the same as your old land,
your ancestral land, stolen away from you
by successive conquerors – Romans, Arabs, Turks,
yet through it all a remnant always remained,
living on your true homeland, Eretz Israel

I am not a Jew, I am a gypsy,
but like you I have been forced to wander the earth,
despised, rejected, persecuted, imprisoned,
even, like you, murdered in genocide’s furnaces

and after the war’s end the world listened,
the United Nations granted you the right
to return to the homeland of your heart,
your rightful dwelling-place

so, after the bloody slaughter,
the salt of your tears dried on your faces,
your fists like hammers fighting against
the ocean of hatred that so nearly drowned you

so you left, returned,
made a new world out of your old world,
changed it for the better,
brought freedom and tolerance in your train

the silent sand sings psalms to you,
the waters irrigate the barren land,
cities and villages founded on hope,
a land of promise

now, many years later, the skies are dark,
rockets and bombs and guns
hurled against you, denying you even your right to exist,
denying you even your right to exist as humans

‘death to the Jews!’ the racists chant
and among the ruins of conflict
all human hands are charred as if with ash
in the endless desolation brought by hatred

if, by a miracle, there could arise
a Palestinian Gandhi, Mandela or King,
how different the world could be; instead
dry eyes sneer at suffering,
smug in their cloak of hate,
their blinkered false certainties

they have wrung out their hearts,
squeezing the last drop of compassion
through the mangle of racism and evil,
dreaming only of inflicting pain and death

you rose out of the ashes,
the rockets aimed at Tel Aviv,
the lurkers in the fields, attacking school buses,
all these you know and endure

in the earth from which you came, to which you belong,
in the rhythm of your endlessly persecuted blood,
your eternal defiance rings through hills and valleys
against the racist thugs who menace you

so, though not a Jew,
I congratulate you on seventy years
of standing for freedom and tolerance
against the armies of evil and hatred

[ladylinda]

I just published my latest book of poems today. It's available (like all the others) as a free e-book download on Smashwords.

Here it is - and the links to all the others if anyone's interested.

www.smashwords.com/books/view/820134 (Songs of Struggle)

www.smashwords.com/books/view/755273 (Songs of Nature)

www.smashwords.com/books/view/755272 (Songs of the Spirit)

www.smashwords.com/books/view/754913 (The Gypsy Road)

www.smashwords.com/books/view/754766 (Songs of the Way)

www.smashwords.com/books/view/752153 (Songs of Other Lands)

www.smashwords.com/books/view/749214 (Songs of the Romani Road)

Songs of Struggle is the latest - poems on politics and society. Songs of the Romani Road, Songs of the Way and The Gypsy Road are about my Romani heritage; Songs of Nature is what it says; Songs of Other Lands are my translations from German, French, Turkish, Russian and of course Romanes.

All free to download!

[Jessiealan]

Apr 24, 2018 16:47:33 GMT -5 ladylinda said:

I just published my latest book of poems today. It's available (like all the others) as a free e-book download on Smashwords.

Here it is - and the links to all the others if anyone's interested.

www.smashwords.com/books/view/820134 (Songs of Struggle)

www.smashwords.com/books/view/755273 (Songs of Nature)

www.smashwords.com/books/view/755272 (Songs of the Spirit)

www.smashwords.com/books/view/754913 (The Gypsy Road)

www.smashwords.com/books/view/754766 (Songs of the Way)

www.smashwords.com/books/view/752153 (Songs of Other Lands)

www.smashwords.com/books/view/749214 (Songs of the Romani Road)

Songs of Struggle is the latest - poems on politics and society. Songs of the Romani Road, Songs of the Way and The Gypsy Road are about my Romani heritage; Songs of Nature is what it says; Songs of Other Lands are my translations from German, French, Turkish, Russian and of course Romanes.

All free to download!

Linda, you are amazing. All this and a baby girl, too.

Bravo!

[ladylinda]

Thanks, Jessie.

Recent events have inspired me to write two new poems.

[ladylinda]

To the Brainwashed of the World:

at least when I go out on demos or marches
I, an adult, know what it is I am challenging

not like young kids,
or, even worse,
babies holding placards in prams,
brandishing slogans
they can’t possibly understand

I don’t even expect to have much effect
and the media always trashes me and my kind anyway

independent thinkers! they are dangerous,
we can allow the oppressed to play at revolution
but to permit a thought, a word, that does not fit
into conventional ‘wisdom’ – that is the sin of sins

nor can you stick me in your tidy boxes:
I voted Brexit, but hate racism and xenophobia,
despise Trump and Tommy Robinson, hate global capitalism,
but equally detest socialist myopia

Corbyn, Abbott, Starmer, McDonnell,
make me want to throw up; a bunch of fakes and twicers,
with the integrity of a prostitute pleasing a client,
and Sadiq Khan’s racist fulminations

I, as a non-white woman,
am expected (by media preconceptions of me)
to be left-wing, politically correct,
demanding ever greater special favours

actually my politics defy description,
somewhere between a libertarian and a liberal,
pro-life on abortion, pro-capital punishment
pro prison reform and legalising drugs

I’m not waiting for the mirage
of yet another failed revolution with its fake promises
of salvation and deliverance; I know better,
the best we can do is try to ameliorate
the worst abuses of this unfair, unfree world,
and try to bring a little more liberty
into the jail of a world that we inhabit
and, to the best of our ability,
even try to live

[ladylinda]

Asking victims to prove themselves worthy:

‘Jews have to earn the trust of the Labour Party’ – Billy Bragg

I am not a Jew,
but I understand their suffering,
born of a people who, like them,
were murdered simply for their ethnicity

all these years after Auschwitz
is your heart still closed in indifference?
are your eyes too fixed to shed a tear?

flowers bloom even in graveyards,
fire scorches and withers the earth;
the sands of pity run through your hands
into an endless nothingness

you who sang of a New England,
you who wrote of the Milkman of Human Kindness,
now shake your bossy fist
in denunciation of others simply because
they are not WASPS like you

you are no different, Billy Bragg,
from the neo-Nazis you cheerfully slag off,
forgetting that we all must look in the mirror
unless we are blind (in your case, wilfully)

who will survive your culling?
who will you deem worthy of salvation?
what more hoops do you demand people jump through?
or is a second genocide your aim?

only a racist like you would spit on graves,
deny the value of shed blood on earth
to irrigate and grow each trampled leaf
till a free country rushes into birth
out of oppression, murder. do the errors
of history teach you nothing? does the bloom
of farms in arid deserts fill your heart with terrors,
a fear that perhaps your angry ranting boom
might be mistaken? learn to be more humble:
pride’s certainties too often make us tumble,
and let compassion start to heal the scar
strangling your heart. all are as human as you are.

[ladylinda]

In Memoriam John McCain:

it was summer, the bright sun blazing
across the sky as if in tribute
when your giant eagle wings, outspread so long,
were folded in upon themselves at last

the bustling crowds, the forest fires,
the pilgrims to Mount Rushmore, the flow of transport
continued; all the passionate angry love
of you, that candle of hope, snuffed out at last

in spite of your sickness
you charged like a bull, prowled like a tiger,
never allowing pain and approaching death
to silence your proud mouth, stopper your dauntless heart

though deeply American, your fierce integrity
belongs to the world, shedding itself like spent leaves
and mulching the soil for others with your example,
and even in death you cannot be silenced

all the empty vessels of corrupt politicos
will bray their insincere tributes to a man who shamed them,
the rats and roaches with not a fragment of your courage
suddenly, for five mintues at least, pretending to be your friends

one of the last of your line, a man who stood for
the liberal values that for a hundred years
defined the Republican Party, before it became
enslaved to the grim ghosts of Buckley and Rand

now the madmen will have it all their own way,
a voice of reason and moderation lost to the earth,
dishonest businessmen, wimpish nutjobs and other detritus
clogging the widening swamp created in spite of you

while the world eagerly washes itself in blood
you, a true hero, a great soul, lie in the night
but even from the prison of the tomb
your voice still resonates with silent honesty

let your passing perhaps bring a tear
even to the shameless ones whose heartlessness
dries up each river, poisons every fountain,
and let the depth of their shame overwhelm them

out of your now dried blood
let vineyards of hope blossom,
let the sun that warmed you while alive
shine on us all, help us to thrive

[Jessiealan]

Apr 22, 2018 16:27:54 GMT -5 ladylinda said:

Seventy Years of Israel:

how long ago it was when you
were granted nationhood again,
out of the chimneys of hatred
the smoke of your murdered souls flew free

for all the pain of your bruised lips,
your battered faces and weary bodies
you, Phoenix-like, arose out of your ashes,
and planted flowers in the desert

your new land, the same as your old land,
your ancestral land, stolen away from you
by successive conquerors – Romans, Arabs, Turks,
yet through it all a remnant always remained,
living on your true homeland, Eretz Israel

I am not a Jew, I am a gypsy,
but like you I have been forced to wander the earth,
despised, rejected, persecuted, imprisoned,
even, like you, murdered in genocide’s furnaces

and after the war’s end the world listened,
the United Nations granted you the right
to return to the homeland of your heart,
your rightful dwelling-place

so, after the bloody slaughter,
the salt of your tears dried on your faces,
your fists like hammers fighting against
the ocean of hatred that so nearly drowned you

so you left, returned,
made a new world out of your old world,
changed it for the better,
brought freedom and tolerance in your train

the silent sand sings psalms to you,
the waters irrigate the barren land,
cities and villages founded on hope,
a land of promise

now, many years later, the skies are dark,
rockets and bombs and guns
hurled against you, denying you even your right to exist,
denying you even your right to exist as humans

‘death to the Jews!’ the racists chant
and among the ruins of conflict
all human hands are charred as if with ash
in the endless desolation brought by hatred

if, by a miracle, there could arise
a Palestinian Gandhi, Mandela or King,
how different the world could be; instead
dry eyes sneer at suffering,
smug in their cloak of hate,
their blinkered false certainties

they have wrung out their hearts,
squeezing the last drop of compassion
through the mangle of racism and evil,
dreaming only of inflicting pain and death

you rose out of the ashes,
the rockets aimed at Tel Aviv,
the lurkers in the fields, attacking school buses,
all these you know and endure

in the earth from which you came, to which you belong,
in the rhythm of your endlessly persecuted blood,
your eternal defiance rings through hills and valleys
against the racist thugs who menace you

so, though not a Jew,
I congratulate you on seventy years
of standing for freedom and tolerance
against the armies of evil and hatred

[ladylinda]

Thanks for your kind words, Jessie.

I assume you meant to quote the memorial tribute poem I wrote for John McCain.

I have posted it on his memorial page online.

Thanks for the suggestion.

[Jessiealan]

Yes, of course, Lin. Sorry I got the wrong post. I meant this one.


In Memoriam John McCain:

it was summer, the bright sun blazing
across the sky as if in tribute
when your giant eagle wings, outspread so long,
were folded in upon themselves at last

the bustling crowds, the forest fires,
the pilgrims to Mount Rushmore, the flow of transport
continued; all the passionate angry love
of you, that candle of hope, snuffed out at last

in spite of your sickness
you charged like a bull, prowled like a tiger,
never allowing pain and approaching death
to silence your proud mouth, stopper your dauntless heart

though deeply American, your fierce integrity
belongs to the world, shedding itself like spent leaves
and mulching the soil for others with your example,
and even in death you cannot be silenced

all the empty vessels of corrupt politicos
will bray their insincere tributes to a man who shamed them,
the rats and roaches with not a fragment of your courage
suddenly, for five mintues at least, pretending to be your friends

one of the last of your line, a man who stood for
the liberal values that for a hundred years
defined the Republican Party, before it became
enslaved to the grim ghosts of Buckley and Rand

now the madmen will have it all their own way,
a voice of reason and moderation lost to the earth,
dishonest businessmen, wimpish nutjobs and other detritus
clogging the widening swamp created in spite of you

while the world eagerly washes itself in blood
you, a true hero, a great soul, lie in the night
but even from the prison of the tomb
your voice still resonates with silent honesty

let your passing perhaps bring a tear
even to the shameless ones whose heartlessness
dries up each river, poisons every fountain,
and let the depth of their shame overwhelm them

out of your now dried blood
let vineyards of hope blossom,
let the sun that warmed you while alive
shine on us all, help us to thrive

[ladylinda]

Independence: Our Resolution:

we, the lost and dispossessed, forgotten and ignored
had a chance to speak at last, and then our anger roared,
exploding in volcanic rage against the smug elite:
on our proud Independence Day they went down to defeat

we stood against economists, professionals, the lot,
all of them reminding us that they knew best, and not
to dare to light the torch of freedom, make our great escape
when we’d be so much better off as prisoners in their ideal shape

but we refused to hear their words, and chose instead to fight,
hoping to make our unclear way out of the EU’s night;
they tried each trick to stop our goal, they told us we were mad,
stupid, right-wing, xenophobic, racist and downright bad

dregs of society, some have called us; others, simply scum,
unable to accept they lost and freedom’s siren won;
yes, the path ahead is dark, but we’d rather take that road
than be oppressed by the EU brutes with their ever-growing goad

we Brexiteers are a bunch you can’t put into tidy boxes:
our politics are varied which confuses the ruling foxes;
I for instance am not right-wing, I’m broadly centre-left,
a Lexiteer whose has no fear of our country being bereft
if we can fight our way past all the schemes and the designs
of the Remoaners whose big idea is to keep us all in chains!


[I'm a Lexiteer; it's uncanny when I look at what Tony Benn and Peter Shore said during the 1975 referendum how true their words still ring to me even though I was still three years away from being born!]