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Anais Vionet Jun 2023
There was a homeless lady,
one afternoon, outside the hospital.
Was she homeless? I don’t know.
She had a ladened shopping cart,
which, on TV, is kind of a signature.
We were inside, waiting for an Uber.

She was outside, in chiaroscuro relief.
Dressed in bright, multilayered, mismatched
florals and brocades, she reminded me
of a gypsy. There are still gypsy caravans
in France. Are there gypsies in America?

She wore boots and long strings of beaded jewelry.
They would have had to have been glass, I supposed,
but tinseled with the glitter of those pop spangles,
she looked, en bloc, the richest and the poorest of us.

She wasn’t young and she wasn’t old. She sat alone,
on a short retaining wall, her cart within guarded reach.
I noticed her because every time I glanced over, she
was watching me with the dark unblinking eyes of a bird.

She had an easy confidence, in the wild, sitting safe
and protected by her clam, obstinate shell of boredom.

What must I look like to her - with her tangled hair
and unwashed face? Me in my permanent pressed
hospital wear, diminished by over-washing. A doll
behind glass, whose whole life is patterned by plans?

Our Uber pulled up, the number matched and as Lisa
opened the car door, I gathered my things and looked
back but the gypsy lady was gone, leaving a blank space.
BLT Marriam Webster word of the day challenge: Obstinate: "stubborn people who refuse to change in spite of reason.”

http://daweb.us/mmp3/the.gypsy.mp3

chiaroscuro = an art style using strong contrasts between light and dark
en bloc = at once, both

*I used the term Gypsy because it’s the most instantly recognized. In the UK, Gypsies is a legal term used for their protection act. The French say ‘gitans’ but they are more popularly known as the Romani people or Tinkers, and Travellers. I’ve read that the term “Gypsy” can be used as a slur but not in the context used here.
Mystic Ink Plus Jan 2023
Whoever is
Comfortable
With their insanity

Will become
A freeman

Live
Love
Peace
Genre: Observational
Theme: To Whom It May Concern
Author's Note: Let this simple fact poke your thought and vibrate your conscience.
Andrew Dec 2021
The young gypsy girl
Who fell off a cloud
That found peace
When her feet
Touched the ground

She held the sunlight
Which would burn
Golden bright
While watching over you
As you sleep
Throughout the night

Her long red hair
With her stylish dress wear
Flows down the street
Floats on thin air
Pam Wooten-Welsh Mar 2021
She was fierce.
She was wild and night-time.
A heart so gigantic
she could paint a picture world-wide.
Her style was her own.
Her spirit is unchained.
Liberated running away from society
touching the earth with her bare feet,
it embraced her soul,
leaving her breathless and carefree.
A natural and appearing
like a field of flowers,
bright and magical.
She was a kaleidoscope of colors
living enchantingly under the moon at night,
and cheerfully in the sun
with its radiance and light.
CC Feb 2021
The crushed night sky with foliage deep within it seems like a troubled place to sleep underneath
A nomad's roof is bare and unseen with the wasted moon of every earth
Why warily waste away the sweetened caress of each breeze?
Wondering when we will wind up binding our hands around the trees
Freckles on each cheek like stardust upon the brow of Zeus
Sleep is a journey you will reach despite the torrid jungle of your mind
The treasure that you are burying is a breath for each life you have been reincarnated into
Who can say it is a fault to desire less when riches are a foolish goal?
Around you lay a long-haired grass, your feet barely touch the ground
You must think that the woman fears no predator
To sleep so soundly while she roars
Purcy Flaherty Jan 2021
Music is a spiritual tongue,
Find someone to talk to,
Bless us with the revelation,
The sound is huge.

Flying fish fill the sonic space,
A classic romance,
Through and through,
You're beautiful,
You're handsome,
And you're a cad.

Creation has a place for everything,
Life's lesson is surrender, so let it go,
Go with the flow,
Like it as it is,
Push past the fear.

Here we go,
Here we go,
Here we go.

Here we go,
Here we go,
Here we go.
BOOM!
The key to impromptu freestyle music, Writing, art and other things
Lane O Sep 2020
A wildflower bloomed
On the edge of a path.
One scarce of flora,
So I bent down to ask.

"How did you flourish
In soil so lorn?"
Her reply was brief,
But it carried no scorn.

"Oh yes, it's quite odd
To have sprouted here alone,"
Said the gypsy flower,
Amongst gravel and stone.
Jordan Gee Aug 2020
I foot the ladder
I called upon the wheat
I called upon the spaces where only an ibex can stand
I called upon the swollen silence, the space between the keys
I called upon the distended bulb of awkward air that is my usher unto
the people of this world.
I called upon God to change my purpose for me
but all I saw were white shapes in the darkness.
he had sent his heralds with the long horns and bugles
the thrones and cherubim suspended like a women’s pearls about the neck
but i was too deaf and hard of seeing
on what was happening in my day to day
in my aloneness
in my facebook messages
in my bank account.
I thought the die was cast and so
I rode their mercy like an uncut Arabian steed.
I was young and my shadow was a
bad foretelling -
like worms drowning on the pavement-
like an empty soul factory in the bathroom stall.
but I’m on borrowed time like a black cat dream on
the narrows and the cobblestones.
like how a broken broom breaks all gypsy curses,
black cat dreams are never wrong, and
in the deep statecraft of my undoing I’m almost sorry for
what I asked for.
See, there are two of me and they are crowing
I know not which one bodes the ill intent and which one wields the cyanide.
but both are mostly indolent in their listening
to the building of the gallows.
Every breath is a fatality
Every hand full of dirt is a genesis
and I can hear the hangman at the gallows.
Let Justice Be Done, Though The Heavens Fall
and i’ll go see my brother on the water.
halfway up the sky he’ll build eternity outside of time,
and I will foot the ladder.
birds of hollow bone they herald my undoing,
planting white lilies in my heart.
by the building of the gallows I will foot the ladder
sometimes there are only hammers
sometimes all I see are nails.
where is the healing balm in this dreamscape that I invented?
he’s holding sulfur in his death hand.
I looked up and asked him for a bright lantern
I asked him to keep this pen alive and to fix me to his liking
I asked him for a bamboo raft worthy of the rapids.
I told him that when I was in California I was so sad I couldn't see the ocean.
I asked him that if I were to give penance
could he take these tumors in his hands.
all i saw were reflections of him smiling
like long eclipses on comanche moons.
I heard the gears of the clock all grinding but the hands were spinning loose.
I wanted to be home then, but he said I already was. And then he told me:
You are the gallows and the hammers
You are the black cat and broken brooms
You are the pavement and the worms and
the drowning and the nails
You are the lilies and the wheat
You are your brother and his dreaming
You are the cyanide and the birds.
but i’ve so much invested already in the crawling
in and out of beds
that all there is left to do is
foot the ladder till I'm no longer deaf to the horse's mouth,
to the screaming of the diad in their forgetting of their
Oneness
Of their Atonement
Of their dreaming of the dream.
20.Jan.2020
She cometh from afar,
Chanting words of magic.
Singing beautiful songs
Calling out to the spirits

Her powers so glaring
Her voodoo doll by the window
The crystal ball of life
Cards of the future laid in the table

Looking into her eyes,
Seeing the communing of the spirits.
The owl on her roof,
Making scary sounds welcoming the spirits.

Piercing into my soul
A telling of the past and the present
Her reading of fortunes
A telling of the future

The enchantment in the room
The conjuring of spirits
Her performance of black magic
A force of good and evil

Written by Tosan Oluwakemi Thompson
This poem describes a voodoo gypsy.
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