[ Next Thread |
Previous Thread |
Next Message |
Previous Message ]
Date Posted: 13:26:52 10/16/04 Sat
Author: Silly Girl
Author Host/IP: 68.91.91.43
Subject: The Poet's eye
|
The Magdalene Laundries
by Joni Mitchell
I was an unmarried girl
I'd just turned twenty-seven
When they sent me to the sisters
For the way men looked at me
Branded as a jezebel
I knew I was not bound for Heaven
I'd be cast in shame
Into the Magdalene
laundries
Most girls come here pregnant
Some by their own fathers
Bridget got that belly
By her parish priest
We're trying to get things white as snow
All of us woe-begotten-daughters
In the streaming stains
Of the Magdalene laundries
Prostitutes and destitutes
And temptresses like me
Fallen women
Sentenced into dreamless drudgery
Why do they call this heartless place
Our Lady of Charity?
Oh charity!
These bloodless brides of Jesus
If they had just once glimpsed their groom
Then they'd know and they'd drop the stones
Concealed behind their rosaries
They wilt the grass they walk upon
They leech the light out of a room
They'd like to drive us down the drain
At the Magdalene laundries
Peg O'Connell died today
She was a cheeky girl
A flirt
They just stuffed her in a hole!
Surely to God you'd think at least some bells should ring!
One day I'm going to die here too
And they'll plant me in the dirt
Like some lame bulb
That never blooms come any spring
Not any spring
No, not any spring
Not any spring
|
Copyright © 1994; Crazy Crow Music
|
|
|
|
There was a guy in Nashville who was suing a reporter for saying that
he had never been in prison. Claimed it slandered him, because he was
famous for his prison songs. I think the Magdalene laundries were still in
business in the seventies, thinking about Molly Bloom. The first time I went to
jail was about fifty years ago, I slugged a cop back in Mobtown. this was
the summer of Brown Vs Topeka board of education. Things was tense in that
southern town, lucky I passed for white, I might have been shot.
[
Next Thread |
Previous Thread |
Next Message |
Previous Message
]
[ Contact Forum Admin ]
Forum timezone: GMT-8
VF Version: 3.00b, ConfDB:
Before posting please read our privacy policy.
VoyForums(tm) is a Free Service from Voyager Info-Systems.
Copyright © 1998-2019 Voyager Info-Systems. All Rights Reserved.
|
|
