RANDI ROMO

Artists Bio & Statement

Randi is a Mexican American writer and outsider folk artist whose work often exhibits a unique combining of spoken and written word with the visual arts. Her writing began when at the age of 13 she was incarcerated in a state mental hospital to cure her depression. In reality the depression concealed her fear of revealing her lesbianism in a family and society that was openly hostile and unwelcoming to homosexuals. Because of her fear and her age, she would spend most of the ages of 13-16 in the institution. During her incarcerations, Randi began to write. Her writing was a natural emergence of her voice seeking survival and understanding of the horrors that she was experiencing in her struggle while living in an environment with severely mentally ill women. She was the youngest in the institution.

Randi's experiences left her with a passion for justice that is evident in all forms of her work. She is active in g/l/b/t, women, and environmental issues as well as worker rights with a focus on farmworker issues.

Randi sees art "as the ultimate transformational experience, having seen its power to give voice where there was no sound and deliverance that came as though it were the hands of angels".

Contact Info

EMail: SCChicana@aol.com

Zrphyrhills, FL 33605
USA

O SAY CAN YOU SEE

Twins fall down to the ground
and a nation howls in its grief
and shuffles its feet to stir up
a blinding dust storm to hide
the memories of the sight of
twisted, burned and dying bodies
whose flesh is scored with
ammo stamped made in the
good old U.S.A. forgetting
the napalm, atomic bombs
and landmines that killed
and maimed innocent men,
women and children whose
only crimes were in being
citizens of their countries, their
homelands that were just as
dear to them and we just can't
believe it when our chickens
come home to roost in the
violence that we have modeled
and trained those who now
point planes of destruction
that should remind us of our
arrogance and the depth of our
leader's sins, destruction that
should remind us of our silence
while we worked to surpass the
Jone's so that we could have a
bigger car and more toys and we
really didn't care what old Uncle
Sam did, just as long as it meant
that we could have more, bigger,
better, faster and oh so
importantly, cheaper

And we point at the crack heads and
shake our head sighing and mouthing
"just say no" and all the while the junkie
fix of consumerism is driving the
populace into debt re-hab,
wealthiest nation in the world and
we won't take care of poor
mothers and their children while
corporations belly up to the trough
and stuff their bottom line, tell it like
it is and go head on and light up
the White House signs from At&T,
Coca-cola, General Motors and
the rest of their cronies who put
the belly in pork, Big Brother wide
awake and watching us all while
spouting patriotic rhetoric that
conceals dances with Enron
that set policy favoring "Big Business"
and undoing the protection of the
environment all the while
plundering the coffers while
running the shredders as hard
and as fast as they will run
shredding public trust, while
steadily distracting us by pumping
fists in the air and proclaiming war
on a poor people whose suffering
we did not hear, whose guilt is
determined before proof
generating a slam dunk of
bombs validated by a movie
review that got three thumbs up
and rated a smashing hit by that
bastion of complete trust
worthiness the CIA who somehow
didn't see those planes coming
right at the plate glass windows

Oh how easily we have looked
the other way and now in the
bright light of day with the blood
of 911 running across a city, the
nation moves like lemmings to a
sea engulfed in the wildfire of
vengeance fueled by hatred and
intolerance that has raised up a
hue and cry, I.D. Cards for
everyone, forgetting a war colored
with the yellow Star Of David and
the Black and Pink Triangles
pinned to the tattered clothing of
concentration camp inmates who
were fed to the ovens, forgetting
the prisoner camps on American
soil that stole the lives and
property of American citizens
whose only crime was in being
Japanese in a world gone crazy
with fear, suspicion and greed
forgetting the inauspicious
beginnings of this country soaked
in the blood of it's indigenous
people who died by the thousands
at the hands of the solider boy
blue coats, the theft of lands and
borders, economics built on black,
brown, red and yellow backs
bloody hands, bloody hands oh why
can't we see our own bloody hands

Patriotic showings in the unfurling
of flags that have long been
stowed till each Fourth of July,
renditions Of the Star Spangled
Banner, and that lesbian penned
ode "America the Beautiful" floods the airwaves stirring the beast in
the breast of John Q. Public that
shouts for revenge while the
families of the tower's dead line up
to make their million's off the taxes
that only the working poor and
the middle class has to fairly pay while
the ten percent who control the
country's wealth thumb their nose
and whisper in the hidden places
the deals that benefit their bank
accounts while children in America
live in poverty, then we hear that the
families of the Twin tower's
death roll are kicking up a fuss
cause more is the word of the day
worried that they might not make
enough money off their grief and
loss and I wonder where was
Uncle Sam for the victim's
families of the many beatings,
bombings, lynching, rapes and
murders, of the people of color,
queers, transgendered, women,
immigrants and all the rest who
have suffered grievously at the
hands of hate driven crimes that
are as heinous as any that befell
New York that fateful day of falling
concrete, twisted steel and
smoking rubble, crimes that have
far too many silent seals of
societal approval in the racism,
homophobia, xenophobia and
all the rest that lets some people
think it's okay to take lives and
crush hopes and dismantle
dreams with violence that stills
brilliant voices and so where's
those checks for the families
who bury their own and try to rebuild
their lives alone without even
a government's sorrow and STILL,
no recognition of the seeds sown
in the covert and overt actions that
have devastated countries and no
one got paid for their dead and the loss
of their land and STILL, no recognition of the seeds that have been sown
are now being reaped

© Randi Romo, 2002

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