Mel From Melbourne - Music & Words

 Why I prefer Neil Young to Bob Dylan is that Neil's holistic vision has deepened and strengthened. Neil has become an advocate for environmental issues and the world's Indigenous peoples, this action in turn deepening his scope artistically and intellectually. Whereas Dylan has become mired in Western Humanism and its inevitable individualism in the positioning of human affairs as superior to the Earth's other species. He's barely cast a glance towards the American Indian -- a facing which cannot fail to deepen and broaden one's perspective on life. He walks as a foreigner to Earth and his fellow man. As one nears death it is understandable that one might become pessimistic about the global. But it is not the way. They were calling for the end of the World in Jesus's day. If one can look outside of oneself as Indigenous perspectives teach there is life. Always life xx Copyright Malachi Doyle 2022.

  Explanatory Note:   By “easier to compromise” I mean that both Western and Eastern philosophies are Individualistic.  The danger with stream of consciousness is that people don’t necessarily get what is implied.  Nevertheless I believe the verbal unedited has its place.  It can be dangerous.  But if entered into in good faith,  It can yield deeper listenings than literature and it’s literalism.  Blessings.  Always was, always will be Aboriginal land.  Malachi xx https://danceparrot.bandcamp.com/album/how-we-see-the-world

 I like those moments   I like those moments  In Basho’s travel journals When he writes About where he has Been with great attentiveness  & engagement  & yet is unable to compose his responsive  Haiku. After all the counted Marvellous things I have seen on my Walking this morning  I also have no Haiku *MGA changed its name in 2023 to MAPh © Malachi Doyle 2022.

  Walcott’s Robinson Crusoe *Patrick Kavanagh – Irish poet from Monahan, Ireland (not far from my father’s hometown in Longford, Ireland). ^Derek Walcott – Nobel Prize winning poet from the Caribbean island nation of St Lucia.   While I admire the work of Kavanagh* I relate more to that of Walcott^   I have too many origin stories To make sense of   I must self invent From a soil Foreign to my ancestors   A soil I love nevertheless I don’t wish to change her;   She already has changed too much Though of course I am part of that too   & yet I stand As good as any man   With my own secret knowledge     © Malachi Doyle 2022.

 I could have been born a woman in Somalia I could have been born a gay man in Iran I could have been born transgender to Christian Fundamentalists  I could have been born a poet to ‘white trash’ — (I use the word advisedly and respectfully: those who do not know who their people are,  Perhaps I am one Who escaped on the racks to Grammar But who still kicks and cries like a c#nt And does things spellcheck Would never allow — Springsteen sang  “Don’t you feel like you’re a rider on a downbound train.”) We must explain to the latter Cos they don’t know their place The former know how things are - their apocalypse  Their loss of faith Their abandonment by God Is as nothing As it would have been were I they Deprived a voice Deprived a pen The racists have a word for them A word that they think gives them authority  But all of us are accidents  And heresy is the only possibility  As Jesus learned Not comparing myself to him  That’s just a trick of English - the language… Jah bless One Love

 Dear Baity,* *Mikey Maginness and I played in the band Bait between the years of 2003 until his death in 2021.   Dear Baity, It’s hard not having you in the living to jam with You took me out of my creative solitude My words shifted and I became saner more collegial, more brotherly towards humanity Less interior At times I feel lost inside my mental maze For hours and days I wanna rock hard I wanna scream and sing for hours   But all I do now is speak Or occasionally a brief car ride shriek But I’m always alone Too self-absorbed despite my belief in the universal siblinghood of humanity And treating one another as such   You also made me brave To call out at the crooks & shout it from the rooftops To sling stones at their icy pleasuredomes Because they desecrate the earth and her children & must be called to account & we must persist in this project We whiteys need to grow some guts & put aside our pettiness & ban

 Premature Epitaph no.2626r262r62r623r2r97237r2378r7239r237r2000…. (*written after watching the Colin McCahon documentary: I Am) In my short artistic career over my short particular 51 years on the planet, I have produced maybe one or two pieces that may be of interest to others. The question is whether to stop now –   lest the possible diminishing of my powers as I age sully those previous, dare I say ‘useful’, achievements? (note: I am not a Utilitarian, but WAS trained in Sociology and social functions are kind of imbedded, even if I rise against it as often in my thinkings). I hope it’s relatively clear by now what I stand for artistically/philosophically. My fear is if I were to drift towards madness in my later years, that these later works might darken and unfairly define my vision. Let me spell this out before I become infirm: I am NOT a misanthropist. I like people. Whether they’re good bad or otherwise is beside the point. But if I later drift intellectually towards the ‘

 The young curse the old for polluting the planet and yet when it comes to opening some windows versus turning on the air conditioner, which one do you think they choose?