Skip to main content

JOK (Johnny O’Keefe) I’m a wanderer too

 JOK (Johnny O’Keefe)

I’m a wanderer too

 

 

JOK (Johnny O’Keefe)

I’m a wanderer too.

 

“If you’re a performer,

That’s the level you’ve gotta give”

-Rob Hirst (Midnight Oil Drummer-Vocalist) on Johnny O’Keefe.

 

I never saw JOK perform, but I’ve felt him tap me on the shoulder, when on stage, surrounded, as an 18 year old, by old man hecklers & rough boy c87nts.

Me, who as a boy soprano soloist from a 1000 boy Boys’ Grammar School with compulsory Military Training and udder thuggery had the fortune (mis? Fortune!!!!!) to be born with a 12 year old’s boy-angel’s voice and walked with a target on my back til I faked an injury & became a French Horn player (still pitch perfect bitch!).

 

Anyway, my adult singing voice was never as good as my child’s voice.

Lacked the strength and integrity.

But you know us Australians can’t reconcile the masculine with beauty.

 

Ah well,

What’s done is done.

 

Anyway,

Later I sung.

18.

& then onwards Engerland when I was 35.

 

I felt Johnny O’Keefe tap me on the shoulder

In the Murder Capital –

The Kindest place in the Country.

 

They say he embarrassed every overseas act (as ‘soft’).

 

Roy Orbison.

Little Richard.

Cliff Richard.

 

And THAT’s the real reason

Elvis never flew.

 

They say

 

Those I’ve known who saw him twice

That HE was THE MAN!

 

A performer.

 

A REAL PERFORMER.

 

You have to be a Colonial to perform.

Else you’re Apollonian.

 

Nietzsche’s ONE GOOD book.

(‘Birth of Tragedy’)

 

WE’RE the bastards.

 

The boys for the job.

 

Insults —

 

We learned

In our mother’s womb —

 

A kick to the guts.

 

Maybe a Rwanadan child

Born of soldier rape


Can relate

 

But no one will give them the tape.

 

So,


Until then


I’m your albino Bredren.

 

That’s how HARD

WE ROCK!


(After Hopkins)

Praise Him.


 

©Malachi Doyle 2023.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

“I didn’t know!”

  “I didn’t know!”   Don’t get me wrong In a Two Party preferred system  I have no choice but to give preferences to Labor The Coalition are scum But Jacinta Allen, Victorian Premier Claimed in a Truth Telling Commission that she never knew about massacres Of Indigenous people in the state She’d never looked up The history of her country The history of the state she leads She’s Premier! She leads a department that ‘manages Indigenous affairs’ We are currently in the process of negotiating a Treaty What did she think happened to all the Aboriginal people?! They went up to live up the Magic Faraway Tree? “No one told me!” No one ever told me either I fuckin researched It was really easy Took 10 minutes There’s this new thing called the Internet & you search stuff up Like History A subject no longer taught in many schools past year 7 I deduced a lot from observing the place & how allergic we are of looking at ourselves ...
2 comments
Read more

In a very unorthodox way

  In a very unorthodox way # (For Max Sometimes) In a very unorthodox way, I’m an Irish Catholic. Of course, in terms of Belfast politics that MEANS something. & while that maybe true – in Australia, for different reasons, as Fr Bob Maguire put it – when Mary first saw Jesus walking out of the tomb on day 3 of his death, she exclaimed “JESUS!!!” – the first time his name was used as a swear word. In that way of an irreverent joke, REVERENTIAL & ORTHODOX are not my way to the Sacred/Love*. For me – I’m not really into Theology – as Max Sometimes quoting me, quoting my mate Richard, quoting Bob Marley, quoting Rasta elders, said today “who feels it knows it.” & I believe that if I am to write my Mass/Symphony of Hope/Love, I must include at least one blasphemous hymn, else the vision depicted be simplistic, like George Handel’s Messiah. The Hope/Love represented or perhaps alluded to (if you prefer) must include genuine despair, dejection, transgression else it...
Post a Comment
Read more

Though it made me a poet

Though it made me a poet   This is a superior microwave to the last if  everything has to be a competition I guess it does! In the Kafkaesque vortex Where one is trying merely to ask a question Instead one is sold something I’m monastic or have acute anxiety Anxiety is pretty cute Like a decapitated bleeding brain Covered in snails turned carnivore By the wrack & ruin of a child’s innocence The fist in the sister’s face The knife in the wall Did I imagine the latter, dream it or see it? Who threw it? Must have been the bowie Still life goes on So I went to school the next morning & got my mouth taped up For being a chatterbox Such is the life of a privileged 5 year old It made me a poet     Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2025.  
Post a Comment
Read more