Skip to main content

Remembering Dad at Christmas time

 

Remembering Dad at Christmas time

 

“How ya goin Doora?”

That was dad’s love name for me

Poet father of a poet

The family trade

But that’s just the surface

He was a stronger force

An incredible singer

Of rebel ballads

My education in the arts

Was, dad advised,

To “become the song”

That's the job of an artist

A lesson from earlier generations

Before recorded music

& its self-consciousness

Ascend the mountaintop with your notes

From singing at the low point of the valley

Stand mid-air

As Okri says the job is to astonish the gods

It was a privilege to have someone to talk about letters

As Intensely & beautifully

Even as his powers waned in Aged Care

He let me fly

We'd just started our climb back together

With my psychosis

A liberating event

Coz finally, after bearing life's early weight,

To fuck up ridiculously

To make such a mess

Like he had done

He & mum brought me home

Rescued me from the asylum

& commenced my recovery

Never stopped believing in me

Never made me feel silly

Just loved

Thank you mum & dad

I hear you tonight in the old Christmas carols

& see you in the tears that fall

Just how much I love you both

 

 

Published & Copyright 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

‘The Garden of Love’

  ‘The Garden of Love’ (after William Blake)   Some young punk Tryin to be ‘hard’ Pussyole! with his mate Said “no flowers!” I was holding some wildflowers To put in my vase at the apartment I asked him “why not?” He said nothing That’s right keep walking bish! To bloodclot! I don’t walk around defensive So I’m not quick to attack I’d rather they think about it themselves ‘Without flowers there is no life’ He dreams Try that on for size ‘You say “no!” to flowers & you say “no!” to life’ Echoed on the wind 'You can’t eat money!' Unity & Devision He hears across the wires 'Not that way!... ... why have you forsaken us?' He feels the ancestors   & again I am reminded of Blake’s ‘The Garden of Love’*   Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2025.   * The Garden of Love By  William Blake I went to the Garden of Love, And saw what I never had seen: A Chapel was built in the midst, W...
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