Mel From Melbourne - Music & Words

  Memories   But then the images In my memory Aren’t what happened   Beneath the surface Deep transformations Were taking place   One can’t see what’s happening But one can feel it & be it     Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2024.

 I can't read this book anymore My mind's distracted by something Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2024.

  Walks with my mother   Once, on our nightly walk, Mum & me (at about 19) We got to the top of a steep decline Stricken with early adult angst I raged as fast as I could down the hill Till I collided with the ground at pace I was young enough & passionate enough for it not to hurt & it did calm me down What 20 years later I would discover was anxiety Mum in her inimitable way, said nothing directly Her approach was active listening She let me talk without forcing advice She diminished seriousness She invited open & honest disclosures But she realized that I was one of life’s worriers So she was natural, not concerned, with me She made things so much better Always with a gentle sense of humour The greatest listener I ever knew She kept thing real, by keeping things light.   Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2024.

  This one doesn’t even need a title   I never needed to make a fuss about my love for mum It was effortless One fight in 48 years together when I was going through puberty & she was going through menopause That was all We never needed to explain things We got each other like one brain We had the same sense of humour It was easy I see my mother’s spirit whenever I think of her She was my best friend until I met my 2 nd wife But she was still my best friend This is all redundant talking about it As irreducible as life We were mates xx We didn’t need to try     Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2024.

  We'll Take Him   I had a full psychosis at 37 & wound up in a Singaporean lockup Interrogated for 48 hours Till they realised I was crazy, not dangerous   The Psychiatrist, the Police & the Embassy Spoke with dad Me frothing at the mouth & said “we’ll put him in a Psychiatric Hospital in Melbourne” Dad said “we’ll take him & be responsible for his care”   So they all got me home to mum & dad’s Mad & wild My parents fed me, loved me, listened to me & saw that I took my meds, booked psychiatrist appointments for me & Dad taxi-ed me everywhere I needed to go   Slowly I recovered thanks to their care   Dad & I became tight over the next 15 years till his death   & when he became an invalid I was by his side & saw him take his last breath With love xx     Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2024.

  I thought that 'ban Australia Day' thing was pathetic. What ever happened to reconciliation? I see the young non-initiated Aboriginals (who are highly Westernised, let’s face it) saying “I can’t understand why someone would celebrate.” Really? Can’t understand or won’t. Empathy extends to all. Maybe some people are celebrating summer, a holiday, time with family and friends, celebrating democracy, good living conditions, successful multiculturalism, relative freedom? There’s so much to celebrate. I don’t mind people having different attitudes -- that’s how democracy works. I understand the pain and suffering that First Nations Australians live with. It’s in the stats: reduced life expectancy, exponential incarceration rates, young children incarcerated, deaths in custody. There’s a lot to be aggrieved about. But denying the rights of others to celebrate is misguided. Perhaps it’s good that the day is marked, meaning different things to different people? Our history is stained

 Hi guys, my main medium is sound. I write as well, maybe that's equal? Why can't one be multiskilled & both be taken as part of the vision? 6 years ago It  all changed for me I discovered properly Expressionism Both figurative & abstract Painting is the main influence on my "work"/play Plus life of course I left hermetic work/poetry long before my mental breakdown When I lived in South London With freestyle rappers But equally I am taken with naturalism & have a suspicion of realism it smacks too much of Capitalism & Idealism Warts exist Paint them on the occasional hand Life is naturalistic, surrealistic, hyperealistic, mystic, (un)/poetic & operatic & so my stuff I make most of my sound pieces as voice memos on my phone As simple and reduced as haiku & calligraphy I imitate nature at times I certainly work both from my subconscious & nature I am suspicious of so called "Politics" for I find most bandwagoneers hateful &

  Hoodwinked   One gets hoodwinked Into becoming “serious”    Or maybe not Maybe there's a malicious glee In being a killjoy? Like an authoritarian primary school mistress Marshalling the flowering Of childhood Into entering & leaving drills   Free spirits can get hoodwinked Into being “serious” Or else ostracised   Oh well It’s made easier Because those who would ostracise Are intolerable anyway & a free spirit Would prefer The company of nature or other outsiders With whom one can laugh & dance & sing     Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2024.

  I had made serious art   My new friend Max said she didn’t realise I had made serious art All she’d heard was my lighter funny stuff I was stunned   After years of fighting my way through childhood violence Fighting on the front in the Third World My ex-wife’s battles with death Coming to terms with the deaths of all my most dear Grieving my father & picking through the corpses to locate my life force   I’m celebrating now The end of years of sorrow, rage, grief & psychological instability I feel GOOD De ne na ne na ne na   Like James Brown Abandoned at birth Into a firestorm, beaten & bullied My complete mental breakdown Which left me mute for 2 years & from which I will never fully recover   But FUCK IT! I’ve made my peace with incompleteness & I’m a bit kinky I wobble a bit on my legs But it’s GOOD! This miraculous life   I wouldn’t be dead For a squillion a week & my madness is GOOD!   M

  I dreamed that my late mother’s breast   I dreamed that my late mother’s breast had been sucked dry by me. I was as I am now: a middle-aged man, and I had in my mouth what had been removed from my mother, a child’s dummy made of her flesh, blood mixed with saliva, making a tomato sauce like thickness, about the nipple. And I was sucking it like a sweet. It completely grossed me out me upon waking, what, in the dream, had felt completely natural. Then today, reading Ben Okri talking about how the world of pleasure/leisure seekers has sucked the Earth’s breast dry. A repulsive image, which why we don’t really want to face our realities (we can aimlessly parrot truisms), preferring our pacifiers, our drugs, our pleasures, our politically correct euphemisms, our rhetorics.   What then? Poetry is not an instructional manual. It is not something aimed to provide utilitarian solutions. But to present our dreams (which reside in our collective unconscious) to the souls of its rea

  Hoping bullies won’t be bullies   In essence the zeitgeist allows the creator & forces the creator to alligator records in alphabetical order oh! & then the pause & the whole thing becomes a morality play & eros & thanatos which is really the whole shape shifter is pushed under the rug. Hard to believe Bataille & Giacometti & Picasso lived. We ought our age moans we ought from the pit of our being dressed in our livery we ought & never naked in case the children find it & realize what we’re really all about. Keep them sleepwalking from the shop to the screen & never face our ecstatic shadows. Of decapitations & teddy bears & teenage fantasies of gang bang. Best we stick to impossible ambitions for others & good intentions. Virtue. One should never face what one is. One should eat a high fibre diet & drink less.     Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2024.

  Animals & Sex   The Kastom people of Vanuatu Most famously known for worshipping Prince Philip as a deity Are trivialized as a curiosity I saw a documentary about them When they were invited to travel to Britain What most struck them, as swineherds, was the size of the UK pigs They were very impressed   Until they found out that it’s artificial insemination that gives the size and weight to modern agricultural animals   This deeply upset them   & they became insistent that the practice must stop That the pig, like all animals, must be allowed sexual gratification as a birthright for living beings   I wholeheartedly agree & it amazes me that we don’t talk about it (I’m not advocating for the end of eating meat Eating involves taking life, whether animal or vegetable So what you eat is your business)   But modern agricultural companies should respect the animals that produce their astronomical profits & this extends to all

  Turdsworth   Byron famous called Wordsworth Turdsworth & while Wordsworth is great Byron has a point Are we just waiting around like nuns & scholars Contemplating flowers Before we die?   Or do we wanna get our ends wet?! I don’t only want to write about it I wanna DO it In the back of a horsedrawn carriage Atop a mountaintop On top of a table In the ocean again As Byron suggested An indirect descendent of my exwife Our anniversary date is tomorrow Too many seek comfort & consistency When there’s a battles of the loins & ecstasy to be won   I wish to cease from all this mental masturbation & LIVE a little woman Bend over with me & let’s get it ON!   You know you wanna It’s in the way you hold your lips & the widening of your eyes We can even do it in disguise I don’t have to be your partner I just wanna make love to ya.     Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2024.

  A sweeping largo strings crescendoing should inspire me to do something creatives do   A sweeping largo strings crescendoing should inspire me to do something creatives do, make content & someone said which I agreed, that art about art is the endgame. & so I thrilled to the music & dreampt I saw a tiger’s eyes, my friend slept with a tiger cub, movement, the tiger’s whose eyes opened my soul was blakelight & wild & godlike, so the astrologers were right to adopt the totemic because our human centred age is uniform & banal & the best supposedly we can do is a socio- or psycho- path. The wild is something very different, something whose psychology is mythic not pathologic, it does not think in words but in volcanos & shadow/light flickers. It enters our being from deep within/beyond the universe. If there is a stillpoint as Eliot suggested, it is the wild. The tiger paced back & forth our eyes locked. It shook me from my illusions & I dreampt

  Old Age   “I’m waiting to die” she said   “Suic…” my dad had said 2 years earlier He barely verbal   Both Dementia   Same day, same room, no visitors   “Have you seen her?” “No” “Has she rejected you?” “Yes”   One gets visitors when one can PERFORM And the visitor can avoid silences  ('awkward'(?)) But when one can’t perform The visitors all vanish (so much for loyalty or soul mates)   What are we so frightened of? Unable to look dying in the face   We’re all going there   & when the visitors drop off & there’s no life around   & you can’t get out & about It’ll be “Are you bored?” “Yes”   Despair unto death   My dad a hunger strike   She’s stopped taking her pills   The carers get frustrated & there's showdowns   But sometimes dying is one's last hope. "Why don't we go to the art gallery tomorrow? Would you like that?" "Yes"     Publish

  What when who etc   What? There is a post box Where? Down an old dirt road When? 3000 years in the future Why? I have no idea, it hasn’t happened yet How? Things come & go. Life is change. Who? An old man with 2 dogs off lead walks up to it unsure whether to post another letter to the woman of his daydreams or not.     Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2024.

You can call me Mal, my family call me Malachi but my real name is Maolsheachlann. But in Aussie we never took ourselves seriously until recently. One our best qualities, it was. As long as it’s not belittling, who gives a fuck? RE-lax! I like Mel like my birth place, far from Ulster, Eire, though she lives HIGH in my heart, drives my effusive spirit, “look out, Barkie’s in love again!”, my love and protect like Sikhism, Mel from Melbourne xx Naarm xx Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2024.

  The man in the blackened out helmet   After he’d finished driving up and down the streets of the half shut town, revving his hotted up engine in the rain for hours and hours, silencing the meditations of the few pedestrians and intimidating the townsfolks in their holiday cocoons, he picked up the shopping — some eggs, some milk and some shampoo — for his aged mother. Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2023.

 If you're wondering why I've stopped writing I'm simply out of love with it Like a modern romance Like the solitude's solace I've returned from pen & keyboard To voice & it's dance with silence Till the next liaison... Au revoir. Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2024.

  It’s   It’s green in the cathedral of vines & branches Then a red & gold light from below The earth is opening up, fissuring Blue light merging at 9 o’clock & 3 If I had a hot air balloon I would take this space with me To my waking dream of my tennis racquet & ball My new passion 35 years after I hung them up After 35 years break I play tennis Just waiting to kick a seasoned opponent's arse Oh Amateur!, Oh Garcia Lorca!, Oh Galicia!, Oh Duende!      Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2024.

 Having spent most of the past 30 odd years with people of colour my conclusion is that the white Australian today is scared & angry in equal parts. I’m not sure what the problem is. Per capita one of the riches countries in the world with comparatively few social problems, I find them to be misery gutses. Wouldn’t know how to have a party without drugs. And now I appear stuck with them, now that my marriage is over. I’m sick of the real non housewives of nowhere and their inability to smile. I’m sick of the invisible men. I’m sick of small talk being taken to be of great import. I'm sick of the vacuousness I’m sick incredulous  I might have to get the fuck out this pop museum culture Somewhere where culture is deep Where people ain’t frightened to speak Where people don’t curse you for having a dick The petty squabbles The ‘issues’ in fashion I’m tired of ignorant shallow holding on to kitch The tight shouldered men “What’s that mate?!” P.S. If there’s typos forgive me. I can’

  Dearest Dad, I know you so well Your youngest I spent 10 years longer living with you Than my siblings did & me alone your flesh & blood You never shied away from your flaws I love that about you I have flaws too My question is then? Do you want me to publish the work or not? I just want to scatter your ashes so you can be with mum Your love for her was 1 in a million I love that I grew up in a marriage of love I see most in marriages of convenience here Unless one knows the madness of profound love One lives looking at others To judge You read much But you were not essentially a reader You were essentially a lover & for that I’m profoundly proud & thankful. I love you so much. I hope that comes through this work. You knew very well The small mindedness of our neighbours But like you I don’t fear them Fuck them. Soon you will be free with your love.     Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2023.