Skip to main content

The wrong place

 

The wrong place

 

I went to the poetry reading in Castlemaine

A once progressive town

& felt like I was in the wrong place

For a start it was deathly quiet

It was like one of those 50s country competitions

There were competent poets there

But none stepping out of party lines

I’ve rarely been in a more closed & competitive space

 

I believe in openness

We live in a society

Where the arts speak to political issues predefined rather than to life

Our artists reveal nothing unorthodox of themselves

 

There is a lack of the intimate/infinite

& the rise of secularism in art

Presents an earth of death

There’s a reason why first nations artists produce the best art today

Because they celebrate the sacred

 

But spirituality is out

Sex is out

Unless it’s queer

My poem about my spontaneous erection in the sunshine & rain was greeted with hostility

In a culture that thinks of the penis as a lethal weapon

People who’ve never had marriages of love

What kinds of poets are these?

 

Anyway,

I really wanna get away from social comment

It’s not bringing us closer together

 

Just to say,

I was hurt by the experience

An unwelcoming experience

One would think that helping a 90 year old woman

My mate Mary to read her poem

& hold her against toppling off the stage would show them that I was not a psychopath

But no

They hated me more

In tears I began my preamble

Only for a bourgeois to heckle me

“Is there a poem?”

 

As my mate Richard says

Man I can’t play

I’m just healing

 

An audience that did not listen

The twisted old prunes of Castlemaine

In their $2 million dollar homes

Enemies of the poor

 

Seeking to have it all

But one thing’s for sure

They’ll never feel passionately about life

Coz they’re competing with it

 

 

Published & Copyright by Malachi Doyle 2024.

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

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

‘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