Mel From Melbourne - Music & Words

  & so I work for a future time   & so I work for a future time When the depressed conditions of the present Will become more acute & desperate Perhaps then some unity for the people A chance for real structural change That unlike the mistakes of the past Doesn’t create gulags & newspeak, (we already have a surveillance state) & doesn’t interfere with the freedom of the mind Where universities will again be public Where we'll have enough hospital beds Where no corporations own God’s rain Where people feel less under attack from one another Where working is not so coercive Where people are less alone Where there are homes for everybody & enough to eat & drink Where people are warm in the wintertime Then maybe, we can work out what it means to be human So that we can better cooperate That we can better, more intimately, communicate Where we are allowed diversity of ideas Where we are allowed freedom of speech Whe

  & so light comes from an angle   & so light comes from an angle & reflects off reflective & refractive surface some of which are moving, telling a happy story but OCD requires the telling of a negative story or is it university dialectics? Yunno how Lenny likes to stroke soft things I get it & at times I get scared that I might be overtaken by a volition to stroke it too hard & break or kill it whence did this fear arise fear of oneself was it watching one’s father beat the family as an enfant & being hypervigilant to guard against that? Am I the only one who feels frightened of my power? That power might abuse. Perverse thoughts arise from whence. Taking care of, attentiveness, & guarding against harming comes with the shadow presence of crushing, breaking. That’s what Steinbeck saw & why he is a master. I recommended Of Mice & Men to someone who’s never read fiction, as a good place to start. We live in an era of quiz shows, when whether

  Manfred   Main thing Herb’s a sacrament For the imagination That people have So you gotta DO something with it Third World sang “now that we have love What are we gonna do with it?” & so While I’m not nearly high enough Just a few crumbs We drank the kool-aid & there was a frozen lake & an elk family behind it & I had never been to such a place But yunno I’ve seen A reproduction Of the Monarch of the Glen Twas down by the Glenside… For they loved dear old Ireland The Scots & the Irish Cousins Redheads Never having written about redheads I’m trying desperately to get young But I’ve seen too much Hurt too much But in youth Seeing things for the first time I want to & I am They’re just more subtle now Compared to a Western sunset I’m on the turn of the Eastern sunset As I face the beginning of my denouement Things are weird all right It’s just I know they’re weird I’ve pretty much susse

  A civilised death (For Bob Dylan)   It’s too quiet to be this sad she said the sell off of life between lead & copper, the coppas came with a lacerating blow to the mind, sunglasses & batons… Lynch arrived, circumflexed & rose tall like a seig heil like constructivist futurist graphics… never took the road, never took to the road either though one line at a time he chipped his jackhammer & lifted bitumen above is head & plants began to grow… the mind replaced by the brain has killed the human spirit, what Kev Carmody calls the sterility of human objectivity… & so even the shaman knew not the magic, the stir, those spectres of light who walk the night & day… I’d rather not say, she sad, it’s all too sad… the concrete, the material, the visceral emasculated by the virtual… the synthetic replacing the dream… no wonder no one can scream… traditions dead as if 2 million years never happened… but then the harmonica played… & sounded a chime of freedom…

  The winter sky was brilliant today   The winter sky was brilliant today It was the essay it wrote As good as Orwell As good as Camus As good as Tolstoy   Jelly wrestling virtual reality For wage slaves & billionaires   Strange essay but at last literature had produced something thoroughly entertaining   It self-destructed after reading As the focus was on the after effect   Anyway, the trees swayed a bit more today As if spring is nearer What will the winter sky do then & will it mind disappearing from public consciousness     Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2024.    

  I smoke marijuana every chance I get, I’m not sorry   I smoke marijuana every chance I get, I’m not sorry Isn’t that what Ginsberg said? My favourite avowed sodomite Probably my favourite poet fullstop There’s an unshiftable shape providing amnesia Of/from earlier musings Like the nail in my foot eclipsing Earlier dances I’ve always wanted to listen to Riders on the Storm high Perhaps that was it Queue the tape… Now I feel like Hunter S. Thompson Or Neal Cassidy In The Electric Cool Aid Acid Test Wolfe recounts Kesey introducing Ginsberg to The Hell’s Angels Now, The Angels hate Jews & they really hate Fags But the Heavens joined & everyone went on “a laugh” Coz yunno Ginsberg’s like, an actual pacifist A robust one Not an anemic He’s what the Arabs I taught called “a sic kunt” Anyway I’m gonna just listen   I listen a while To Miles Davis’ Aura As the night comes falling from the sky To borrow from Bob Dylan Again t

  That laundry is still on the line   That laundry is still on the line Like the Wichita lineman Rocking back & forth Shit another poem about the weather What should I be writing about? So out of touch with my nation I feel like an exile in my homeland I’m obsessed with the changing light I don’t care about politics It looks to me like a game That the left & the right are all part of the same club To do the corporates’ bidding What would Australia be without mining? Would we survive? How would our nation change? What other industries would emerge? Let’s be honest, as the Aboriginals proved You don’t need much infrastructure to survive here We don’t have Siberian winters A lit fire could warm a lot of us Then we’d have community & we wouldn’t need to buy much You don’t have to buy a lawn mower if you’re mates with next door Oh no! 30 year olds want fathers & babies I’m 53 Spectacular ariel show from the flock of pigeo

  Silence 2   I dream of the orange-red-blue coals of my childhood or is it my future? I sat on one line a while determined not to rush, well actually just dog tired & sleepy I’m trying to work with silence, the quiet where as yet I haven’t found the rhythm Well there are many pauses for starters, we must walk away from the poem & do something else You cannot force things, as forcing things makes a clunky sound, like someone helping you through gritted teeth Prepare for such noises as you grow older & require caring for Relax the temples lower the shoulders seek not to possess the rhythm The problem for man is once he’s located an idea, he seeks to narrow the perspective & frame & cease being attuned One must remove expectations, caring not if the poem is written or not, If anything real is to be achieved beyond merely completing a task at the cost of existence/nature I had combative dreams last night & woke up angry, maybe that’s why t

  A proper winter day   A proper winter day Good day sir May I kindly assist you? Etcetera etcetera With some grey & with some cold damp & yet I see pink within the grey & yellow & blue & green Were I a painter I would use all the colours To try communicate the awesomeness of the grey blanket thrown across the clotheshorse in the sky I rode a bicycle when a boy in Beaumaris I hit a bump one day & fell & no one stopped to help me I was 14 or 15 Evidently teenage boys are not well liked I went crazy in Singapore & received assistance We should soon take that toilet mat in It’s been rocking on the line a while It’s now a darker navy grey I once saw an elephant ride a bike Or it may have been a bear After a bush walk with Pepper A deeper purple in the grey Shot with orange & some clear sky blue beyond & collars of white It’s a good day I did the washing Now on an old fashioned wooden cloth