Mel From Melbourne - Music & Words

  Worse than death   Some have suggested that divorce is worse than death & those who haven’t known it Or are still in relationships  Tell you you’re wrong   Divorce threatens one’s belief like war does In love, in life, in joy, in women, in relationships, in people, in the world, in sex, in commitment, in laughter, in tears, in heart to hearts Deep things It also threatens one’s belief in oneself   & so we bargain as if over a bag of oranges The corpse of our love Back & forth As the marketplace dictates   Clearly God IS dead & the madman is right   & we live Like spectres In this 2 dimensional world   A smileless street Living to die & Warring merely to survive     Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2024.

  FARMS, NOT MINES!     I’m writing down the page So keep up It might move quickly It’s no doubt the wine Music of Dionysius The god of the dance But where kids? Does the wine come from? That’s right Farmers The winemakers Have HIPSTERIZED their process Because evidently Farmers are not SEXY enough But the people That grow the wine Are the same people That grew Your breakfast Your lunch & what keeps you Going During the day: Tonight’s dinner Or what used to be called “Tea” Everything that goes Into your mouth Apart from A a genital Comes Thanks to farmers! When I lived in the city I didn’t really GET this FOOD COMES FROM FARMERS!   Now Getting away from kindergarten for a minute Sorry POST-DOCTORAL Coz nobody in the literati or Th’Arts is talking about it! When was the last time Anyone in the city talked about food processes Other than that the ingredients are a given How much you paying for

  Linked Haiku (30.9.2024.)   Willed haiku Is prose   --   Plastic cup I like blue   --   I still wear Her tshirt   --   Saw a bird I didn’t know   --   Swallowing water On a warm day   --   JJ Cale provides The backing   --   This haiku Is unpleasant   --   I can’t stop The strain eased   --   The birds & the building site – Springtime   --   Psychological narrative The bird that scoffed Wasn’t a kookaburra laughing   --   Linked verse Leave it alone Mal!   --   I’m going outside Away from the PC Here say   --   The writer Doubts the point was made   --   The reader Knows better   --   My first helicopter ride This year Dragonfly   --   Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2024.

  Easing away pathology (OCD)   Bright beautiful morning Breakfast Haiku Breathing   I shower So I miss the last 3 minutes of Mahler’s 4 th   It all happened very naturally   Elliptically     Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2024.        

  Haiku for Marcus   Haiku don’t have titles & the syllabic count Well, I’d need time to go into it I studied haiku for years Almost exclusively I’ve been published in World Haiku Review & really Haiku in English is An oxymoron Yes, the 17 syllable malarkey In Japanese it’s usually 17 But you know It’s Zen It doesn’t have to be precise Also 17 Japanese syllables Equates to about 8 or 9 English ones They’re that simple In essence more like word paintings English poetry is rhetorical Japanese Haiku is not Ideas have no place in haiku Traditionally you put in a seasonal word Haiku should have a break Implying emotion As I say Zen So something of impermanence    So I’ll try for you Marcus   One should be outside Or have spent a good deal of the day Walking & meditating I’m not I haven’t   So:   The last wine glass All the others shattered     Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2024.

  But they didn’t have any eggs   But they didn’t have any eggs & without help, because he wasn’t trained as an astronaut, he was just a supermarkets in the country open late. Fortunately, dry spell. Cold though. Clear & cold. The 2 tend to go together. He dreamt of the guys chasing him with a warm jumper wearing a spacesuit. There was a man Dirk the guy with the smile & harmonies & instruments. He could hear them in his head. A glace si vous plait? What to eat for breakfast, they wondered. The kids wanted pancakes but a tiger is not going to each party & unless red was blue she knew it too. Wild like the tiger’s eye that hypnotize ya. Mozart hummed a tune of his. He wasn’t fond of tunes. He required that the guys at NASA set the temperature too high. He didn’t know how to take off his helmet but the tiger was a friend to the monsieur. Limon. Finally a breathless morn after a witnessing magpie & escaped from his neighbourhood & they sent out to refuse a

  Art & Writing   It’s scary writing because you’re so exposed. Words appear so definite when really you’re just digging through space & time on a particular day, in a particular mood, with a particular mindset & capacity. Words isolate & divide. They are sequential. Unlike music or painting which is able to show multiple simultaneous sounds, tones, motifs or images, writing is linear. One thing follows one another. When I look at the works of serious painters, I am envious, of the avoidance of thesis allowed visual language. Even films. That last mad procession in Mad Max Thunder Road with the guitar player at the spear end & really what is happening, what does it mean? John Olsen when he painted his great Spanish Encounter under the influence of Dubuffet was able completely get away from rational thinking. I’m currently watching an interview, which I had to pause to start this. & I remember when I first looked at Surrealism, it was clear that it was ill-su

  Sundays   I used really look forward to Sundays. My wife & I would head out in the car to places we hadn’t been before. They were to borrow from Wordsworth “golden hours.” My wife was my home. We were super close for years. Despite all her years of illness & the stress it brought upon us, we were the best of friends. No one, as yet, has got to know me as well. I loved her with my whole being. We made the best of the COVID lockdowns. We’d have karaoke nights & special dinners, letter writing ‘competitions,’ lots of silly things, to wind down from our roles as essential workers. We always laughed a lot. We used to laugh ourselves to sleep. I don’t want to air why we split. In fact I don't think it had to happen. Ups & downs are part of any long lasting relationship. Anyway, we did. & so I lost that feeling of home. Sunday night art documentaries. Just the feeling of being accepted & safe at last, after years of trauma. Today I don’t want to be angry. I’m

  Exile & the Kingdom   I don’t really want to write. I’m forcing myself to because it’s basically all I have, else my life stands for nothing. I remember talking with Tim Thorpe from Triple R about the dangers inherent in over-creating: the danger in winding up making pieces about the making of pieces. & here we are. I’ve run out of creativity. My mate Terry McCarthy, the fine singer guitarist songwriter bandleader, yesterday said “don’t be so hard on yourself. Go for a walk. Do other things. & no doubt in a couple of days you’ll write something.” But the thing is, I have to write every day, or else I fear fall into a psychosis. Writing is my protection against the abyss. & if I don’t do it, my nerves will implode. Art for me is therapy. I create because I have to. You see I battle OCD & so it is an obsessive compulsion to write. Some days the muse has deserted me & so it feels like a nausea when writing. What Jean-Paul Sartre was talking about. Exile &

  I must be a cunt. The word prick doesn’t go far enough   I must be a cunt. The word prick doesn’t go far enough. Prick is soft. It doesn’t cut ya. I wanna talk about kind hearted women & why I’ve always been too much of a pussyole to put a ring on it. Kind hearted women remind you that men & women are in the same boat. We go after twinkle discs only to be treated like shit. I’ve known some kind hearted women, who if I were a man worth the name I woulda hooked up with. Sure there were nights, but I was always beholden to the rice crispie so my friends/ my people would approve. Men are cowards, they seek out the beautiful ones for proof of their status. But the beautiful ones let you down & so in between relationships you meet kind hearted women. But they’re hooked onto some flake & so you’re a mate. Max hung up on the phone to me. She was upset I used the word cunt. But prick doesn’t go hard enough. She’s a kind hearted woman. I don’t not pursue her because of look

  Blackbird   I went to the kitchen to put the wheat bag in the microwave & looked out the back window To see a blackbird racing past As if on roller skates Or like an old Warner Brothers cartoon I thought “Man blackbirds can run fast! I wonder what the enjoyment comparison is for him Between running & flying?”     Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2024.

  Strange Days   We’ve agreed that the masculine physical advantage must not be exploited. Now can we admit that the feminine verbal advantage not be exploited?   & so bullies are bullies & I’m an introvert who’s been forced by life (arguably by Capitalism & the American way) to behave like an extrovert.   Defensively fighting for my life to the point where I can’t breathe.   I have Max Sometimes to thank for certain insights.   I went to the pub tonight & the women look arrogant & the guys penitential. One thing’s for sure. No one’s smiling.   We have a new generation of women raised on the Real Housewives of Shitsville & they talk with a sneer & the reason I like black women is they’re usually kind, having learned humility from their shituation. “Who feels it knows it.”   I’m fairly sure the cook spat in my burger tonight. Men like to win from my comments but no one will admit to it.   I’m a blues singer, so my approach is s

  Fait accompli   So, we’ve given up our grand narratives in the West. & our only reference points are celebrities/infamies. In many ways we’ve returned to a Roman Pantheon. But these demi-gods only ‘trend’ for a little while. & so we struggle to communicate, each of us coming from different angles, talking about different things. History’s a possibility, but then few know history & in this age of revisionism up is down, plus it leaves us stuck in the past, ill adept at coping with the contemporary. So what can we agree on? One would think that our basic needs must be met, yet many are against public housing & food banks etc. That education is crucial for a country’s future? Still kids who go into vocational training over higher ed earn more in this country. One would think that community enriches life 10 fold & yet some prefer the company of artificial intelligence & most spend their days glued to their phones, avoiding the glance of their townsfolk. It'

  Chasing glory & justice   “Off! off! off! off!” they chanted at the singer, expecting her to take her clothes off, coz clearly she was no Maria Callas but was sexily clad. Why does that scene from that film move me so? The humiliation. The power imbalance. Seems like an event I can relate to. Being bullied by a teacher at the boys’ school I was interned at. Only I could sing. FOR WHICH they humiliated me. So terrified of the beauty of boys they sought to brutalise us. Some say this new age of the young is the best so far, coz for the lack of torture they’ve been put through. & yet they are so squeamish of marks of woe, like suffering is injurious to their appetites. The new age of AFFIRMATIONS. The disease of conceit. I’ve written about it before. I self deprecated in a shop the other day & the young woman was aghast. My attempt to share universal human awkwardness as a rallying cry not for ideals but for the beautiful mess that is man. We live in an age where even wo

  A title with a hangover   The blackbird frolicking about in the backyard has a hangover The sky is grey the air misty with a hangover You get the point – the point has a hangover My teetotaller sister I meet for lunch has a hangover School children at the primary school have blinding hangovers I guess Mondays always have hangovers My diary has a hangover – not looked at for 3 weeks I missed the full moon – it didn’t miss me – we both had hangovers The end of this poem will have a huge hangover As did the start I’m sick of hangovers I would love to start a day when the sky is blue & the sun shines through reflecting on the crystal clear stream     Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2024.

  The birds’ spring songs sound fresh   The birds’ spring songs sound fresh Like together they’re making a symphony I can’t see them though So I don’t know who’s making all the different bell sounds Now THAT bird! I recognize by its call A rosella somewhere The birds & I had become close I’d presented my place as a refuge for them Now 2 assaults First my estate agent required I weed the spontaneous plants that the winds had brought that the birds loved so much Then recently a housemate’s cat moved in Why do people get cats in the country? I guess they do keep away the rats & mice But I’m a bird man Hopefully now that the cat’s fucked off The finches & the wrens will come back As I say I had thought of my home as a safe house for birds & ancestor spirits In a world where they’re threatened by ‘progress’ & the crow Waa the feminine moiety arrived & no bird minded my bi-monthly dog I’ll just have to wait patiently for a