Two things & the impossibility of writing a great poem in a settler society, or at least

 

Two things & the impossibility of writing a great poem in a settler society, or at least me

 

Two things:

 

My poetry became more prosaic

When I became a school teacher

I had to make myself understood by all

I had to be ultra accountable for my words

Like living in fuckin Stalingrad

However, also

A moment arrived

When I recognised what a miniscule audience

High poetry has

Half its own fault

For disappearing up its own arse

But also the dropping of literacy standards

Amongst the community

Also the recognition that

I wish to speak with people

Beyond the Anglo-Saxon

Who speak English not as their mother tongue

& also

Having lived a close to the bone life

At times

I’d tired of parlour games

That no doubt ties in with earlier statements

This piece has been hastily composed

Little thought given to structure

Oh yeah, & I was put on anti-psychotics

A ‘prison for the middle-class’

Which slows down the angels

&

Oh yeah, on yeah

Also that the world of ideas is in a war

& to retreat into hermeticism would be cowardly

 

The second thing I wanted to say

Completely unrelated

& I’m having a bollocks of a time

Getting it right

Was

That when you receive few phone calls in your life

Live alone

& don’t talk to many people for days at a time

Coz you’re convalescing in the country

OK, me! (ha-ha)

But also the sick & the old

Those lonely seem to be preyed upon

By more junk calls than is normal

Coz one is yearning for company & answers them

“In case it’s important” they fib themselves, hope alive

An evil

Not of the magnitude of war crimes

Obviously

Or corporate crimes against the 3^rd world

But it is a corporate crime

It is a cruelty

Defended by a judgement of karma by some militants & criminals

 

But look at history

The window of Western wealth of the masses opening

& the broadening of the middle classes

Only really happened post WWII

& the window is quickly closing

This is going to be a hard nut I can see

& I must tread as lightly as if I lived in Stalingrad

Less funny now

So some people chose to climb out of extreme poverty

By joining a national or corporate military

& travelled overseas

& those people perpetrated obscene crimes

Against the Majority World peoples there

Overseen by the Few uber wealthy elites

They are culpable

But most suffered at home

& what different

Those who join Call Centres?

These employ thousands of hopefuls

From poor populations

Puts them in dreadful workplaces

All to upset lonely Westerners

 

…

 

Oh, now Pauline gets it

It’s about settler societies!

The massacres! The massacres!

So indeed there is some Karma there

(pause)

…

 

But to upset lonely Westerners

Looking for some genuine communication

They don’t massacre them

They don’t rape them

They don’t make families watch their loved ones tortured

Blood is not spilled

Less it’s just driving someone to suicide

It’s not even close, remotely

No doubt a far lesser evil

It might not even be an evil at all

But a cruelty

Seriously people are lonely

& it is a kind of slow torture

I remember my dad

Speech impaired

Getting out the words “Suic…”

As in suicide

A year before he became mute

& died

 

…

 

Colonialism is a weight on all our shoulders

& we can’t deny it

Or wish it away

We are responsible to it!

You can’t buy your way out of the past

 

..

 

 

So

All I can really say is

The Minority World is lonely

The Majority World is hungry

People are miserable

& a small handful of untouchable people

Are making all this misery

 

So you have a choice:

Purgatory, Hell

Or Revolution!

 

(Fuckin ‘ell

That just happened all by itself

It’s the poem speaking

I’m steering clear

I just wanna drink wine in good company

& feel safe

& have a roof over my head

& food in my belly

& time for poetry

I’m scared of revolutions

They kill a helluva lot of people

Fascism is a kind of revolution

Which is circling

Like “you know who”

In Harry Potter

 

But regardless

Right or Left

Lot of blood is spilt

Once their governments are enshrined

They shoot the poets first

As Plato enshrined

Thugs rise to the top, as always

So I guess, personally, I choose Purgatory

Well, reform really

But the poem didn’t give me that option

Anyway, lock in A) Purgatory

Like a good boy from Beaumaris would

I’m not sure if it’s wisdom or cowardice

Perhaps the two have a bit in common?

I guess I choose the middle path

Because I’ve been so socialised

& when I broke with it

I saw the bulletproof glass cage

& wealthily dressed thugs protecting it

& took a plea

Lest the gutter

& early death

I chose Psych meds

The ‘middle class prison’

 

…

 

Pick the bits you want from the poem

Reduce suffering where you can

I can’t tell you what to do

That’s up to you to make up your own mind!

 

…

 

I think Afrika will have a big future, once it kicks out the honkies. & it’s right to do so.

As for Aboriginal Australia, hammered for 250 years, it could be tricky, coz you have a settler culture who outnumber you.

I don’t think the world is one solution. It must be many. My words are irrelevant to solutions. I’m just a drunk monk chattin’ his shit. I wouldn’t know what to tell ya. Go well. Respect your global sibling.

You know, when you write spontaneously, other people’s systems of thought overtake you. The just person, the racist, the homophobe, the comedian, the lamenter etc & you write things in the moment that you, if you had time to reflect, you wouldn’t write. & yet you write in real time & so you can only bounce off what is down, like a jazz soloist, not against silence. It’s not pure. It’s a bastard. But Jesus was a bastard, as were many good people. As was I. In a sense, you don’t get to write your angles. They’re inside. Often despite your conscious will. Often things, if you think about them, you disagree with them.

You see I worry about the World’s Indigenous people. That the moderns in Developing countries will sacrifice them, as we as settler moderns in Australia sacrifice ours. So what I’m writing is a plea. To stop thinking endgames & open to an attuned continuation. Prognostications about the future is driving discourse, because that’s the path of Capitalist-Communist Economics. But I think that future viewing is all gambling & what we know about gambling is that most of the time you lose. It’s all acceleration.

So in Endgame politricks, which is everyone wages war in a land grab for food, housing & water, I guess those elderly & sick in Western Countries are fair game.

As they are in Majority World Countries & maybe the Buddha’s Compassion is a middle class game. So what? It’s dog eat dog & kindness has no place. I think, like Dad’s hunger strike, I too don’t want to live in that world. I’m not tough enough. I’ll take a dignified babble as I go to the grave & curse you all for Eternity. I refuse to strike anyone in anger. I’m too old for that shit. So if you have to kill me, that’s on you! & if you have to break my heart, I’ll cry, but they’ll be MY tears.

 

…

 

The other alternative, is that if everybody builds walls around their nation, as projected by Trump is that we turn on our own, as in are you for, or agin us? Then we’ll be starved of connections to other places & what of the diasporas in our countries? They’ll each be fighting amongst themselves & the wars will be played out in the Minority countries. That’s the theory, at least. But how do we feed the Sudan, without imports?

The closed door policies don’t work.

We’re reliant on one another for energy & food & culture. Cos let’s face it, drums & voice have limited appeal. So let’s get along. & kick out the corporates or at least stop rationalising what you do for a living. It’s all shit. No one deserves to suffer. They just do. But don’t sleep easy at night if you’re doing marketing phone calls. It’s more than an annoyance. It causes harm.

 

Jesus, that was a long way round to say very little! The whole joke about “what is subtle?” Answer: that which people don’t get.

Some say splitting hairs is not worth it. I say that is precisely what the dexterous mind is for. Coz it’s not hairs, when their hairs are human collateral damage.

So what about Tuvalu & countries beset by rising sea levels? What are we going to do with our environmental refugees? Are we going to open or close our borders when our emissions are responsible for the damage?

It’s not so easy is it? & so I go back to my first point about prosody. That things have become more complex, hence writing has to become rougher around the edges & more robust, but how do we preserve that ancient poeticness. I think, increasingly, poetry will be little fragments, like jewels, within lengths of prose like my favourite haiku from an early film adaptation of Frankenstein:

“Lonely: bad

Friend: good”

The whole point of my second thing in this poetic essay.

& those phone calls…

Anyway, I’ve gone on long enough about it.

 

 

 

Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2025.