Mel From Melbourne - Music & Words

  Poem 17: Alone, Sunday’s a blues day When I don’t “know  Right from wrong”* Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2025. *line from Muddy Waters

  Poem 16: Listening to Beethoven’s ‘pastoral’ symphony  Window open on a sunny winter’s day Meditation ambushed by a circular saw below Cutting into my momentarily opened soul As war rages throughout the world  My consciousness is roused to ask “where am I?” Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2025.

  Language   “I think we’re at the start of world war 3” said X everyone’s feeling it oh I don’t know I’m depressed the city is cold & the middle class are upset by me talking what they call ‘politics’ which means dealings between people when I talk about language they really get really livid they seem to think I’m breaking a law in doing so so who really cares about a functioning democracy enough to oppose the lynch mob?     Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2025.

  No title: Mum didn’t silence distress with advice She listened till the wave passed — One in a million xx I miss her Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2025.

  Poem 15: I saw on social media today That Trump with Big Pharma Are trying to take the Australian government to a US court Over the PBS subsidies — Is it true? Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2025.

  Poem 14: There is no graver sin than despair xx Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2025.

  (Is it a?) Poem 13: Lovely old saying When something goes wrong: “It can happen to the best of us” Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2025.

  Poem 12: Mount Rushmore is a desecration of a sacred Indigenous mountain  Kitsch sculpture Contemporary globalised pop language Pollutes more often than not Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2025.

  Poem 11: From outside — Few better sounds than the sound Of a child laughing  Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2025.

  Poem 10: At my desk  Overhearing parting friends say  “I love you”  Soothes like sitting by a crystal clear stream Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2025.

Poem 9: “Never force” was dad’s advice It rang true as a little kid Before I became cranky Man, if I could just snap out of it! Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2025.

  The people of the world   & she was to die My darling mother The woman who’d carried me inside her & reared me As thick as thieves we’d been An honest friend Philosopher, entertainer Giver of just counsel & comfort We had the same sense of humour 6 months ago she’d admitted finally to defeat To 60 years with a polio throat That had made swallowing food such a struggle She had a peg put in So she fed through a tube straight into her stomach Bypassing her mouth In the last months of her life As western medicine prefers At any cost to prolong life  Life ceased to have any flavour & she would "welcome death" In those days before she died Life had beaten & battered her Whether by God or man I listened to her words sympathetically As she’d always understood As it came to the end In those last days & hours Her mouth would be always open & her tongue visible & manic As she searched despe...

Version: Jack Sprat spat endless shite His wife was taciturn  But altogether  Between them two They somehow partially rhymed Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2025.

  Poem 8: I once met a former child soldier  He was havin a bad night  He showed me his scars It must be hard for people like that to be around  People who are offended by words (I’m conjecturing of course) Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2025.