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Lygon Street Blues

 

Lygon Street Blues (2025CE)

 

I wept while praying last night

Just between me & God

But Jesus woke me this morning

To the words of my dear friend Richard

Encouraging me to speak of my pain

Filthy as I am with the world of politics

He said he hadn’t seen me so worked up in years

He said that I appeared “ready to hit someone”

He said he wasn’t even sure it wouldn’t be him

Nazis coming into our city really fucked me off

I’m cut

Man nearly all my loved ones are ‘migrants’ including both my wives

Even my Dad was

It’s made me all ‘John Rambo’

Fight not flight

But then I listen to Tex Perkins sing

“You’re 39, you’re beautiful & you’re mine”

& I think of Daniele

My beautiful wife & my home

Taken away from me

But still held inside me

Still my heart

Though 2 & a third years have passed

Oh my love!

Clearly love wasn’t enough

The tours of duty we did together

As she spent years in hospitals

& in the day I cared for the wellbeing of thousands of children

Till eventually, broken in pieces

Our marriage ended

Toileting someone is bad for your sexual chemistry

She knew me better than my mother did

Same goes for her & me

Modern marriages need some romance

But I had nothing left

It’s not only the marriage that broke down

The deaths of my mother, my best friend & my father

All too much

& I’m like Sister Wendy

I feel people’s energy so intensely

& I feel so much unhappiness around me

As Blake says “marks of weakness, marks of woe”

So I try to lift & galvanise people’s spirits by sharing goodwill

Most people like it

But some can’t receive

Then again, I find it really hard to

 

As I say & my marriage proved

It’s a lot easier to give love than receive love

Who’d love me for God’s sake?

I’m ugly, I’m a loser, I’m weird, I’m crazy

My consolations are I’m a great confidant & ‘uncle’

& animals like me

& as Lao Tzu says “when the clouds part, the sun shines through”

I’m healing

I’m learning to love again

But I’m still grieving

I don’t wanna hit anyone

But fuckin Nazis attended by thousands in Melbourne

You’ve gotta be kidding, my siblings!

People tell me not to worry about it

& it’s no good living with my defences up

It’s exhausting

It makes me stiff & sick

My trauma is really playing up

So I don’t know

I think the Muslims are right about ‘hospitality’

& I’m a Melbourne

So I want everyone to feel welcome

& no one to feel intimidated

As I say

I see my pain in the hearts of those I share this beautiful city with, Naarm

 

Nevertheless,

I’m got to remember that I too need to receive some tenderness

Less my heart turns to stone

I meditate on the stone

& like the ancient scholars

It meditates on me

But as Edie Brickell says

“Man, I wish I had a hand to hold”


—


As a P.S. to this poem

Someone dear said to me “it’s nice you care”

All I could reply was:

“Love that I care? They’re talking about the love of my life!”

Do people have any idea what ‘black’ people go through?!

& ‘black’ girls & women?!

“Children & the elderly”

I can’t unsee what I have seen walking next to her

& no one gives a fuck!

 

 

 

Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2025.

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