Mel From Melbourne - Music & Words

  Time   “He was the first man we saw Other than our father … We called him Man” Surfing 3 metre waves Balletic & fresh As only a stoner can do Someone not seeking to pin things down But allowing for dormancy & activation I was talking to Kurt Cobain But he didn’t want to be understood He just wanted to be Like you my love “With your own name there & your … (confetti) … hair” It’s a problem with us writers Enshrining patterns That refer not to sculpture But life Dangerous Like my psychiatric diagnoses Legally necessary But do nothing for the patient patient I unravel like the inside of an old golf ball Kurt had the same name as me & was barred from medicinal marijuana I woke deep breathing From inside my dream to outside Infact they were one & the same Continuations of consciousness As I look to end this poem I say why? & why not? Sprinkle fried onions on noodles Oh it’s lunchtime I...

  City Prayer   Some look inwards To find the world Some look outwards & find themselves alone Some help others Too busy to look Some sit atop a mountain & sing “I’m king of the world!” There are 8 odd billion ways Each inexplicable Is it doing or being? Such words as these Lose any meaning As random as our Snoring or yawning We live, If we’re lucky, We love The more the pin prick goes in Conceptualising past grievances The more it hurts, The more we identify causality, Yesterday I bemoaned the past Today I keep my mind open I am not only duality I rub Vicks into my chest They way I rubbed it into Your chest & back We went through Hell together Lung diseases, brain disease 10 years in & out of hospital Vomiting litres of blood A butchered brain op requiring a follow up But found Heaven For seasons at a time   The car lights play on my ceiling As I lie in the dark Night has fallen...

  The light is fuck off golden   Fuck off with your drone photos Of places on Earth You have no relationship with that land You’re just a fuckin peeping Tom So Walt Disney was a Nazi sympathizer He made Daisy Duck’s rump ripe For fetishists for animations like the Japanese Terrified of blood & sweat & penile disfunction in the real deal When I was young man with issues I married a Japanese woman So I get it Now I’m an old fart not with issues But problems Miles Davis’ Aura I like I married a black woman for 12 years We did tours of duty With brain disease I’ve got a headcold now So I can’t breathe through my nose So I shallow breathe & my anxiety plays up But why should I care If I’m a fuck up publicly? I’m not hiding Like a nation of fuckin silent men & projecting women I’m just healing man  Might never heal properly  If I’m ever again to hook up with someone again They’ve gotta be divorced ...

  Love behind everything   It wanted to see love behind everything, his libido & it refused a homeless man a bed It had been too long since he’d got laid So he chose to see love behind the destruction of a water supply in Southern Nigeria by Shell God just wanted to get laid Anything, that he could have his female counterpoint I’m not getting into the Greeks & Romans I’m a Southern Hemisphere poet & God saw love behind this I think my next door neighbour punched the wall in a rage & God saw love behind this His counterpart was a new ager Part of the healthy, wealthy & wise set & God battled with his faith He struggled to see love behind this But his libido was pragmatic As Australians are In fact most moderns are & so he kept going on about love Even though it felt hollow For he could hear next door whimpering in despair Wearing a tshirt with the word love on it Next door took the tshirt off & put ...

  Shell Oil Spills in the Water Supply   I don’t understand why people from my first world country Like to hear about suffering in 3 rd world countries It’s so far removed from their lives & yet poems about first world realities & disingenuous communication Are ignored It’s a kind of voyeurism It’s a kind of superiority complex In Southern Nigeria People are getting sick from Shell oil spills in the water supply In Southern Australia People are getting sick from loneliness Living people from the 3 rd world Serve as symbols for us in Australia We’re terrified of looking at ourselves It’s easier to empathise But it’s that same source Australia’s phobia of looking at itself That feeds into corporate crimes We can’t stand the sight of ourselves reflected in the mirror So we need 3 rd world news to allow us to feel As for the Southern Nigerian I don’t know what she thinks about Australia From the literature I read I gathe...

  We’ve watched too much TV   There are things I ought to write about Like environmental catastrophe & yet I don’t, though I feel it deeply I so I write about my brother’s gumboot Lost in the snow & him crying & my parents laughing Sympathetic of course But humour at the absurdity We’re a funny lot, us folk We cry in anime yet laugh at the deaths of dear ones & so we’re presented with endless reels Of extinguished species But it somehow feels unreal We prefer to talk about celebrities Because it don’t upset the meal Emotional pleas for justice Do not touch our hearts We mistake real life for fiction We’ve heard too many lies Our minds contaminated & so the Devil’s techniques Amuse us until apocalypse     Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2025.    

  I miss my country friends (For Fernando Palma Rodriguez)   I miss my country friends Like I miss fresh air   There’s lots of pretty faces in the city But the conversations are dull Always rushing to the endpoint The music always too loud & you yourself have no faith That any new territory will be reached   Conversations are afterall relational In the city the conversations chop & change constantly Everyone for some reason in a hurry Little resonates & I’m as dulled as they are   I’m lonely here My nights are taken up with small talk Everyone selling a message of hope When there’s a ghost inside their breast   We talk without any appetite No candour, consideration, nor grit We do not listen well here in the city Our ears ringing from the traffic & the muzak We cannot see the horizon We have lost our sense of direction     Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2025. ...