(apologies to Nick Cave - many stolen and bastardised lyrics inside this performance piece - al)
“my face is finished - my body's gone - and I can't help but think - standing up here in all this applause and gazing down at all the young and the beautiful with their questioning eyes - that I must above all things - love myself...”
like lazza himself - dig yourself nick - get ready for love – set me free
but my mouth like black black cotton up here in this foyer of justice – a cave of wet remembrance
coz a long black-haired skinny god of cool is in the house now, this ghost of the baddest seed, this bastard museum of bashed, bent n biblical lyrics - of birthday parties and boys next door – of orgiastic guitar, of painted strippers on my munted body – my mortality, this love of organised stanzas of hate and the perfect strut and stance - of naked full-blooded violence – the birth of a concrete vulture – this darkest night..
yr subway words hammer in my head - yr blood as a pen, beaten n robbed in the fading city light – yr face like a bug, an art school failure
and i’m not fit to tie yr fucking shoes – i’m hideous to the eye - a fat little insect - the stripper dancin on all fours in his birthday fucking suit – the stench of London, the st kilda scum – a punk gothic
we call upon the sainted author to explain – yeah man – we need the authors’ explanation – the underlying seeds of all this – the cognac, pethidine, the heroin of it all - the grinderman’s methadone plan – a twelve-step poem, a bleeding Wangaratta nightmare
hey my friends, lovers, diggers and beggars – so we ain’t believing - in interventionist gods here tonight man - one microscopic cog in his catastrophic plan
but if we did, if i did, if you did motherfuckers - I would kneel down and ask Him not to intervene - not to touch a hair - yet to leave you baby as you are - to direct you, direct you into my arms
and hey, we don't believe in the existence of angels either - but looking at you I wonder if that's true - and ask the angels to watch over you - to each burn a candle for you - to make bright and clear your path - and to walk, like Christ, in grace and love
and i believe in love - in some kind of path – man, we can walk down it, me and you - always and evermore - Into my arms, into my arms - my broken, scarred and pricked arms, my germanic syringes, yr pornography of religion
nick man, let’s take a litlte walk to the edge of town - across the track, where the viaduct looms, like a bird of doom as it shifts and cracks - where secrets lie in the border fires, in the humming wires
he's a ghost, he's a guru – and they're whispering his name through this disappearing land but hidden in his coat is a red right hand - here he comes
you'll see him in your head, on the TV He's a ghost, he's a god, he's a man, he's a guru - designed and directed - his nest high up in the autumn branches, built from nothing but high hopes and thin air, collected up some baby blasted mothers who took their chances
and we've laid the cables and the wires, we've split the wood and stoked the fires - we've lit our town so there is no place for crime to hide - our little church is painted white and in the safety of the night we all go quiet as a mouse - since the word got out - from the North down to the South - no-one's left in doubt - there's no fear about - if we all hold hands and very quietly shout Hallelujah - god is in the house
back here in this july city night – in their bloated museums, all the magicians, the mathematicians - across the wet-paved, tree-lined light-lit thoroughfares - and baby, we're hip to the sound of six billion people going down, blocking the sun - blood running down the inside of her legs, the moon in the sky is battered and mangled and the bells from the chapel go jingle-jangle - we made every effort not to abuse her - crazy bracelets on her wrists and her ankles - and the bells from the chapel go jingle-jangle – do you love me? do you love me? do. you. love. me?
lets celebrate the murder of sadness, the rape of the melancholy muse – busting the rhymes – the batman regret – a permanent fear of the denial of youth – the killing of aggression – growing to each other’s faces – no grace in rebellion – no end to the 30 years of relentless scars – the unreliable muse is dead – the author unexplained – look yonder – look yonder - sailing ships around me... never enough exclamation marks anyway – dig dig dig...
so yeah man, I bought her a dozen snow white doves - I did her dishes in rubber gloves - I called her honey bee, I called her love - but she just still didn't want to - she just never wants to – Damn...!
and you there, perhaps still with us in this friday cello cave rant leave religion to the psychos and fanatics – we’re tired and hardly breathing – we’re sick and tired of all this self-serving grieving
Kevin, go tell the women that we're leaving...
=====================
antipoet - allanboyd - july 2009 -
for the nick cave exhibition... july 10 2009
10 July 2009
speak to me saint nick!
30 June 2009
In the final letter
Enter here...
In deep blue rancid breaths, I’m speed-reading Winton - this totality of radical deception. A eucalyptical perception. At this stage, the reader is transformed - sinking deep into the grit of South-West quicksand.
And you?
The casual observer now flanking the Subiaco midfield, in ripped athletic spurts - like Cousins on ice - a paranoia of closed-circuit swine-flu drama-scapes.
A different jumper. A new season. Another stanza.
Is this it?
Forest Products Commission, June 2009
We’ve taken on Gleneagles. Off the Albany Highway bitumen we veer left - some 200 wet metres before the Jarrahdale turnoff - down the bloated corrugations of Randall Road. Our convoy of late-model polar-white utes off the mud-map. I’m like Google Earth now in this beard of fuzzy rain.
Is the sky black? White? Riparian?
Under the stark-gnarly bone-bark stags, those plastic-wrapped boxes stacked seven-high on Singapore pallets. A crushed water-bottle bong protrudes boot-high in the pea-gravel humps at the second tree-dump. We’re loading 40 boxes before smoko now – noting serial numbers like wrecked accountants. In the truck-trod dirt pan there’s some kid’s busted black plastic pirate-patch; a buckled 1998 twenty-cent piece; the rustling papier mache tower of empty cardboard, pepper-black potting mix n dead plastic bags. Coffee rocks unearthed. Smokes smoked.
Then, it’s just me, my buckets - and the nausea of three-day Southern Ocean fronts - bashing against the Darling scarp like a bastard file. Future of the Left rasp my wet cold ears - the beanie-helmet not a hardcore symphony – an exactly distorted travesty of late-pop-Welsh-genius. A poetry of cash notes in the cock-shaped block.
Our clay-muddied boots heavy now, sharper than rainbows of wet spastic memory. Waiting for waves of clarity...
*
We traverse the dirt-pillows of raised rip-lines, 200 seedlings at a time. The brotherly mist of diesel-confusion fully fucks with my headspace today – forces an awkward comical moonwalk. The mersyndol of toxicity fumes.
We break hard fat beats in the ruins of a native coupe. The raised contours cut from a collage of contemporary barcodes, the sky a rabid grey march. Black and green ribbons like pint glasses across the paddock, the mounds fresh: inserting 1550 stems into each empty hectare. The ripped n turned forest litter - impediments to my speared tool – our collective biceps cringing. Pangs of the dashboard porn-mag skin, an erect misogynistic flashback.
Yet, there we are man - heeling in Pinus pinaster - the youngest airbrushed bark of us still billions of times more powerful than a new colour of shampoo. The ludicrous irony of planting thousands of Maritime Pine in logged Jarrah stands. Like corporate logos in an anarchist society.
*
Am I home in my Heathridge kitchen? Cutting n frying onions, dishes in the hot soapy water – and you babe, deep in a lit-review fugue. The sound of the oven-fan; the windy rain nails at the window. The kids home at 3.25.
*
Hey, I’m not moon-bending this time, just distributing pamphlets advocating a special violence, the blood of Iran drizzled – a warm Thai beef salad, acacia and sandalwood reflections.
Does this paragraph break mean more than clear-felled forests falling, like antlers on an emu? A single clapping hand? A Griffin? A standard model Fight Club? An unread Cloud Street? The Dirt Music mannequins? A Blac Bloc fucker at the barricades?
*
Abercorn: Back past Sawyers Valley though, about 12 Ks down Flynn Road - across the twisted wire fence at the bottom of the paddock - drapes splintered cross-legged roo bones bouncing in a weak breeze. Tufts of fur and brown blood and black meat still attached- the stench making me retch.
Parked on a hill, hubs locked, wheels in the mound gutter - we eat Lebanese bread with honey, the bees humming at the windows.
Back then, hey I’m giggling, swallowing chunks of velvet Cometti stanzas in the final quarter; skolling orange Staminade.
Then crushing bleached sheep skulls as the rain smashes my useless face.
*
The phone outta range now at the bottom of this ridge, my legs bent strange under the rims. The blood with the soil. I’m pleading obscenity at the red-tails chasing the white-tails and koolbardies; the chiddy-chiddys and the crow noise. Their random languages – a reverberating festival of forest squawk - seeking stumps the size of cars without habitat or mates.
Maybe it’s the Sandalwood nuts rattling in the tray, or the remnants of last night’s Super Dry in the battered white Esky; the skies a forgotten stunning blue. Perhaps an unhampered uniform of soggy tree-planter-wear riddled with pine needles, dirt and beer bottle-tops?
Either way, I’m sinking fast here as I type this, trying not to move, hoping the GPS kicks in.
The next planter’s silhouette at the hilltop over there - I’m stranded waist-deep in the Scott-River hail.
*
Hit Send...
_________________________
Allan Boyd –June 30 2009
12 June 2009
Perth Heats - 2009 National Poetry Slam
The Perth heats of the 2009 National Poetry Slam will be held at the 459 BAR of the ROSEMOUNT HOTEL, Cnr Angove and Fitzgerald Sts in North Perth.
Theres a map here, on the venue page.
PLEASE NOTE: We will not be accepting Heat registrations until early September 2009.
BUNBURY? there is also talk of a Heat in Bunbury! More details will be posted on this website when we have confirmed.
When are the Perth Heats?
- * HEAT 1: Friday 9th October
- * HEAT 2: Friday 16th October
- * HEAT 3: Friday 23rd October
- * HEAT 4: Friday 30th October
- * FINAL: Friday 6th November
Its $5 Entry for Slam consumers - to be used to help cover costs of running the event and providing prizes for the winners.
If you wish to compete in the Slam heats, registration will cost you $5 - to be paid on the night of your heat.
REGISTER HERE (currently disabled) Please come back early September to stick things in boxes...
If you have any dramas please phone Allan Boyd - WA Slam Heats organiser on 0402 573 580 - Or use the Contact form here...
Thanks comrades... Werd!
From the waslamheats.com website...
--
01 June 2009
23-n-a-half
testing yr well-trod pathos
i'm braver than uniformed cock
i'm uncircumcised bitter
rigid-n-raw
this truncheon of meaning
we eat well here
in box(es)
("final words? i'll give you 23 and 1/2 max..." - in response to MoTHER)
Bernstein stuff...
I often mention Charles Bernstein - who in 1978 cofounded the "L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E" magazine, which ran until 1981 - and his activist approach to generate an immediacy of language; to carve up expectation in the devices and forms of poetry. (PDF Bio)
Today I realised that my partner has him as a friend on Facebook!
Anyway, here's a couple of quotes: "The reinvention, the making of a poetry for our time, is the only thing that makes poetry matter. And that means, literally, making poetry matter, that is making poetry that intensifies the matter or materiality of poetry—acoustic, visual, syntactic, semantic. Poetry is very much alive when it finds ways of doing things in a media-saturated environment that only poetry can do, but very much dead when it just retreads the same old same old..." from Against National Poetry Month As Such by Charles Bernstein - Author of My Way: Speeches and Poems
"Verse is born free but everywhere in chains. It has been my project to rattle the chains."
MORE: Charles Bernstein - My Way || CB's Website
