Adelaide Festival
I am in town
staying 10 floors up
with a view of cranes, cars
and the casino
I visit friends with small children
Four heads bob
to Play School songs
faces slack with delight
Their small white limbs
flail and jerk
clap hands
crocodile jaws
stars in the sky
Stomp Stomp!
eyes wide
spittle sprays
dancing is an inalienable right
wading through late afternoon
white wine
we cheer them along
affirm their inelegant joy
Later that night
I dodge drifting posses
girls with owl eyes
and ironed hair
boys rolling on beer
baggy jeans
and spanking new white runners
Across the road
a crowd is frozen
in halted momentum
3 bucks tip forward
chests lean
legs scissor
fists clench
explode across the pavement
shouting revenge
while the girls
and softer boys
hover
suspended in the burst bubble
of hot night inebriation
over the body
red shirt
cream pants
slumped to one side
he does not move
I did not see the punch
but it has split open
the bustling night
of festival city celebration
Everywhere I walk in this town
I am knocking against shoulders
and elbows
no-one watches where they walk
At 11pm a line of bobbing bodies
puckered flesh
and slack alco pop mouths
spills out of Hungry Jacks
the mall is littered with
broken glass and abandoned French fries
Police on every corner
I count ambulance sirens
1-2-3
In the festival club
burlesque acts top off the night
a woman with a black bob
inserts a corkscrew into herself
then stands on her hands
spread her legs
and a red flower pops out the top
of this inverted vase
artists and those who like to be associated with artists
sit under fairy lights
dance on wooden boards
drink beer from plastic cups
swanning in their sense
of in-house belonging
It is a half hour walk
from the apartment
-where the children are now fighting off bedtime
I leave the mothers alone to deal with that one
their anger as uncensored as their dancing joy
to the festival end of town
I walk through the roaming
stumbling groups
who – fifteen, twenty years on from the dancing children
now need to be lubed up to try and find
that uncensored joy
just over the line from
random explosions of anger
The boy in the red shirt
lies still
sensible adults wearing linen stride past
ignoring the trauma
not my business
don’t want to get caught in the splash of
blood or dirt
The police buzz towards the scene
The snapshot starts to dissolve
as I walk past
head down, eyes straight ahead
trying to navigate
a straight line
from the sleeping children
through the unfolding street tragedies
into the place
where a green plastic pass on a lanyard
tells me I belong
Front Page News
The article in the newspaper
confirms that the reigns of power
will be handed on a platter
from the baby boomers
to Generation Y
Gen X
now and forever
the Jan Brady
of time
the awkward
middle child
Profiles of six
up and coming
Gen Y about to turn thirty
reveal a yawning mediocrity
I want to travel some more
I’m not ready to settle down
My friends are important to me
The minutiae of these
lives is not mediocre
to those living them
The yawning malaise
lies in the fact
that this is front page news
Are we so numbed
by warming and terror
catastrophe and technology
that we could not
find six up and coming Gen Y
with passion to burn
and desire in their eyes
for what may be possible?
This is no revolution
this is no overturn
this is a global reading of the will
from one generation to their offspring
Designed to anaesthetise
gloss over the damage done
the wrong turns took
Look!
You don’t even have to fight for it
The power’s yours
We’re off to spend our Super
Good luck with this thing called Planet Earth
New Year Comfort
If your thoughts turn to death, as can happen at the start of a new year, I have recently found the words of Walt Whitman to be of enormous comfort:
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceased the moment life appeared.
All goes onward and outward ... and nothing collapses,
And to die is differnt from what anyone supposed, and is luckier.
Those words are from Leaves of Grass (Song of Myself).
Old Walt has that peculiar shining insight that is the gift of true depressives. He struggled a lot with life and so you can believe his fervour when he finds things to celebrate and be hopeful and thankful for.
Happy New Year 2010.
May we all find light and fervour in the most unexpected of places.
Cigarette butts, envelope seals and used serviettes
Cigarette butts, envelope seals and used serviettes
(how they found DNA to track down 39 living relatives of Hitler)
You may have heard
that two scientists
have used
cigarette butts, envelope seals and used serviettes
to prove
the existence of 39 living relatives
of Hitler
It captures the attention doesn’t it
even the imagination
cigarette butts, envelope seals and used serviettes
it could be an episode of NCIS
or the lyrics
of a Leonard Cohen song
I may be naïve
but I’m not sure why they have to find them
these 39
all of whom, I think
have changed their name
most of whom, I imagine
if they know their lineage
are just trying to live their lives
quietly, seriously, with as little pain as possible
and if they don’t
well …
… they are probably doing just the same
Did you know that Hitler
was ashamed of the mental illness
that ran in his family?
It was one of the reasons he never had children
He did not want to leave that legacy behind
He preferred
a different legacy
of a new world order
kind
But little did he know
that from his lips
in his tongue’s lick
from his mouth’s spit
he was leaving behind
a trail
to stretch his sticky history
on
through years
over time
to these guilty? innocent? implicated?
39
How many of us
are leaving traces
of guilt
remnants of shame
littered through the city
disappearing into the streets
of our lives
adding to the pile
of ever growing
refuse and rotting rubbish
that makes up the story
of humanity so far
That also
we hope
and sometimes can see
is the fertilizer
for the tiniest of seeds
a new way of living
new hope for being
that comes
maybe not from a DNA hunting party
following evil
and hoping in some way
this proof will stop it
but hope that comes
from looking at what
we do
and how
and who we do it to
and seeing what is there
on the cigarette butts and envelope seals and used serviettes
we all leave behind
Moon Wonder (in honour of 40 years)
Fly me to the moon
said the song
and they did
Watching the documentary
I understand conspiracy theory
it is too much to be believed
How did they know where to aim?
And how did they know how far they had to go?
And who steered?
And that picture of the earth, a perfect, jewel like sphere?
That can’t be real
that can’t be where we live
They said they were driven by worry but not fear
that a tiny thing might go wrong
these were not men haunted by demons of existential terror
although one said he was scared, more scared than an astronaut should be
Astronaut – how did that even become a real job, or anything more than fantasy?
They walked where there is no ground and they breathed where there is no air and when asked were you lonely he said I knew I was alone (the most alone a human being has ever been as far as we know, the one orbiting around with the others down below) but I was not lonely, no.
They reached ‘magnificent desolation’
and more than one came back with divine belief
Sometimes the happiest times are when you are alone with purpose, out of the orbit of the every day, traveling light, the bare necessities and only room for essentials inside and out, a task, a singularity, people and habit and demands and routine a remote reality.
I did not know that they left so much there.
a strange colonisation of debris and machines and
cameras and LEMs and Rover and flags
Did they ask anyone?
Who cleans up the moon?
How do we even know it’s called the moon?
Was there a sign?
Re-entry cause more trauma than the effort of the trip. There is only so much you can leave desolate. The rest comes back with you, every time.
Yourself.
Inside and outside.
Back to the rising muck, the littered, rubbished, heaving, groaning, decaying, screaming, bombarding, growing, not at all peaceful, loud and lewd, real life.
Back on earth.
Wishing,
Wondering,
What precious part you may have left behind.
And if it might have been the bit
that makes
all the difference.
What Aussies Do
Aussies look after Aussies
That's what Nicole and Keith told me
Clutching each other and peering down the camera barrel from their Aussie home on the other side of the world, a thousand miles away
It is a relief to be told so clear, so firm, so true
After all Nicole is the face of Australia, so she must know what it is that we do
And now Mr Howard is no longer our leader I simply don't hear often enough, or learn, or see
What it is that makes me Me
Human
Female
De facto
Urban dwelling
But what Aussie else? What Aussie outlook? What Aussie attitude? What Aussie identity?
And now I know, now I understand, now I see
I just need half a million dollars, a national disaster and a live feed
To remind me what it is to be
Aussie!
Aussie!
Aussie!
Bushfires and Leonard Cohen
Victoria Burns
Two words, that launch a week of personal tragedy for many and public expressions of grief for countless more.
Echoes of tsunami, 9/11, Princess Diana, JFK ... moments where events beyond our control tap into personal reservoirs of sorrow and community outpourings of compassion.
A deeply painful experience for those who have lived the devastation of the bushfires. And for those of us who have been lucky enough not to, the strange, the surreal, the swept away emotions, some of which are our own and some of which we beg, borrow and steal. To try and be connected. To try and understand.
Perhaps a more reserved, reflective pace of compassion is called for at these times. So that the individual losses of people do not become transformed into the almost meaningless mania the media would propogate.
In this, among this, wise words from one who is one of the best in the world at putting words together. At his Melbourne concert, Leonard Cohen observes that:
'Some pain is too deep, some sorrow too great for words. The best we can do is provide food, clothing and shelter to those who are in need.'
And offers this as we leave the hallowed halls of his words and music at the end of the night:
'May you be surrounded by family and friends. And if you are not, may the blessings find you in your solitude.'
A simple prayer.
Sometimes that is the best we can do.
A version of this article has been published on e-zine 360boom.