BREASTS! -New Video performing at JamPar Poetry Brisbane (+ Conduit Arts gig TONIGHT!) -18/05/2013

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The infamous mammary glandular rant by Randy (text follows below -so you can sing along at home). Edited by Alex Scott. Performed as part of feature I did for the lovely folks up in Brisbane last year.



if you are not seeing a playable video window click here for a direct YouTube link



BREASTS!

breasts are the best oh yes
I'm talking about breasts
and the time has now come to confess
how impressed I am with their shape
their firmness
there's really no contest
for where else my eyes could get

(stuck)

and ah it's just my luck
to then get busted
staring at her bust
then lose her trust
oh now she's real suspicious
that I only think about what juts
out from her chest namely her
breasts

believe me I have tried my best
not to be some vile letch
but I am powerless
in resisting temptation
when in any given situation
if an opportunity should occur
of being able to ogle
over there at her breasts

it is for these
for which I continue for to quest
though it oft-times
seems utterly hopeless
as most women just think I'm a pest
to say nothing about
joining me to get undressed
where, I could get a better look at
yeah, her breasts

on the crest of a conquest
I want the bequest
to please be her guest
by all means make... a mess
all over her breasts

breasts, I do not jest
their shapes have become enmeshed
upon my very consciousness
threatening my equilibrium and wellness
my imagination gives me no rest
and on exposure to them now
my intellectual power plumm-ets
spiralling into an infinite regress

breasts!
damnable breasts I say
they're horrible monsters like Loch-Ness!
and like Captain Ahab chasing
the White Whale I too am obsessed
by those compelling and comely  breasts

now I have the onus
of saying to their owners
in the tone of this poem
I mean no disrespect in my intent
but my fellow human beings
It is so, so -hard-
to ignore what I've seen

I mean I really just could
spend whole days gazing
stunned and open-mouthed
'cause they're amazing
pondering those magnificent
works of art that are
so close to both our hearts


your breasts.



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I've been a bit quiet on the blog for the last few weeks for two reasons, firstly I've been getting the album ready for a major launch in Melbourne sometime in July, including getting a whole series of these videos done. Secondly because I've been performing (and will be performing a lot more in the next few weeks). There are some great gigs coming up. Please my good friend Benjamin Solah's site Melbourne Spoken Word (http://www.melbournespokenword.com)

Tonight for example (Saturday May 18th), I'm teaming up with Amanda Anastasi, Steve Smart, Benjamin Solah, Santo Cazzati and Kerry Loughrey for their first official msw.com gig, hosted in Conduit Arts, on Brunswick Street Fitzroy.

It's gonna be a great gig, all-star line up, hope you can make it down!

-Peace








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Things got ugly, in so many words -May 1st 2013

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if she wants
to find herself described
in something you wrote
tell her, fine
tell her it's there
tell her by all means
come find it

but also warn her that
for all it's imagined attraction
this has never been
a safe place to go


looking for yourself




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Like so many poems, this piece started life as a tweet/facebook post and I imagined it as jumping-off point for a much larger, self-involved, self-aggrandizing, cabaret of closeted skeletons of what-lead-me-into-writing, slam-poem.  It's taken me the better part of a year to realise I didn't need that, and have the confidence to just let it be a long story short. I'm a slow learner.





-Peace





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Randy's Advice to Young Writers -27/04 (revised 28/04/2013)

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My advice to young writers: 

QUIT

because you're young

and awful 

and don't know anything yet 

(including that you're awful)

or

because you're young

and brilliant

and you fucking know it

yeah you should also quit

(especially you should quit)

because I don't need the competition kid

get the fuck outta here

go be awful 

go be brilliant
pages can wait
til it's first written on y'face

and quit asking advice from wankers.

_______________________

"I was born old and it wasn't much fun" -Steve Smart

-Peace

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ANZAC day & the Origins of War -25/04/2013

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well...  ugh.

I spent the last half-hour trying to find a short version of George C Scott's amazing opening speech from Patton, on YouTube, for a satirical Anzac day poem, but in that process had to imbibe so much right-wing crap that I actually feel sick now, and lost my nerve.

It's kind of a non-statement, but: we're living in the twenty-first century, war is a horrible thing that should always be avoided, never be supported. However, I don't begrudge anyone going to an Anzac day march. Lest we forget.

It's very easy for a some inner-city, highly-educated, progressive-politics, middle class geek like me to make grand sweeping statements, and lambast about militarism.  Yes, I do think all that patriotic stuff is a pile of brainwashed bullshit, yes I think it's stupid for people my age to go honour the noble courage of some ancestor they never knew sent somewhere far away to commit violence, because the big men at home in suits couldn't keep a lid on it.

But I'm living in 2013, and dubious cause or no, I have never had to sacrifice anything, haven't lost anyone to a conflict, and highly doubt I ever will.  I'm going to go out today with my family, as a living whole, and celebrate my birthday. Lucky me, lest we forget.

So, I'd encourage you to go get a copy of Patton for yourself, and see how well that rhetoric stands up today. Meanwhile, I'll leave you with some straight up science instead:



"it's tempting to close one's eyes to history and instead to speculate about the roots of war
in some possible animal instinct, as if like the tiger we still had to kill to live, or like the robin redbreast to defend a nesting territory.

But war ~ organised war, is not a human instinct. It is a highly planned a co-operative form of theft. That form of theft began 10,000 years ago when the harvesters of wheat accumulated a surplus and the nomads rose out of the desert to rob them of what they themselves could not provide."

-Dr Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man










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-Peace


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Skinned -21/04/2013

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We wear a skin...

we wear a skin
of shamed breast feeders
of prescribed discomforts
branded by bottle-fed men
scared and stuck
behind their belief
in one size fits all figs leaves 

we wear a skin blemished
by advertised body types
that wraps us up so tight
our insides shrink
wrinkling into whatever shape 
best fits and matches
their price tags

bicycle riders wear a skin 
of lines marked unclearly
catching car door fractures
safety zone bruises left...

...by those who would prefer
cyclists as a sight unseen

until this cycle breaks
we wear their lack of vision

dangerously invisible
against their traffic-

jammed billboard supermodel citizen
swallowing two dollar-a-litre
swill stationed wagon lines

there are no straight lines
anywhere on the human body























today we shed their skin
and all it's obtuse angles

our learning curve cycles
today we’re exposed
celebrating our bodies
all bodies actual
not just sexual

naked as our smiles
our cheeks, on seats
saying:

"Oh 
you can see me now"




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The World Naked Bike Ride took place in Melbourne on March 3rd, this year. Sometimes it takes you a while to figure why it is you do what you do, after the fact, and how to correctly articulate that doing.

All photos taken by myself, hopefully they add more than distract from the flow. In selecting each it was hard to balance the titillation factor (whilst not completely shying away from, or hypocritically claiming to ignore it, either) with the more documentary side of just celebrating that we were all out there having a good time.

-Peace








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Australian Shames -18/04/2013

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I believe the day will come,
when we will attach more shame to being a bigot
than we currently do in this society to being called
gay

There is a day coming
when Australian society will recognise shame
as something for people who stand
in the way of other people's love
their freedom to love
their freedom to express that love
and not apply shame to those of us
who are attracted
to members of their own gender.

No one knows how long they will live for
but I believe I will live long enough
to see this day come in Australia. 

I also believe it is a shame, for Australia
that we are not there already

I believe that want happened last night in New Zealand,
is something that should be celebrated the world over.

(can't figure out how to embed this video of People singing in the New Zealand Parliament  but clock on this link: [HERE ] to give it a watch for yourself. If it doesn't move you... well that's a shame)

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I don't pretend this is the best piece of writing I've ever done by any stretch, but I felt it's really important to make this occasion, for posterity  Y'know, right side of history and all that gorgeous stuff. Have a good day my friends, especially those of you across the Tasman from me.  

-Peace

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Inner Piece -14/04/2013

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you miss pieces of the person

not the whole person

you miss their eyes

more than their hair

the bottom of their ear

not so much their neck

the sound of their voice 

but only when they talked

through a smiling mouth

you remember lunches (together) fondly 

though dinners (out) were always a hassle

you miss Sunday night being with them

having left them for what they were like

come Monday

too old for blind sentimentality

seeing now that you can never

more than forty nine percent miss

what you half-heartedly held

when you had it

you made up the rest

in inner dialogue

lots of three dot eclipses

... to make it all fit

you have a bag with a broken zip

to hold all these perfect pieces

of an imperfect person

and no patience for puzzles

you

are missing a lot of pieces

of a complete person

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-Peace

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If You Can Hear This You're Too Close -21/03/2013

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you can debate
what's on the page
ain't on the stage
in poetry
til you're blue in the face...

if your vehicle has no wheels
if your plane has no wings
your book has no pages
your speech no words

if your breakfast is at night
and your dinners done by morning
then what you have
with your meal
is a mislabelled palate

poems read aloud
should be poems designed
or re-designed, for reading aloud
just as a poem written on a page
(or a screen) better
reed       that               <-weigh

them poets mate
they debate the debate
they equivocate
remonstrate
on and on
on one hand
but on the other hand...
I
am
so bloody tired of hearing
the out-of-date pontificate
for fucks sake!

the page versus the stage
like the roof versus the walls
book better than the film

like saying shoes are better that socks
like dinner better than breakfast
like saying... nothing at all
like saying one hand
is better than the other
is only true when you mass-debate

somethings out there
simply don't need dissection
don't need to be compared
you might love your Mum
more than your Dad
and who cares?

you might like winter
better than summer
but those are at least both seasons
and so whatever your reasons
you  poets...

right it to be red
say it to be HEARD!
or both but cut the
this-bike-doesn't-need-wheels!
shit

because that
both reads, and sounds, absurd






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Oh Randall but but but butt....yeah, shut up. I don't care. No, this is me shutting down the discussion (my involvement there in).

 It's not only boring, it's also completely baseless to compare two different types of things (ah ah I said types of things -not things). If you still wanna wave a flag for whatever corner you're in: go write some dry academic paper I won't read ,or some shouty-singing fucking slam poem I won't listen to. Don't care. Done. Go away.



Oh and apparently it's World Poetry day today. Go eat a stapler.

-Peace















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Rash -14/03/2013

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I have this rash
on the small of my back

I named it 'after you'

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-Peace.

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Sweetalkers, now under threat -12/03/2013

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-Peace














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