Flaming Hoop

2012-01-30T00:29:00.002+11:00

bye bye Andrew McMillan

2012-01-29T22:41:00.010+11:00

My good mate, NT writer Andrew McMillan passed away last night at home in Darwin, surrounded by pals. He outgunned a September prognosis and died in style with plenty of good grass, bourbon and morphine to ease his way. He felled a range of projects en route over the past year which would have flattered a well writer.

Here's a poem I wrote for you Andrew. I read it for him on one of the trips I was lucky enough to make to stay with him in recent months, and he seemed to like it too. It's pretty rough, but now's the time - so here it us.

BRING ON THE BLACK HORSES
(for Andrew McMillan)

bring on the black horses
the rustling muslin, the arched necks and stiff
boot-polished, lifted hooves
bring on the warped trumpets
the single-malted kisses
bring on the dancing doorbell
the endless parade of collaborators and
ex-lovers, friends
- super-efficient, all at once
bring on the dongas under
a mighty host of outback stars
the campfires and the stray, hard-drinking guitars

bring on the recordings, the
theatrical reworkings, the gigs, the ABC crew
whatever – bung it on! flick on
the gorgeous haze of pain-busting
hunger-hefting THC wafting over
the tropical orgy of palmfrondfernery
out there beyond his gecko-clicking patio
where graceful torresian pigeons swing
feeding upside down and at 3am
orange-footed scrubfowl yodel like
partying maniac Martians
(Andrew approves)

turn on the afterburners
the head
the steroids
the @^#^&*! nicotine
the sauvignon of each persuasion
the bourbon, don’t forget the bourbon -
turn it on!

here they come!
come in!
at Andrew’s, home is where the floor is
there are swags enough for all – none
shall be refused

stories stream through him
mad hatter passing round a dormouse
rolling up another
grinning like a crack in the desert floor

bring it on!
the ceremonial day approaches!
the burial site has been divined
the journey of the wack magi
will soon be heading
deep inland

Melbourne - fireworks taking themselves too literally

2012-01-05T12:53:00.002+11:00

2012-01-05T10:16:00.004+11:00

2012 was the first New Year I woke to where both my kids were staying off elsewhere, separately doing their own things with their own friends at their own parties. It was a bountiful eve, driving Sienna up into the tangling hills of Research, hairpin bends writhing like a a cut snake, moon a cantelope slice hanging fat near the horizon in the warm air, pygmy possum eyes glowing overhead as we climbed and climbed and I left her at a high stone gate with friends and wound back down and home to absolute peace and solitude. Just loved it. In the afternoon of 1/1/12 went over to my lover's and we spent a sensational day partying, dancing, singing and whatnot ... Lots of whatnot. A very happy 2012 to all of you.

For Harvey James

2011-02-08T00:54:00.002+11:00

stealing away ... For Steve Prestwich

2011-02-07T23:58:00.009+11:00

Death doesn't mess around ... Except when it does. Age's sombre march can have many mis-steps. Lost two old friends recently, both in their 50s. Harvey James's loss we saw coming, his lung cancer spreading. Steve Prestwich's second, fatal bout with a brain tumour came out of left field.

Writing obituaries is an honour and a fierce challenge. You deal with the fresh grief of those closest. There's often family dischord, and people are angry and easily upset. Yet with luck the tribute stays up on the net for people to read from anywhere, for a long time. Like a vitual headstone in space. It's an important memorial to read about the marks artists make on the wall of life.
Artists can get too easily forgotten in this country, in my opinion. Vale.

2010-12-22T03:28:00.002+11:00

I've never used a toilet as portrayed in pictures 1 and 2 in this official poster on a Swinburne University toilet wall, but I guess at sometime someone has, or else they wouldn't have put this up, right?

2010-12-22T03:23:00.002+11:00

This in East Brunswick outside 3RRR after I did Aural Text review of Black Inc.'s 2010 Best Austraian Poems. More moody Melbourne rainskies. Just loving this rain. Cool, cool summer so far.

2010-12-22T03:22:00.000+11:00

Trees out Dad and Sue's window

Storm surge North Melbourne

2010-12-22T03:02:00.004+11:00

This bizarre apparition appeared up the road when I exited a pub in North Melbourne late last week. It was so transfixing I nearly got wiped out by the 4WD coming down the road in the shot shortly afterwards when I went to cross the road. Big downpour included.

Paulfactor

2010-10-21T19:15:00.004+11:00

You gotta love this. Paulfactor
Living Music participant/
performer/writer and DJ on
the Living Music Radio show,
Mondays 3-4pm on the magic 3CR
and coming up in Word on the Street.
Don't mean a thing if you
ain't got that bling

2010-10-21T19:09:00.003+11:00

Looking forward to these shows ... I'm back on the publicity trail again, but only for a good cause like
LIVING MUSIC’s 2010 crew present …
WORD ON THE STREET
Underground Loop Vol IV LIVE CD LAUNCH
Old Council Chambers, Trades Hall, cnr Victoria & Lygon Sts, Carlton
Three shows: Thursday 25th November 6pm &
Friday 26th November 1pm & 6pm
FREE but to avoid disappointment please book Ph: 9329 0503 / info@livingmusic.com.au

Imagine you’re young, you’re in trouble, the world is bearing down like a tornado. Music can be a release - even a transformational magic carpet ride. But in order to get your act off the ground, first you have to skill up. Find a mentor, a studio and some boon companions. That’s where Living Music comes in.

From a natty studio complex hidden behind a brightly graffed door in a North Melbourne alleyway come sounds of the street, beguiling, moving and fresh. Melodic hip-hop, torn-up pop, gentle Islander R&B and genre-defying tales of struggle and love all feature on Living Music’s new CD WORD ON THE STREET Underground Loop Vol IV.

And to mark the occasion, Living Music 2010’s crew present WORD ON THE STREET live in the Trades Hall Old Council Chambers over three shows November 25-26. The show’s concept is loosely based around the search for a shadowy underground figure called Motley, detailed in the title track, aided by a selection of songs from some of the one thousand-plus young people who’ve participated in the Living Music program this past year. Tracks crackle and growl with energy, harmonise with fine melodies, unfold with surprising skill. Words and music ranging from the most simple, sweet acoustic guitar to sophisticated, highly-arranged diatribes arise from a range of talented characters like Paul Factor, Trixide, Gabby and Saint Lu.

Backgrounds in youth detention, homelessness, family breakdown, disability, mental illness and substance abuse have touched participants of the Living Music program, an important avenue for musical composition, recording and performance for young people at risk since 1999. And, like the show and CD, assisted by the City of Melbourne, inspirational mentors have worked alongside Living Music participants - including key people from Rogue Traders, Dili Allstars, the Avalanches and Living End plus Mia Dyson, Mark Seymour, DJ Wasabi, Little G, Wicked Force Dancers. Current mentors for the Word on the Street CD and show are Motley, Mantra, Rob Sedky, Thomas Butt, John Favaro (Badloves) and Pete Satchell (Dallas Crane).

Andrew McSweeney, the very experienced head mentor, songwriter, producer and musician behind Living Music - who also plays with Kutcha Edwards - is very excited about the new show. “I can’t wait to see what people think. We’ve definitely struck some real talent at Living Music in 2010 and the CD has plenty of knockout tracks. We also get to present it onstage over three shows in the Trades Hall Old Council Chambers, which is a really cool old wooden amphitheatre with an exciting, intimate feel to it.”
BOOKINGS AND ENQUIRIES: Living Music, Andrew McSweeney. info@livingmusic.com.auPh 03 9329 0503/ Fax 03 9329 7857 Website: http://www.livingmusic.com.au/
MEDIA ENQUIRIES & interviews with participant Paul Factor or organiser Andrew McSweeney: Jen Jewel Brown 0408 898 338 jenjewelbrown@fastmail.fm
Living Music Radio Show with Paul Factor airs weekly on Mondays 3-4pm on 3CR
Supported by the City of Melbourne, the Department of Human Services and Artful Dodgers Studios through Jesuit Social Services.

Oh yeah - and speaking of Artful Dodgers Studios, they have their annual exhibition launching 5pm Tues 26 Oct and they say: “In our backyard you’ll discover strange flora and fauna – created with sculpture, painting, sound and moving imagery.” OK?

Who: Artful Dodgers StudiosWhat: Into The Shed
When: Tuesday 26th October – Saturday 6th November 2010
Where: Fortyfivedownstairs (45 Flinders Lane, Melbourne)
Email: info@fortyfivedownstairs.com

2010-10-01T01:42:00.001+10:00

January 2009

2010-10-01T00:58:00.006+10:00

Once upon an up and crumber, as Dennis Cometti might say, a body of public art began a journey.

nioce tatts Dane

2010-10-01T00:51:00.004+10:00

AFL Players Association's most valuable player 2010
shot by Darren Tindale for Fox Sports

visibly inking up

2010-09-30T23:37:00.008+10:00

Collingwood's Dane Swan is inking up at a great rate even as he works his way towards a second Grand Final in 2010, Collingwood vs St Kilda. I expect the Pies to put the Saints to the sword properly this time with a bit of Samurai strategy courtesy of canny Mick Malthouse (who'll be smart and lucky enough to get MM next?). And hopefully some straighter kicking (although please note, knockers, Travis Cloke is one of the best contested markers in the comp, which has to count for some space tokens, surely). Wish Prestigiacomo was in though.

more PI

2010-07-20T00:34:00.009+10:00

shot by Paul Harris, Sydney Morning Herald

Lab Rat Solar-Powered Studio Palm Island

2010-07-20T00:05:00.007+10:00

Heard a really great show today on 3CR, which isn't unusual. It was on Hip Sista Hop
http://www.3cr.org.au/hipsistahop
Hip Sista Hop

Hip Sista Hop Monday 1 - 2 pm
There was an amazing single mum on who was working with an org whose name escapes me now, but she casually mentioned she'd been in Palm Island working on several creative community projects powered by solar and wind. They played some of the music which was a real knockout, so original and Australian. Hip hop completely Palm Islandafied.

My favourite was 'Anybody Seen My Horse?' which was a little song based on a true search for a missing horse sung by a bunch of very young girls who sounded about 10. Blew my socks off. Apparently at the end of a flattening day of searching the jungle, the little girl's horse was found. Unfortunately it was pinched the next day. At least they got an astounding recording out of it, recorded by solar power.
If I can find out more, or a link to the music, I'll post it

xJ

Melbourne Stencil Festival (09)

2010-04-07T01:03:00.005+10:00

I did a report on the Melbourne Stencil Festival 2009. with my fellow Swinburne student Morgan Riehl. Some of Morgan's neat shots of the fine collection are here ... (click on the heading)

Palm Island

2010-03-09T00:21:00.007+11:00

who let the dogs out?

2010-03-09T00:01:00.004+11:00

November 19 2004
drunk and happy Cameron Mulrunji Doomadgee
who! who! who! who!
swinging down that Palm Island road
barking out that jump up song
who let the dogs out?
who! who! who! who!
yapping out that happy tune

down comes the tall man
Senior Sergeant Christopher Hurley
mounted on his four wheel drive
grabs Doomadgee - hey mate!
… arresting me for nothing!! –
spears tackles him into the back of the slammer van

Cameron’s a proud Palm Island man
first chance he gets he punches Senior Sergeant H
and they fall 'through a door' says Hurley
when he changes from saying “down the stairs”
anyways that concrete floor is hard
knee-dropping Hurley a tower of power
Doomadgee gets four broken ribs
and a liver split in two against his spine
says the coroner
massive force say three medical experts
then Hurley drags him to a cell
and the video shows him writhe and moan
where he is left to die

and the people no!
and the people burn
the copshop
courthouse
cophouse down
Palm Island 40 languages a mass of confusion

July 31 2006
Eric, Doomadgee’s only son, 18
suicides

Patrick Branwell
was locked up in Doomadgee’s cell
the day died

January 15 2007
Patrick suicides too

or looks like it …

see somehow that night after the cops drive
the witness 10 minutes out of town to ‘cool
down’ his grandma finds him at midnight
right in his own front yard
more than cool
he’s cold
hanging there
at the site of the inciting incident
right where his cellmate Mulrunji was nicked

Sir Laurence Street arrives
in his white hat, investigating
calls Branwell a witness not indispensible
yet

February 5 2007
Senior Sergeant Hurley
becomes the first cop in Australia
ever to be charged with assault and manslaughter
for the death of a prisoner
but it’s a cop’s against a dead man’s word
Noby Clay saw Doomadgee taken - hard
heard him being slammed around
but who can say if they aren’t called?
just another blackdeathincustody
the whitejuryrules
and sure enough
Hurley’s rap won’t stick

so … who let the dogs out?

next time you sing
a drunk and happy song
remember Cameron Mulrunji Doomadgee
swinging down that Palm Island road
yapping out that happy tune
who! who! who! who!
who let the dogs out?
who … who … who …

Rise again, Tote Hotel

2010-01-20T00:03:00.002+11:00

Photo by Pierre Baroni

2010-01-20T00:01:00.002+11:00

At the Tote. Shot by Pierre Baroni

2010-01-19T23:53:00.003+11:00

Save the Tote protest 17/1/10 by Pierre Baroni

Save the Tote

2010-01-19T23:12:00.003+11:00

Letter to Tony Robinson, Victorian State Minister for Liquor *sigh* licensing

Dear Minister,

I urge you to reconsider the very unfair closing of the Tote Hotel in Collingwood. This venue is a real grassroots venue that has been a really strong contributor to the music business. Melbourne is famous for its live scene and its terrific bands, many of which have become internationally successful and brought considerable income back to Australia.

The Australian music business is a major employer and Melbourne is the music capital of Australia. Yet we would be nowhere if the up and coming bands have nowhere to play, to cut their teeth and learn to entertain. The Tote is one of the most important venues in this regard. It has never been a violent kind of venue, more a friendly and down home rock'n'roll pub well sited in an area surrounded by shops and inner city social activities.

We can't allow this important aspect of Melbourne's character, this vital venue - and potentially others like it - to be closed due to a narrow-minded view of licensing laws. It is very important that youth be given a creative voice and young bands have places like the Tote to play in.

Please save the Tote.

Kind regards,

Jen Jewel Brown
journalist and author of Skyhooks Million Dollar Riff
ex-A&R Manager, Mushroom Records and Publishing

A silver guide to unconsciousness

2009-12-14T16:05:00.002+11:00

The trick to unconsciousness is knowing when you've achieved it. It's like balancing on a tightrope - one minute you're awake and the next you're not. Everyone wants to know what happens on the highwire. But what happens on the highwire often stays on the highwire. The tricky thing - to maintain enough wakefuless to experience falling out of wakefulness. Your feet doing their best to swallow the rope dividing light and dark like two carpet snakes, your body perfectly balanced, half and half weighted, moving back and forth, back and forth, almost rocking like to keep your weight distributed above your left foot then your right, coming and going, going and coming and coming and coming ... but the next thing you're swimming up from the weightless dark of unconscious samsara towards moksha, towards the light and it's another day

The Cat Piano

2009-11-11T01:55:00.004+11:00

2009-11-11T01:43:00.008+11:00

2009-11-08T03:19:00.003+11:00

More poetry in the poetry incinerator right now. I just noticed a rat run under it, or perhaps a ferret. Flaming Hoop will be poeting again soon. I think I will just go investigate what that flash of fur was.

Guitar by Gabby

2009-10-24T01:55:00.001+11:00

ARTFUL DODGERS STUDIOS PRESENT OUT OF MY HEAD

2009-10-24T01:09:00.002+11:00

Please come! All welcome and it's free
Out of My Head
an exhibition at Signal
Signal @ Northbank - behind Flinders St Station, towards Sandridge Bridge, Northbank, Melbourne
OPENING: Friday 30 October 4pm
EXHIBITION: Wednesday to Saturday until 14 November 2-6 pm

Mental sparks fly as the Artful Dodgers Studios, Melbourne’s award-winning urban studios for young “at risk” artists, create installations for their new Out of My Head exhibition at Signal.

“The collaborative process is very exciting”, said Clare, 21, one of the participants. “Everyone put forward their own ideas to come up with the one theme, Out of My Head.” Together 10 resident artists on staff and around 40 young participants under 28 have been involved on some level in the development of work for the exhibition, which will also feature individual pieces and projections.

The critical battle of the growing individual to manage issues like mental illness, societal prejudices, family hardships and the misuse of drugs and alcohol inspires the work. The centerpiece installation is an outsize ganglia/neuron station representing the thunderstorms and lightning-struck inspirations of the brain. The second group-devised installation features footwear: shoes, boots and sneakers layered with the vivid and maddening detritus of life. The venue will be filled with sounds created in the Artful Dodgers music studios under the Living Music program.

Artful Dodgers Studios has mentored young artists (15 to 28) from marginalised backgrounds through the respected Gateway program of Jesuit Social Services at 1 Langridge Street, near the corner of Smith Street, Collingwood, since 1995. Professional staff include visual artists Alison Burton, Zoe Horsfall and Forest Keegel, musicians Abby Dobson (Leonardo’s Bride), Charles Jenkins (Icecream Hands), John Favaro (The Badloves), Natalie Allison (Vanessa Amarosi) and Andrew McSweeney (Kutcha Edwards) as well as dramaturge and Arts & Culture Coordinator Rebecca Lister and multi-media honchos Justin Schmidt and Tim Osborn.

Out Of My Head will be one of the first exhibitions in the City of Melbourne’s new Signal creative arts studio for young people near Sandridge Bridge, Northbank, behind Flinders Street Station. Wheelchair access is available from Banana Alley,

Website: artfuldodgers.tv

Signal

2009-10-24T00:35:00.003+11:00

2009-10-15T01:39:00.002+11:00

A tiny tree down the wormhole of a book stack in the window of the Book Affair in Elgin Street. I did some publicity for the shop's marvellous Fringe Festival exhibition The Liminal.

The LiMINAL
Universes in transition
MELBOURNE FRINGE ART EXHIBITION in Book Affair windows (3 new locations)
161 Elgin St, CARLTON * 287 Smith St, FITZROY * 149 Sydney Rd, BRUNSWICK
Thursday 24 Sept. - Sunday 11 Oct., 10am to 8pm (& 24/7 from the street)
Opening Parade: 200 Elgin St - Wednesday 23 September 6pm for 6.30pm
ALL FREE

A record, three-day heat wave peaked on January 30 last summer in Melbourne, when the mercury hit 45. Suddenly Book Affair, that rambling and greatly loved second hand bookshop at 200 Elgin St, near the corner of Lygon, seemed to spontaneously combust.

Sparked in an air conditioner, flames soon billowed high above Carlton and the roof of the iconic 25-year-old business was gone. This led to flooding and a mammoth relocation of over 100,000 books. Finally, after hard work, understanding bridging support from staff and vital help and solace from the local community, a three-headed phoenix of three marvelous, specialist second hand Book Affair shops has arisen.

To celebrate this, the Book Affair – perhaps the only bookshop in Melbourne with a permanent Arts Projects Coordinator (Susan Bamford Caleo) and several practicing artists-cum-booksellers on staff - presents The Liminal, a delightful Melbourne Fringe Festival exhibition. Works are sculpted primarily from recycled book paper and bindings, but also incorporating other things such as barbed wire, silk, hemp, ash, cotton, wool, string and wood. It is the second time the Book Affair have appeared in the Fringe Festival; their exhibition last year 'Bookish' was very well received (“delightfully playful yet very thoughtful” - Buzzcuts; “drenched in the same sort of charm that one finds in any great bookshop” - Beat).

Led by owner Kaya Prpic, the staff of Book Affair is working with a group of consulting artists (including Shirley Cass, Katherine Connolly, Eliza Donald, Ute Leiner and Waltraud Reiner) on the exhibition, to be displayed in the windows of the three new shops. Sculptured forms and costumes will capture moments of transformation and disorientation, reflecting their experience over the last six months.

The Liminal (from the Latin word līmen, meaning "a threshold") is inherently unstable, alive with possibility. The myth of Daphne, who morphed from a nymph into a tree and the infinite possibilities of the liminal space that readers enter when they open a book, are some of the early ideas inspiring artworks that incorporate an element that can be worn.

This is a community project for Book Affair staff and friends and is important for morale as well as a marking a tremendous new chapter in the Book Affair story. Hence, a mad and joyous parade of staff and friends will proceed on Wednesday 23rd September at 6.30pm from the old shop (200 Elgin Street) to the seductively new wood-fragranced and sculpture-draped Book Affair HQ at 161 Elgin, to launch the exhibition and celebrate the three new shops. There will be fun, colour and an opportunity to shake off the last of the ash.

The new Book Affair second hand shops are at 161 Elgin St, Carlton (academic), 287 Smith St, Fitzroy (sci-fi, occult, graphic novels) and149 Sydney Rd, Brunswick (military, sport, transport).

For interviews with key personnel and further information, contact:
Publicist: Jen Jewel Brown email jenjewelbrown@fastmail.fm
The Book Affair: Susan Bamford Caleo, Kaya Prpic or Catherine O’Dwyer
Phone 9347 3542 email sbamcal@hotmail.com

your immediate cormorants

2009-09-20T01:05:00.000+10:00

I wish I could remember
you sleeping
seems to me you were always
awake when I stumbled
to consciousness
awake and writing
I felt for the phone, dailled two, room service

golden
your long curved back
absorbed you reached behind
and clamped my left breast
the other hand
inscribed wet notes on the lions
Sicilian outrageous
grand mechanisisisms
melodious
infamy
my right breast
triggered the secret door behind
the innocent, panelling in my library

your immediate cormorants
oh, my mercy
transcendental work
is going on

2009-09-11T10:23:00.004+10:00

Cat People (1982)

2009-09-11T10:09:00.002+10:00

Cat People (1982)

2009-09-11T10:03:00.001+10:00

when twilight crawls down the lawns of the old
New Orleans zoo
shadows lean like collapsing bars
at dawn she
wakes naked and bloody-faced alone
to the crisp lip-curling spank of cat
pungent cement
her own basso profundo moan

my panthera pardis …

go then through the empty streets as the black city mumbles
the Desire Project where ambulances won’t go
with its broken flat windows leaking Cajun smells
past boughs skeined with Spanish moss
in the drowned French quarter
the graveyard sinking
in Mississippi mud

now this old swamp pops and creaks
around her entering
above, the moon is beaten gold
a crocodile god’s eye

pole the boat past the cayman’s swirl
to the shack trapped in the bayou
black she waits
frightened panting
enter slow
don’t forget
to chain her down

2009-08-21T00:55:00.000+10:00

2009-08-21T00:46:00.001+10:00

starter

2009-08-21T00:45:00.002+10:00

rubber tarmac fight
blue smoke stink
hairpin
a bunch of yaaaaaarhs
gaaaaaaaaarns getfuckeds
stiff arms waving
from the blur
with the glint of beer colour
glass cracking toast
cracksmashtinkle
yaaaaaaaarh
aaaaaaaaaarh she skids a thud
yella glass sprays
into the bush gasping
eastern greys pogo out
of scribbly gums
shade thin as sticks

amber ooze
cracking tree
phalanger turns
head tucked
black noon
cicadas with your
cluster eyes
drummer
green stick pin singin
wild chorus in the canopy
of flowering mountain ash

glass spawn
glints from rock
it split its head
open the thick
jagged lip
sizzles with light

2009-08-21T00:20:00.001+10:00

2009-08-21T00:15:00.000+10:00

2009-08-21T00:07:00.001+10:00

2009-08-21T00:01:00.000+10:00

Past Portsea

2009-08-03T01:59:00.002+10:00

112 tram North Fitzroy to city

2009-07-20T18:27:00.001+10:00

Lost in a puddle
autumn rain and autumn leaves
Edinburgh gardens
goalposts barely held by gravity
Seagulls strut a patch of sun
‘council flats’
Dusty shoe tram boy reads poetry
- whose?

Trees burst from midget yards
Clouds on strings
Spiderman crouched on busstop
Poet rusts on plinth
Holden FJ ute in Brunswick street
drop dead beautiful
Jungular graffiti brilliant walls
Marquis de Sade
flogs leatherware

Labour in Vain
pub patrons well employed drinking
Over a forgetful shop
fossil tinsel
Marios
local heros make food
Central Hall
the ol’ TF Much Ballroom
True Blue Shoes
I wonder?
Tree stencilled on wall
with ghost koala
Persistence of possums

City Square
ghost of Vault ‘Yellow Peril’ II
Shops too full of objects
my imagination’s already full
Free:
Banksy’s rats and Little Diver

Still lost - Burke & Wills
stuck on
Collins & Swanston

idiots are everywhere

2009-07-20T18:14:00.003+10:00

Follow the title to the story in The Age last December. Apparently certain anon sees his nothing silver vomit as better to look at that Bansky's Little Diver was. He slopped his paint all down the back of this iconic street art's protective backing. If I wasn't a pretend Buddhist I would say I hope he departs us soon to rort in hell instead. It's a sad, sick world my friends. *Sigh*

Dorothy Porter reading and celebration, Collected Works

2009-07-11T04:28:00.002+10:00

2009-07-11T04:23:00.003+10:00

2009-07-11T04:20:00.000+10:00

2009-07-11T04:11:00.005+10:00

2009-07-11T03:17:00.001+10:00

2009-07-11T03:14:00.001+10:00

2009-07-11T03:08:00.003+10:00

2009-07-11T02:59:00.002+10:00

Alan Didak all is forgiven

2009-07-07T04:28:00.005+10:00

this is how you did it
kicked out their rusted-on disdain
shot your 85 kilos ballward like a foxy out a cannon
cut the herd whip hips a freak machine the wiring
foottobraintohandtoeye ecstatic
and the nanosecond prethink reaction swing 360 3D
a blast

whelped in black and white
kicks like a circus
dog heart
the rhino-fuel joyride
with pumpaction angel
of obfuscation
headdown ghostrider death set
of assignations
mystery man midnight shaker
all forgiven
all is forgiven
thy name is Alan Didak
hallowed be thy name

Dream Baby left me dreaming sweet dreams ...

2009-06-27T21:38:00.002+10:00

White Stripes (for Meg)

2009-06-27T21:37:00.000+10:00

what's inside a girl?
a series of red tunnels
leading to a parallel universe

a raspberry beret turned
inside
out
a strawberry incense SLAP

theriotouspinkslipperydip
of her inner cheek
watermelon smile
red alert

a cherry

acandy-stripedsetofcomplications
like a carnival carousel on fire

a red brigadier
a SCARLET woman
a psalm played on a cherryburst guitar

2009-06-26T01:19:00.000+10:00

Buy ACME

2009-06-26T01:12:00.000+10:00

Buy ACME’s special Hairy Pets DVD. It’s compact and fits easily into
your DVD player. The colour is crisp and clean. The whole family will enjoy it. The neighbours will love it. Comes in a box with free instruction manual. 12 easy payments of $99.99 per month. Plus GST. Up front. Actual colours may vary. Please check state laws before using. May not work with portable DVD player. Family may divorce. Dog may not be alive. Insertion may cause rectal trauma. Almost certainly. DVD not included.

Ida

2009-05-28T00:42:00.004+10:00

runaway monkeys

2009-05-28T00:20:00.002+10:00

if god exists
riding down the highway
if god exists
in her FJ
hope she thinks we're OK
not kind of hokey
if god exists
runaway monkeys

if god exists
she plays a Stratocaster
if god exists
not just any guitar

if god exists
she could come over
if god exists
and bring her lover

if god exists
she could be pissed off
about the football field
clearfelled each five seconds
if god exists

if god exists
will she help us
not just whelp us
if god exists

runaway monkeys
if god exists
runaway monkeys
if god exists
if god exists

beauty rots

2009-05-17T03:56:00.002+10:00

FITZROT: This wall was wallnapped

2009-05-17T03:40:00.006+10:00

2009-04-20T01:35:00.001+10:00

Shameful lack of blogging deserves a flogging - watch this space for more of the Fitzroy black and white wall conspiracy shortly.

Gordon Bennett's reply

2009-03-17T20:56:00.001+11:00

jean-michel basquiat

2009-03-15T00:54:00.001+11:00

2009-03-01T04:26:00.001+11:00

black panther

2009-03-01T03:47:00.004+11:00

on the beach

2009-03-01T03:32:00.004+11:00

capsized cage
black panther spilling
under moon's sullen cloud
beach and sky are one

moveable calligraphy of paws
smell of burning canvas
tail rope whips wet clawed
fur imprinted sand gleaming

wave goes out
she leaves the beach
legend

transient and nomadic

2009-02-22T22:51:00.001+11:00

A couple of days ago I had to go into Fitzroy and I was socked to find that the Night Cat wall, which used to be swell mash up of black and white work including the razor sharp Scythe Does Matter, had been taken out. Apparently some official mural is going up, or advertising, because the space is all marked out. Rotten loss to freeform street art though. Miss the Dylan that had been lurking there for some time.

New Year's poem

2009-02-14T23:55:00.004+11:00

darkling – do you know
the moth whose
sandalwood wings
wait for the moon
has your eyes on them?

do you know my pens all bleed in your house
and then repair themselves?

and that this dark knight son
was sent to be your protector?
(he will save you
again and again.)

you know
this vertical beach you sleep in
whose blocks are sleeping dogs –
do you cut your hair so this can’t tumble
from its turrets? (ha!)
(a rain of Rumpelstiltskins.)

do you know your beauty’s
more immutable than
bone and skin can catch?
your words, indestructable?
we your lovers love you,
expanding the chambers of all our hearts.

do you know you’ve
turned this New Year’s Day
into a storm of butterflies?
do you have any concept of this?

believe me!
a secret.

you

are

perfect

2009-02-11T13:06:00.013+11:00

2009-02-11T13:01:00.003+11:00

2009-02-11T12:59:00.002+11:00

2009-02-11T12:56:00.001+11:00

2009-02-11T12:49:00.003+11:00

2009-02-11T12:44:00.006+11:00

2009-02-11T12:40:00.003+11:00

2009-02-11T12:38:00.001+11:00

2009-02-11T12:36:00.001+11:00

2009-02-11T12:33:00.001+11:00

2009-02-11T12:27:00.000+11:00

Vale Jenny and John Barnett

2009-02-11T11:28:00.005+11:00

Had just starting reading The Age this morning in my favourite cafe in North Fitzroy after dropping my son at school when I got a very sad call. Can't be confirmed due to the intensity of the fire, but it seems certain that two key members of the Mammal Survey Group of Victoria, Jenny and John Barnett, have died trying to escape Steels Creek. Not long after we came back to Victoria, my family and I went camping with them at Cape Liptrap and elsewhere. My daughter, then about 10, has very sharp eyes and a strong animal instinct. She found an owl pellet - a 'cough up' little ball of skin and fur. The Barnetts, making we new members feel at home, were immensely kind and knowledgeable. They gave years of volunteering and career work for the better understanding and protection of both wild and domestic animals. So many people have been touched, many disfigured, devastated by this hell of wildfires. So many animals and birds and plants lost too. We know of no worse peacetime disaster here. It's a huge wakeup call on climate change. In time, some healing will take place. New growth will, we hope, return. Nothing could make this catastrophe worthwhile. We are clutching at embers. But let's hope our sluggish leaders finally start to get the urgency of our world's need for protection from ourselves, and especially from the industries who have callously exploited our naive lack of safeguard regulations against pollution, and the governments who have ignorantly backed them at our great peril. Ignorance is razed. The climate change wolf is over the threshold. The meeting for a new lock may need to be brought forward.

Ball of confusion

2009-02-11T01:34:00.002+11:00

They think 200+ dead in the rampant Victorian bushfires so far. This so eclipses anything in the Euro records of Oz. I am a member of the Mammal Survey Group of Vic and one member is beside himself due to not only losing his house but nearly also nearly his life - he was saved by a road block - but what's really freaking him out is a suspected extinction event of all local wildlife('It looks like an atomic bomb's gone off'). He's pleading for help to rescue animals, if anything can be found, round the Hume Plateau forest system, Mt Disappointment state forest and Wallaby Creek water catchment area and further east. But authorities warn of crime scenes, road blocks, unidentified remains and electrical wires blowing, bushfires that might reappear as walls of flame out of nowhere, flames walking with ten league boots. Embers, trees can fall from the sky at any time. I'm calling him back Friday, as arranged. But by then ... ?

Melbourne fries - 46.4 degrees C = 115.52 F

2009-02-07T17:56:00.001+11:00

It's a new all-time temperature record today in Melbourne after the hottest January week last week with three days over 43. Andrew Bolt (Herald Sun climate change denier), check your brain. A day over 100 F used to be a one out of the box when I was a kid, but climate change is bearing down on us like the riders of the Apocalypse, beating all predictions with its speed. Many garden plants are toast. Instead of showers,we favour baths,with the kept water doled out to the garden. We dunk the dogs in this to keep them sane. Four major bushfires are out of control around the state with wild northerly winds ripping loose dead leaves and embers. Blogger's not letting me upload images again - seems to be a regular feature these days - so sit tight and I'll post some when I can.

xJen

Bon baby Bon

2009-02-06T02:16:00.003+11:00

Walls of Melbourne

2009-02-06T00:16:00.001+11:00

2009-02-06T00:11:00.001+11:00

2009-02-06T00:07:00.003+11:00

2009-02-06T00:05:00.000+11:00

2009-02-06T00:01:00.001+11:00

here ....

2009-01-31T00:28:00.001+11:00

spill

2009-01-29T03:08:00.004+11:00

did I tell you when the night runs over your body
your body and the night are inseparable
did I tell you
the night-flowering cactus opened finally
a single bud erupting high
above the bush

only when the moon is very full
only when the moon is very full

did I tell you that I’m thinking about the way
the top of your thigh at the back
plays violet music
as slowly as a leatherback hatchling emerges

did I tell you
did I tell you

did I tell you when your eyes come to me I am happy
we fall into each other our hands tangled in each other
our mouths and the joy is immediate and rigorous
like the slow triangulations of the moon flowering cactus
we rope ladder to the moon
making love together
together you say
this is what’s happening now

and this moon-flowering cactus
Queen of the Night
is a Cuban escapee
and only when the moon is very full
a violent bud enters the thrilling and
sudden spill of dark-shot light
the cradle spills
above the trees
a single bud erupts so high
in the midnight blueblack
only when the moon is very full
and it makes me long for you

and did I tell you that the scent
of this wham white gold fireworks burst outdoes even
waterlilies and the coming scent of rain
and this is what’s happening now
and the moon is very full

Roller Derby swings

2008-12-23T12:19:00.004+11:00

Slay Belles Roller Derby queens at work

2008-12-23T11:38:00.004+11:00

2008-12-23T11:33:00.000+11:00

Tango8: Love and Food

2008-12-05T15:06:00.005+11:00

OK here comes the media release ... promotion is just another thing I like to do for worthwhile and creative projects ... like I did for Artful Dodgers Studios recently ... AND THIS IS ONE!

A fresh new Australian comic anthology to savour
To be launched by Melbourne food legend Dur-e Dara at
Mr Wilkinson, 295 Lygon Street, East Brunswick
Wednesday December 17 at 7pm
SPECIAL LAUNCH PRICE $20

In sumptuous black and white, bumper comic book Tango8: Love and Food celebrates two of our greatest obsessions in sizzling style. The eighth issue of the giant Australian romance comics anthology Tango follows on where the provocative Tango7: Love and Sedition left off. This banquet of contemporary stories includes new work from talented graphic novelists Nicki Greenberg (The Great Gatsby, Allen & Unwin), Bruce Mutard (The Sacrifice, also Allen & Unwin) and Mandy Ord (Rooftops, published by Finlay Lloyd), whose great story on food and fatherly love will ring true for many.
Works from two brilliant cartoonists from The Age, Andrew Weldon and Oslo Davis, are among the 70 very different offerings. These vary from 1 to 18 pages in length, exploring the theme of 'love and food' in hilarious, romantic, creepy, nostalgic and heartfelt ways. Tango8: Love and Food’s 70 contributors mostly hail from Melbourne, Adelaide and Sydney; four live in New Zealand.
The ongoing Tango project presents work by established and emerging comic book makers in annual collections from Melbourne-based Cardigan Comics. These are edited and published by Bernard Caleo, a fine comic writer and artist himself. Caleo’s collaboration with Angela Savage (For Natasha) is a highlight of Tango8: Love and Food, comparing piquant memories of red icy poles at the Brunswick Baths with the swooning joy of breast feeding. (Savage won the Victorian Premier’s Best Unpublished Manuscript by Emerging Author award in 2004 for her book Thai Died, published by Text Publishing in 2006 as Behind the Night Bazaar)
Tango8: Love and Food is a rollercoaster ride through the wealth of comic book talent in Australasia. At 242 pages of affordable comic book goodness it’s a great gift for foodies, comic lovers and those hard-to-buy-for teens, twenties and thirty-somethings - as well as the baby boomers who learned to read from Marvel and DC comics and achieved puberty poring over Robert Crumb and Zap!
Cardigan Comics has been kindly supported by Arts Victoria in the publication of Tango8: Love and Food. The trade paperback sized collection is available at book shops, comic book sellers and at http://www.cardigancomics.com/
For further information and interviews, contact: Publicist Jen Jewel Brown
Ph 0408 898 338 jenjewelbrown@fastmail.fm
Publisher Bernard Caleo Ph (03) 9497 8098 bernard@cardigancomics.com

Tango8: Love and Food

2008-12-04T22:56:00.005+11:00

Aurora Australis

2008-11-19T00:55:00.004+11:00