(for Reza Berati)

Being born moon
Unable to see shadow
I stood at the gates
Of opposites unaware
Of what was to follow —

Beginning I
Beginning thought
Beginning action
Beginning love
Beginning seed
Beginning birth

I am no name
I am blood
I am appendages
I am orifices
I am child

I’m a vision of my father man
I’m a Christ on the cross man
I’m a Devil incarnate man
I’m a dangerous out of control man

I’m the Buddha of the Bodhi tree man
I’m a Bashō of narrow roads man
I’m a vindictive killer man
I’m a mean-assed manipulator man
I’m the predator watch out for your daughter man
I’m a crazy Sun of a bitch man

The one who dies daily
Who cries nightly
The one who sleeps
Lightly
A Sicilian Mafiosi
Man

Wild animal
Chasing full moons
Howling
Rabid dog man

I’m the fruit of jazz man
I’m a sex and rock n roll man
I’m a Muddy Waters
Hoochie Coochie
MAN

I’m a Cuban Revolution
I’m Trotsky getting blown
By Frida
I’m the ice-pick from hell
MAN

I’m the psalm 139

Make sure that I am not on my way
To ruin, and guide me on the road
To eternity

I’m a poem for my
FATHER

I am tears for my
MOTHER

I’m a babbling brook man

I’m the bitter and twisted
A sad and lonely man

I am Orpheus
And his tree
I am Orpheus
Dismembered
I am Orpheus
Re-invented

I’m a babbling brook man

Constantly changing
A changeling
A troll of my nightmare
An alien seeking

I’m a child lost man
I’m the never was a boy man
I’m a sweet gone of youth man
I’m a missing my boat man
I’m the savage beast
Of time man

Truths not realised
Stories not told
A burning my bridges man

I am my mother’s child
Her sweet do nothing wrong
Boy/man

I’m a missile in Kansas
I’m a soldier facing east
A Hiroshima denotation
I’m a Peacemaker
A Gandhi faker

See…
I’m a cruel bastard man
I’m a rip the wings of flies man
I’m the enjoyer of someone
Else’s pain
MAN
Compassionately
Disfigured

I’m a babbling brook man

Down, down, down
I go

A lost in paradise

MAN

A country untamed
A sea in tempest
A sky set in blood
An earth crying in travail

Footprints breathe
Its emphysema soul
Trees whimper sorry
Crows blacken this land

90% of burned flesh
He’s only a boat-person
A statistic with barely
A name –

Sew your goddamned lips
Says the Judge
The razor wire
Speaks a multitude
Of voices

Afghan, Irani, Sri
Lankan, Syrian

A few drops of water
On our desert land

Lampedusa doesn’t sound
So bad compared to

Our Christ Island

Perhaps we always need
War to feel compassion
Not this Peace of
Suicides

That feeds our inert souls
As life eats life

This necklace of words
Strangles my soul
For I am uttering

Language like nebulae
Across an ocean of space
Unable to define who

This I SPEAK –

For this I cry:

Drunken man
Decadent man
Violent man
Shadow man
Shallow man
Scared man
Angry man
Ant man
Monk man
Atheist man

Four winds man
Seven seas man
Cosmos being born man
Cosmos no longer man

Because I have been a light in a body’s soul
Because I have been a painter’s black square
Because I have been a stain on the face of history
Because I have been an opera of birds
On the road to Assisi

I speak –

Rage against the shadow of our racist heart
Rage against the ghost of this country’s democracy
Rage against the false prophets of our fourth estate
Rage against the corporation’s greed of the machine
Rage against our continual schizophrenic night
Rage against the unexplained death
Of Reza Berati

Rage, Rage, Rage

Australia

Fuck this SILENT land!

Ken Trimble