Feb 2009 SLAM @ The Front

Went to the Front Cafe for the monthly poetry reading/slam,
the first slam for 2009. Actually was quite nice fun night out 'cause there were a hole heap of new faces and verses.

Omar won (again!).

A new poet started off the evening with a wondrous poem about the stages of womanhood. A powerful piece, which if she had stayed and allowed the poem to be 'judged', would have doubtless won a prize. Alternating spoken word and snatches of thin sung chorus lines, which worked to link the stages, this was the sort of work which makes one ashamed to be a man. A sharp biting work on familial and sexual relations of power. (unfortunately i was not prepared with pen and notebook to take notes, so i can not remember her name) Some other new faces, and faces not heard for several months.

It is a universally accepted truism that art is a religion and that the museums are the cathedrals for this religion. If we follow this metaphor into a conceit we can see the front gallery as being a consoling chapel.

Moving (beer in hand) into the adjoining gallery. Three artists were on show entitled 'Three in a row'.

"Three lines are necessary to enclose any space and three dimensions are required to form a solid"

The catalog stated:
"There is unity, oneness and harmony, in our concepts, manifested in our work in the shapes of eggs, circles and dream lines.
Individually our work is fundamental, original, and primal.
Our work shown together as a whole is elemental and organic" I could not disagree with these statements, and the unity is shown in all the works.

However I would have to say that the "unity is a complete interpenetration rather than a mere harmony".

One wall was filled with works of drawn eggs. Simple, still on the white canvas a thin red wash crossing the front of the piece, very simple and very powerful, calm and mediative like a Zen painting or a Rothko.

There were too few textile pieces by Lyndy Roslyn Delian which were of a very high standard, as fitting so important an artist.

Some prints were on display which subtly captured the organic shapes of the Australian environment. (I enjoyed trying to pick out the species of plant represented in these monochromatic collages.)

And my favourite of the exhibit, were some small pieces made out of glass. Like fantastic maps to a unknowable city, they captured my attention with the simple radiance of the creations. As was true of all of the objects in this exhibit, these glass works created an meditative air. And as the catalog spoke of harmony and unity and of a spiritual connection and quality, one can only say that all of the works in this exhibit succeeded. Even if like myself, you hold a more materialist view of nature, it is hard not to be moved by the mediative quietude created by this exhibit.

Following on from this evening of humbling art the mass was called to order. The readings, like in a dissenting church, were all from the laity.

i read some stuff - some of which may have been posted before - but now they are posted again in a different format.

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Poem One: (It's 1977 and i hope i go to heaven, ive been too long on the dole and i can't work no more) (The mystical revelations of Crasstafari)


The Welfare State

Cause all property is theft
Cause all poverty is theft
Or y cunt dem drakies unterstate
Weeeeee stolet fairdinks an squire

The black state awe wite pauper
Blanknife salted feta pepper
She strands the waide open systhyme
Frails downdy do onto her kneeck


Do they owe us a living?
Course they do
Course they fucking do

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Poem Two: (Another day at work, and i wish i could die)
Parking Lot

Voiceless tatters of paper, bits
Of confettied leaves vortext
Across the grim (picture of our future)
Parking lot. Slight mist of dust raised
Brown mixing shattered underfoot drought
Dry grass flowering. Hot - It shall not
Rain, the wind from northwest bays.
My heart is empty. Our lives are empty
Alien. No more, no more, evermore.

Futile.
Ugly and futile is this world.

She sighing gulfed away the ice
Melted gin and tonic one desperate
After drunkenness veil of anonymity.

---

Poem three: (For Patrick White)
She sometimes wished she were dead
Riding on the bus after work
On the way home, with smashing
Slashing lighting crashing the middle
Distance. In this twilight of dusk,
Ach! she thought one can have these
Sentimental ideas, these silly adolescent
Ideas. Fearful of home with her uncaring
Husband and piled bills and tasks
Of cooking cleaning maybe she thought
This idea is not so silly after all.
Listening to them on the bus, inane
Chatterings of sneezing and sniffing
And coughing on the bus with mobile
Phones and plans for the weekend (plans
She knew went no further than getting
Drunk) Overlistening to them
She felt like a spy - like a spy
Who wished only simply coldly to die.

---

Poem four: (a mash up - or just an old fashioned collage - cutting it old skool)

Remember to Kick It Over

Emancipate yourself!
From mind forg'd mental
Manacles of Slavery.

Stef, she tapped her head,
Her forehead, with her hand.
It is here we must kill
Both Rome and Babylon.

Faces in the street
From marks of Trenchtown
Ghetto woe to Gaza's white
Phosphorus tv bombs.
To London's charter'd street
To the beat of weary feet.

In here, again she tapped
Her forehead, inhaling deep.
Speed thin sheen of sweat.

She inhaled and coughed...
Can I see another's woe
And not be in sorrow too?

Emancipate yourself!
From mind forg'd mental
Manacles of Slavery.

It is here we must kill
Both Rome and Babylon.

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And then i were done and 'twas time for transubstantiation. i spent the rest of night (and part of the mourning) transmuting beer into pretense and forgetting the banal hum drum of working life. SUBSTANTIA EST FURTUM.