TO BE FREE

Let us give thanks - oh friends
we who can gather here and walk in our
flowering gardens.
For the time is nearing
when to gather together
dangerous it shall be.
Terror - Terror
the latest control word,
all for your own good, we are told.
Oh, leave that responsibility to Me
Please - let me be
Free.
Free to walk in my flowering gardens
Free to gather with friends---
trusting -- sharing.
Leave me to know, to learn, to trust
Leave me be - True to me
Thus You!

So easy, I see it - unfortunately
we humans - so diverse
so bloody complex we make our lives.
Too willing - to sell our souls
our intelligence - our knowing
To the Great God of Commerce.
Blank minds, filled with desires,
fabricated by the weavers
of possibilities - of dreams - fulfilled.
Chasing, racing always - seeking
the elusive - betterment - of who
of what -- and always, the how.
Poor empty man, lost the way
of true living - stolen the chance
to know and see -- beauty
everyday.
FREE TO BE.

Gail M. Clarke

(Performed at the 2006 World Cup Grand Final at Nimbin Town Hall)

THE UGLY AMERICAN

We have become the ugly American,
shoveling fast food chains,
and botox injected pluck, suck, fuck and tuck clinics
into our ravenous, neon encrusted maw.
We are infected.
With the genetically engineered anthrax
of Americanisation.
Sliding into a stuperating sloth.
As we, the carnelised consumer
suck the processed pastiche from the bloated beast
of the bitch whore goddess
HOLLYWOOD.

We have become the ugly American
preferring to bury our heads in the sand
of a nineteen fifties atomic age dream.
Blissfully unaware of our bloated arses
blistering in the reflection
of a mushroom cloud sunset.
Our rednecks betraying our willful ignorance,
built on the flayed back
of a forgotten and stolen aboriginal.
Our blind eyes forever shuttered
to the pain outside our own experience.
To the truth of our own ugly shadow
a blot on the historical landscape
As we squeeze the life from this ancient land
in our ultimate act of Terra Nullis.

We have become the ugly American,
so unreflected we have disappeared
into the black hole of our own dead dreaming
Freddy Kruger now walks in a business suit.
Trading his fist of death
for another decade on the post modernist recliner
of his robber Baron empire.
Eating the lotus that grows on the unborn
rapaciously sucking the blood of the future
to flood our overfed senses,
in yet another futile and frantic search
for endlessly empty meaning.

We have become the ugly American,
for in our silence we are content,
to share the spoils,
and give consent.

Biskit

Babylon Plaza

the old queen still sits upon her throne
tin soldiers still melt in her furnace
princes still prance on polo ponies/
the clichés are killing us:
we change channels
Africa is burning/ Paris is dancing
we change channels
Africa is dancing/ Paris is burning,
the ice is melting
the tide is rising/
new laws are coming
laws of silence, silence & shopping & work:
spoke the little prime minister of the great island
girt by lies/ by the click of the shear,
by the friend of the Texas hangman
president of where-the-buffalo-roamed/
prince of hurricanes:
trapped in the nightmare of his fallen towers
trapped in the revenger’s tragedies
and we all are punish’d
we all must pay
as we rush through the streets of the terror
to get the last Xmas shopping done
at Babylon Plaza.

David Hallett

Another Angel Has Fallen (to Michael RIP)

Oh the beauty which I have beheld,
Wonders I have seen.
Through it all my life has seemed unreal
a broken dream.
Unmasked feelings, open hearts,
raw humanity, and pain.
Tear contorted faces,
Through desperate embraces.
Reaching for traces
Of love long gone.
Perfection stirs erections –
Such beauty to behold.
Watch a flower unfolding,
A blossom growing,
A teardrop flowing.
Another angel is falling.
Why is it so easy to find the question
To reach to the depth for each one’s heart and needs?
The question to bring on the light,
In other lost dreamers?
To bring each their own insight?
But for our own questions, our own needs
The question seems to hide,
And the answers we fight
While trying to solve
And bring some resolve?
Sweet Fallen Angel.

Wisdom and sadness intermingled with tears;
Oh, lost son! Lost brother! Lost lovers!
Oh the pain of just being.
And of being SO ALONE.
But sweet Michael, you never knew
How your beauty and radiant love shone out,
And your sadness touched our souls,
And your insight helped us all grow.
So, beautiful angel, sweet Michael, MGM
On a sad dark lonely moon night
All alone, far from home
You said your final goodbyes,
I will always remember your embrace,
And your kisses, god they were the best in the world!!
I will remember your beauty standing out,
On our big moon nights,
And I will wish you a happy full moon goodnight,
Sweet scented, eyes bright,
Now closed forever tight.

Pampussycat