scattered landscape

AntiPoet at Perth Pestival Lit Crawl Slam 2020

Though we are anchored to our mental shores

Uninsured at the Boranup breaks

Telling stories to the wardong

Songs to the unsafe terrain at our feet speak

In beats across the blatant sky

All mud and pindan

All meat and muscle

All bus stops and diesel fumes

Airports and Stadiums

And all streets always end in circles

Return to the sturdy vessel

Bags stored in uber boots

Fire sticks and smartphones crackle electricity

Our apps meet in the western humidity

Heads float over the unwritten landscape

The terra nullius of our bent language

Unspoken, unheard, reserved words curved and carved

Into impossible clouds from airline windows

Into the strange artefact of your wooden face,

Your dreamt body waits at Derbal Yerrigan

And wait for unsaid answers

In the soft sound of this framed space

This baked baker baking

This naked inhale

.

And its here in each broken breath

In the jarrah creaks beneath our bodies

Sipping the long person energy

We simply breathe the dust of Noongar Boodja

Of the coastal plain

Sucking banksia nectar in the fat sun

Under the satanic thunder of State,

Of gods, of masters

Of our capital selves

That we cannot kneel politely

Under wet blankets of climactic blindness

Unbound by these monsters

Undrunk on concepts

Shedding scales n skins n shifting flesh n bone n eucalypt fire

Until we dream ourselves deeper harder

Deeper harder

Into each other’s landscape

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Written for "The Landscapes We Cannot Shed" - Lit Crawl, Perth Festival 2020. Performed at Mary Street Bakery, Mt Lawley as sacrificial poet.

"The Landscapes We Cannot Shed explores the physical, spiritual and emotional homes we inhabit in a lifetime. From local legends to national stars, join Zal- Kanga Parabia, David Stavanger, Anne-Marie Te Whiu, Maddie Godfrey, Allan Boyd, Tineke Van Der Eeken, Hessom Razavi, Asha Kiani, Sukhjit Kaur Khalsa and Zainab Syed for a night of poetry that builds from solo performances to rapid-fire rhythms and ends with the intimacy of a soulful third round." https://www.facebook.com/events/534419450723923/