Protest

 August 11 Word of the Day: Protest

 

Letrilla: All my songs are protest songs

 

It’s true my heartbeat grows and grows

My body lives out all it knows

All my nerve ends walk to the edge

My tongue goes lightly from the ledge

And all my songs are protest songs

 

There is the song of red flowers

Songs that swagger songs that glower

Drawled songs travelling the world and back

Songs ludicrous songs blue songs black

But all my songs are protest songs

 

Lullabies without a pretext

I sing anthems lots of effects

Tall ballads long crooners their schmaltz lines

Great spirituals in waltz time

But all my songs are protest songs

 

Freeways streaming without a care

Buildings go nowhere into air

All the cables are enough rope

Spaceships promising more false hope

Where all my songs are protest songs

 

 

 

Listening to the Royal Albert Hall concert of 1966

Image: B. Harvey

Pretext

 August 10 Word of the Day: Pretext

 

B. Harvey

Why ever should I need a pretext? Here is the making of the news. Here the collision at the zero place. Place of given flesh. Here is word shock. In growing seconds. In thought burst. The raw reality insults my quaint certainties. Protest is instant. The song made of absorption. Of mess and meaning. Meaning racing to make meaning. Direct questions rush in to size the situation. Statements of thirst. Now is the need to protect. Protect myself. Protect memory abiding in the truth of past experience. Statements of knowing in the midst of not knowing. Hung in the now.  

 

Tears

 August 9 Word of the Day: Tears

 

Letrilla: That’s not climate change that’s your tears

 

Hard to explain why I’m so tall

And the planet a tiny ball

Facts don’t connect more surprising

And meanwhile waters are rising

That’s not climate change that’s your tears

 

My body is all out of sorts

What is isn’t at all what oughts

Even my talk’s on holiday

And common sense has gone away

That’s not climate change that’s your tears

 

Who in the world am I up swirled  

What in the world is the world

One eye on the very hot garden

One on high tide no beg pardon   

That’s not climate change that’s your tears

 

Maybe I’ll drown I just don’t know

Bigger smaller go with the flow

But if I asked politely you

To consider would you come too

That’s not climate change that’s your tears

 

  

Image: Print of ‘Dreaming Alice’ by Charles Blackman (1956)

in the storeroom of Etching House, North Sydney.