That I’m a hoopdancer.
And of late, I’ve been falling in love with hooping, all over again.
Hooping? That’s a THING?
Why yes, yes it is. And trust me, there’s a lot more to it than waist hooping. Inspired by the joy of movement and other amazing hoopdancers around the world, I’ve started keeping a record of my jam sessions in the park.
If you have a couple of minutes, check it out. And decide for yourself whether I have ninja status yet!
Heheh.
I met this white man once in Europe, and have since kept him recessed online
to remind me why I think the way I think,
and respect those who I respect,
and revile those
whose words, spat with poison and written in blood
inject hatred, aggression and ignorance into Life.
It detracts from the discourse, the joy of the commune, so it’s time for simple poetry to address the malignancy of fear.
A Land Truly Girt
Shall I remind thee, human
Of our tiny tormented Blue Dot?
Should I iterate that irritations in noses get covered in snot?
Bear with me child;
Collective consciousness is just an airway
and racist dust does not last long; empty cells at the top of a stairway.
In this way you create your own prison
And scream at others to join you inside
Well, I’d much rather breathe in my Freedom
Having power with love in my stride.
See the movement of minds that are more than just matter
Overshadow the shallow dark waters you taint
and they’re cast from a mould that is forged in a mettle
where the torch is so strong that your image is faint
Overcast by the beings who soar high above you
you’re alone with your hatred in shadow on earth
For great heat dissipation takes place when damnation
grows a xenophobe mind in a being since birth.
Malignancy in tongue is more than cancerous to mind
You cannot sit with poison and expect all else to hurt
You’re blessed with eyes and ears and voice but use them all to bind
what could have been a resource in a land that’s truly Girt.
Til you find me one more planet to inhabit as a human
We are all a refugee and cling to life on the crumbling crust.
And these solid plates of agar, floating colonies on liquid
have been moving since Gondwanaland divided up in trust.
This behaviour’s kin to yelling at tectonics down beneath you;
“Get THE FUCK BACK ALL TOGETHER OR I’LL SHOOT YA IN THE CORE!”
No matter how you stamp your foot demanding all this movement,
Friend, you’re just a ball of atoms floating too on an infinite shore.
The robustness of your case to send back queue jumpers to sea
To keep your Straya drunk with fighting whites that’s right for you
Will be vilified, exemplar of the Racist Uptight Knights
and reminds me of a 3 year old I nannied- oh, wait, he was two.
You’re systematic in attacking what you fear will threaten your skin
Oblivious it cheapens all infinity to nought.
If aliens come to harvest some poor human for their sin
You’ll be the first to go my friend, and you can take your Thoughts.
peace
and solidarity
Tis a photo of joy that reminds one to see
Past the murmurs to nudge toward something alive
Being that which connects and collides in a frame
Saturating a feeling of brightness inside
There atoning in wonder; illusioning fear
But you prospect for metals that steel your third eye
Fall upon this small magnet, deem one to be three
For the fourth is enforcing the fort caught engrossed
In my moment of sharing a careful word worn
Wearing waste jarring charred tarry stars from their place
Is a wayside where whey splits from curd and the corn
Found its oily way into good cooking and space
Here you wonder aloud where the crack has been formed
One can plunder light, draining some quiet repose
Lying low, waiting words sweeten rupturing line
To demand mindless maker defeat its caked praise
Ode defining the miners who seek what they find
Bolsters boyishness dearly adhering to rows
Taking weather near hither or thither to be
Coming back to the colour that brightened your sighs
In a thronging sensation; a resounding vibration
Persisting through filters that aid percolation
And a clear conversation, intent on elation
Bringing lingering things to the boiling point nation
Rolling out of the grey where you stay in all day
Reeling back from the black that attacked your old fray
Polling hacks that enraptured the brackish to clay
One can see now how clouds can delight in array
And like a bird, held mighty word
peace xxx
Not long ago I caught one of Sydney’s iconic ferries to Manly Beach.
The journey there was beautiful; blue skies and sun warmed wooden benches on boat’s bow.
An afternoon passed on the beach, lying still, watching all.
Here the clouds inched over, high above in a non-threatening gesture that spelled to beach-goers “we’re here to delight, not rain on your charade.”
This movement overhead geared towards something brilliant; as temperature was cooling, the sky was only warming up.
Swooping birds bore down on a boardwalk stretch beyond a gargling bay, as I boarded one last ferry, green and yellow floating in wait.
If a silence is golden then the girl standing one deck above me was glowing in rays. Though temptation of ten thousand cameras around us preserved through the pixels and lens, her and I were were the contrast that both used our eyes instead to remember the scene.
With a static air that charged the very nature of my being, and a place to stand on benches looking out across the bay, waning sun was melting down toward the landscape of the city, and it felt to me as though the time stood still in a timeless way.
PEACE xxx
Among the cars, the light to see
The folded root in pavement
Beneath a trunk where grow did she;
Pedestrian amazement
In flight the answer clear enough
On peppered figs like cotton
Upon the saddle, over rough
For ridges grow forgotten
But time on lime of grass sublime
Arrived the simplest answer
To what once more befell on rhyme
Remembrance of the dancer
There cloth had worked as sail to wind
Here clothing serves as master
As flailing flag in wind is thinned
A breeze blows ever faster
But, still in movement stopped the call
To go with haste, directed
Gradated green away from wall;
Away from screens erected
Now fathom this – your time in flow
Trick kisses from created
Cremate to ash the past, let go
To find a mind elated
xxx
Twenty First Year Manifesto
Twenty one has been kind to me, here on the earth
And I’ve nurtured a humour with ongoing mirth
There’s been gifting of friendship and travel and love
Such elation at hoop-dance that fits like a glove
But with all of this growth I still need to confess
That my room is a shithole – an artist’s own mess
Here beneath all the piles of papers and pants
Are a few little things that still hold some romance;
Small drawings of anarchic doodles in pen;
A postcard that tells me I need to be zen;
The pink tube of bubbles I stuck in my bra
and promptly forgot about at Mardi Gras
A blue book that tells of the wisdom in words
And man’s greatest treasure in being absurd
I’ve learnt more than ever be honest, be true
But those with closed minds are a task to eschew
To cultivate love in its highest of forms
Needs movement, and stillness, defying thy norms
And pushing the boundaries that bound many years
You defy forceful factors that fracture small fears
For they’d splintered like wood into stagnant sharp states
Where they grew with conditions; for conditions are baits
But, empowered by those who live love with their being
Who resolve, knownst or not, there’s a gift in their seeing
In the thousands they meet and see right to the bone
To the human inside; to the voice, not the phone
Which then begs the question, how know you these friends?
Helen grins and leans back now to tie poem’s ends
With a homage to life, and a thank you to kin
My next of which lie in a heart that’s within
But let’s now make light of my Twenty Two year,
Whilst I love all these wishes; go buy me a beer
(jokes)
XXX
Make light of it
As promised, I went to the arid and dry.
Only, something had changed in the landscape of late.
Great plains, always salty, cracked and creeping on for miles sat below a liquid surface.
Here upon the plains a quiet; something stirred in ghostly waters.
Badger Bates, respected elder, told of slaughter on the flood plains; how the killing of native people echoed on and on for years.
It was then we heard the students who’d been present here before us often came to tears; unsettled in this place of darkened desert.
It was not until the elder smoked the students through a fire, and he spoke to spirits settled in this place of violent past. And what followed was a calm; a lifting light, a subtle sigh. The feeling of the landscape changed, no more they felt the morbid weight and felt no need to break the camp.
For my part, there I stood and felt with heart the toiling on the soil. My science told me “silly!” but my instinct knew much more. Who am I to judge from outside that the spirits were not haunting? There indeed existed much more than my sweeping visit told.
peace x
Helen War 