.
Those of you on the facebook/twitter vine know I've been working away on a little poetry chapbook, in time for a combined cycling/poetry tour I'll be embarking on come-August.
The chapbook "Unsettled in Australia" is about working with asylum seekers in the community, which I did in 2012, with Australian Red Cross. It's 98% material that you haven't seen before on this blog, written specifically for this publication.
Ultimately the book will be used to help raise money to assist the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, whom I know first hand do great humanitarian/legal/community/work.
I don't want this to be a collection of trauma-porn stories I've appropriated off of the vulnerable people I worked with, but rather an anecdotal account of my work, a gonzo-style first person shooter as welfare worker, reflecting on Australian society as I tried to help people integrate into it.
The writing is coming along, however I'm already having to edit things out. One rather painful excision is a prologue I wanted to have open the story. The idea was to set a mentality about Australia in a global context of being a very rich country, and all the community services we enjoy (with the people I worked with did not have access to, even once out of detention).
I love the idea of starting with a prologue set years ago on the other side of the world to give a bit more sweep to the overall story, however an opener needs to be punchy too, and this is just too damn long, because of the length doesn't work as an opener/precursor to the story I'm trying to tell, especially as it doesn't deal with the subject matter.
However think it's an interesting piece of writing on it's own, so I thought rather than just recycle-bin it, why not put it up here for posterity's sake, and as a teaser of sorts-
SIX YEARS AGO:
Those of you on the facebook/twitter vine know I've been working away on a little poetry chapbook, in time for a combined cycling/poetry tour I'll be embarking on come-August.
The chapbook "Unsettled in Australia" is about working with asylum seekers in the community, which I did in 2012, with Australian Red Cross. It's 98% material that you haven't seen before on this blog, written specifically for this publication.
Ultimately the book will be used to help raise money to assist the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, whom I know first hand do great humanitarian/legal/community/work.
I don't want this to be a collection of trauma-porn stories I've appropriated off of the vulnerable people I worked with, but rather an anecdotal account of my work, a gonzo-style first person shooter as welfare worker, reflecting on Australian society as I tried to help people integrate into it.
The writing is coming along, however I'm already having to edit things out. One rather painful excision is a prologue I wanted to have open the story. The idea was to set a mentality about Australia in a global context of being a very rich country, and all the community services we enjoy (with the people I worked with did not have access to, even once out of detention).
I love the idea of starting with a prologue set years ago on the other side of the world to give a bit more sweep to the overall story, however an opener needs to be punchy too, and this is just too damn long, because of the length doesn't work as an opener/precursor to the story I'm trying to tell, especially as it doesn't deal with the subject matter.
However think it's an interesting piece of writing on it's own, so I thought rather than just recycle-bin it, why not put it up here for posterity's sake, and as a teaser of sorts-
SIX YEARS AGO:
What does paradise mean to you,
living in this place?
every day
spent here
I've gazed
away hours on those clouds
down by the
banks of Phewa Tal
rowboats
and pagodas float
quiet in
front of forested foothills
guest
houses nuzzle up sides of the valley
smoke and
mist rise lazily off the water
tastes of
incense off the breeze
mingle in
with my cheap beer
before
today
paradise
was my prologue to Pokhara
everything
from Buddhist meditation
to massage
and adventure tourism
at your
fingertips
a hill or
two back your city actually starts
where all
the Nepalese people live
everything
concrete walls and dust
broken
plumbing and warbling speakers
blaring
plastic bags and gravel roads
I walked
around for like an hour
trying in vain
to find a bin
to put my
banana peel in
ended up
just throwing it in a gutter
wrapped in
western guilt
with the
rest of the garbage
how many
angels can dance on the head
of your
conviction not to litter
amongst
rubble
...westerners
don’t venture this way much
I came out
here looking for a post office
found you
kids running up to me
asking
where I come from
making me
wish I could talk
in your
language
because I
say the name of a country
you pretend
you understand
but if I could tell you where
but if I could tell you where
I actually
came from
you would
not believe me
beyond that
lake oasis
a kilometre
from your house
can't
describe to you
what my
country is like
it would be
easier to say-
I come from paradise
where you
won't go mad
looking for
a rubbish bin
streets are
magically kept clean
by trucks
with giant robot arms
picking up
all the collected garbage
where I
come from
the
government gives money
to people
who don’t have jobs
it tries to
provide housing
for people
who are homeless
where the
power stays on
all of the
time
where there
is running water
in every
home
even in our
toilets
it is clean
enough to drink
where I
live
hospitals
are for everyone
and
medicine is mostly free
If I had
been born here, kid
a haemophiliac
like me
without
access to that system
would have
died
from the
bleeding disorder
before I
reached your age
I come from
an impossible place
where you
can live in comfort
your whole
life
without
war, want or disease
where
superstitions about gods
don’t rule
over people’s lives
you
probably have belief in some deity
who
promises you things like these
I don’t
have any beliefs
I have
never gone hungry
and I never
will
I know this
as
certainly as I know gravity
just as I
know for certain
we better
get the hell off this street
because
where I come from
we don't
see riot police like these
- - - -
I don’t
know where those riot police came from, either
out of
nowhere
five
minutes ago I was inside that post office
waiting in
line musing on the above
out the
door now
mission
accomplished
my parcel
back to paradise
a shiny
line of soldiers shoulder to shoulder
right down
to the gate
they looked
magnificent
fiberglass
helmets and shields
wanted a
photo of them--
never seen
tear gas canisters before
where I
come from
we haven’t
had a Maoist insurgency
or a
corrupt monarchy
this is
what I wanted to say
to you
before, kid
I don’t
know
what you
know about
my country
I’m just
being simplistic
those
heavenly afternoons
I’ve had up
the road
could make
me boast back home
about Paradise
here
and I could
spend just as many days
defaming my
country for you
nevertheless
it would
still sounds celestial
you
wouldn't believe me
but all
that separates
me from you
is
Himalayan mountains
a few long
roads
then the
Indian ocean
all that separates
us
is an accident
of birth
two feet of
height
four inches
of my backpacker beard
and a
couple thousand dollars
meanwhile
you kids
are long gone into this afternoon
a dipping
sun gleans light off those riot shields
shit’s
about to go down tonight
they’re
looking at me
don't make
eye contact with-
always
hated police everywhere
I know
motherfucker's just doing his job
like I just
do my job
when I do
my job
I was
trying not to think about my job
so far I've
found it hard
to explain
what social work is
in a
developing country
kids who
come running up to you
just
wanting pens and balloons
don't
believe in our poverty
by your
understanding
everybody is rich where I live
and truth
is we have fantasies
for
entertainment
of a
post-apocalyptic worlds
that would
pale against this
where I
come from
people
don't know your poverty
any more
than you kids know
what the
word poverty means
people the
world over use these words
but their
meanings differ
yeah,
another
thing kid
just as the
hills here
separate a
lake paradise
from a
rioters purgatory
back home
we have
marked divisions
of our own
in
Australia
our biggest
problem
is not
knowing how to help
_____________________________
(see I shouldn't have told you it was too long, because now the whole time reading it you were saying to yourself hey this is too long, weren't chya?).
Anyway, I am going to hack that down to about 20-30 lines somehow to include it in the book. Hopefully it will be finished within the month. Watch this space.
-Peace
.
No comments:
Post a Comment