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Series: Poems by Luka Lesson
Anonymous
'Anonymous', a poem written and performed by Luka Lesson.
They say
“come follow me, follow me"
but they've forgotten that their prophecy is probably what's killing us all
economies are costing me
commodities accosting me
constantly stopping...Show More
'Anonymous', a poem written and performed by Luka Lesson.
They say
“come follow me, follow me"
but they've forgotten that their prophecy is probably what's killing us all
economies are costing me
commodities accosting me
constantly stopping the cacophony from calling for autonomy
Impossible but possibly they got a free lobotomy
the truth is often a collective oddity or anomaly
And there's nothing exceptional really stopping me
honestly I'm part of your astronomy like Ptolemy
Equality has honestly gotten to be abolished
and polished off like it's porridge
now protestants hate the Pontiff
don't bother me 'til we're on it
and consciousness is upon us
until the prophets are in my college and Anonymous my monarchy
Man I get it - forget it
don't embellish their letters
presently your pestering my presence
you're pathetic
you're 7/11 in my memory
I see your pedigree
I see enemies as amphetamines that never enter me
I haven't finished
not submitting or being diminished
I'm committed to admitting everything ever been hidden
so you listen to my mission in collision with my spirit
I'm admitting all my sinning and I'm giving no apology
///
I’ve been to every gritty little village and city
I’ve seen milli little kids without a penny in pity
they're paying a pittance to the peasants to keep 'em skinny
I’m trying to spread the message but it’s killing like Achilles
Still spitting on the corner from California to
Sydney
speaking on the borders of paranormal and really
and even if nobody is celebrating my victory
my letters are spreading like confetti throughout the city
Along all meridians
kids by the millions
living in the slums
skin mostly obsidian
family Abbyssinian
African or Indian
even in Australia
Indigenous resilience.
I’m waiting on the senate I hope to finally get it
I’m waiting on the people to vote and finally vet it
I’m waiting on the parliament to grow and develop
I think it’s time we stop the whining and finally pay repentance
But I’m not holding my breath
I mean I’ve got a cold shoulder to stretch
I mean I’ve got a boulder on my back and my neck
'cause It feels like holding up the Atlas when rapping my text
///
They tell me I - coulda been a rapper
but this shoulda woulda coulda isn’t action
and actually it’s the rapper in me that keeps preaching in patterns
thinking back to when I rapped on the streets for practice
That's when I’d freestyle for no change
no joke got no gains
blew up - no propane
no-one knew no names
'cause I didn’t really smoke or blow trees
or coke dream
so I wasn’t "in with the scene"
I just hoped my lyrics would light fires
and see if the right guy
would hear it the right time and gimme a life-line
Now I’m a zeitgeist
hitting a typewriter
poetry pied piper
killing the mic I don’t need to be signed I believe in my sci-fi:
a kid with the right mind can rocket it sky high.
Half biggie / half hippie with tie-dye - turnin pipe dreams into pipelines
Half elegant
half Pastor/Reverend
paragraph art peddlin
fountain pen veteran
and to the death of him
weathered by every the element
and every lesson is a blessing on my pen again Show Less
Antidote
'Antidote', written and performed by Luka Lesson.
In Ancient Greece
healers used to keep snakes
they’d let them live beneath the beds of the sick
because they believed that snakes represented change, renewal and healing
Now
in Greek the word...Show More
'Antidote', written and performed by Luka Lesson.
In Ancient Greece
healers used to keep snakes
they’d let them live beneath the beds of the sick
because they believed that snakes represented change, renewal and healing
Now
in Greek the word for poison is ‘φαρμάκι’ but the word for medicine
is ‘φάρμακο’
like pharmacy
because inside the poison
is where we find the antidote
And they say - "Live by the sword, die by the sword"
but the word "sword"
has the word "word" in it
because our words can be the antidote
So much so that we can retell history
I retell my past in any way I choose to I even called my last terrible break up
'the best thing that ever happened to me'
Sometimes
I rewrite proverbs just to prove the point
Like, it’s not - "The bigger they are the harder they fall"
It’s actually - The smaller they are, the harder they brawl
And it’s not - "Behind every great man is an even greater woman"
It’s actually - In front of every great woman
stands a mediocre man who just gets all the credit
And - You can lead a horse to water... but they’re very hard to drown
And - You should keep your friends close, and your enemies... as far away as possible
Unless you want their poison to teach you how to cure yourself
You see this poem is for the snakes
because every time they bite they leave a drop of the antidote inside me
I extract the medicine
hang it around my neck in a vial the shape of survival
carved out of the time I broke that red neck kid’s nose in Musgrave Park when I was 15
I broke my pinky knuckle when I did it though
I guess that was his antidote to my poison
See this life is a snake
eating its own tail in a cycle
constantly shedding its skin
dying and reinventing
killing and giving life
and unlocking its jaw every now and then to eat something bigger than itself
We all need to learn how to eat concepts bigger than ourselves sometimes
My friend went into chemotherapy this week
her son shaved her head
I took her beanie shopping
we bought two
one was green and the other survival
afterwards we had dinner and she asked me all about my problems
I spoke so much about myself the cancer almost disappeared
Jack she calls it, is a blind date with a parasite
who couldn’t finish his own meal
it’s not her time
the poison the doctors give her will kill her just enough to keep her alive
and she’ll live long enough to make it look like it was medicine the whole time
And the whole time she’ll keep telling herself
I am surviving
I will survive this
I am surviving
I will survive this
Because she knows that while they say
"Live by the sword, die by the sword"
It also means - "Live by the word, die by the word"
Which also means - Live by the sword, die by the sword
Because your tongue is the Excalibur
stuck in the rock of your mouth
most of us spend our whole lives trying to pull it out
learn how to use it properly
try not to swallow it by mistake
but still carve a name for ourselves
inside of ourselves
That’s why we need to keep speaking our truths
like - Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day,
teach a man to fish...
and he’ll build a billion-dollar industry
that’ll cause thousands of aquatic species to become extinct
or
To have and to hold in sickness and in health until divorce do us part
or even my headstone when it reads:
Resting
In
Peace
but
Resurrected
In
Poetry. Show Less
Bones
'Bones', written and performed by Luka Lesson.
There are 206 bones in our bodies
and mine
are just like yours
but I’ll be white ochre if I want to
I’ll bleached by sun and soaked by sand if I want to
I’ll be eaten and reclaimed decomposed...Show More
'Bones', written and performed by Luka Lesson.
There are 206 bones in our bodies
and mine
are just like yours
but I’ll be white ochre if I want to
I’ll bleached by sun and soaked by sand if I want to
I’ll be eaten and reclaimed decomposed and desired if I want to
There are 22 bones in my feet
and I’ve named them after the poets who have walked before me
I will burn if I need to
be dust
if I choose to
desire smoke signals of yesterday reminisce in my own future
I will be a figment of my own imagination if I choose to
I will be rubble
.drift wood
.dead weight
.dead set
.dead end
dead poet’s society
There are 206 bones in my body
and each one will be fine bone china tea cup discussions of what could have been
use my fibula
to mark the chalk outline
of what went wrong
reform my skeleton into a shape of something you think you can come to terms with
like
how did he?
why did we?
why wasn’t there?
when was it?
why didn’t we?
There are 40 litres of water in our bodies but most of us still can’t find a fucking flow
I will build a dam if I want to I’ll build a river
an estuary
a lake
I will build a tear duct the width of your mother’s face
I will not let her tell me we can’t hear your voice anymore
I can’t hear your voice any more than my own sometimes
My heart
up all day
and I know you know what that means
I know you miss me
but I wish you’d missed
And I’m not ready to shoot
the breeze with you
.not ready to fall with you
.not ready to flow
.not ready to go
.not ready to be that bold with you just yet
.not ready to decompose disintegrate or dissolve
I’m not ready to feed the dirt
just yet
as a poet
we’re only ever respected once we’re dead so I guess I’m not ready for fame just yet
beats me
I’d rather be anonymous - but breathing Alive - in secret
a “bad poet”
but livid
average
but dealing with it
I’d rather be another number than a statistic
there is a difference
I’m not ready to fall just yet
There are one thousand miles of veins in our bodies and I’ve given each vein a name
so when I’m gone
you still can’t use my name in vain
And there are 36 breaths
in this poem
that I may have never taken and they
are the best shit that I ever wrote Show Less
May Your Pen Grace the Page
'May Your Pen Grace the Page', written and performed by Luka Lesson.
May your pen grace the page at the same pace as your brain
May your grey matter
From now on
No longer be grey
May you mean every word that you say
And may writing your lines
Be...Show More
'May Your Pen Grace the Page', written and performed by Luka Lesson.
May your pen grace the page at the same pace as your brain
May your grey matter
From now on
No longer be grey
May you mean every word that you say
And may writing your lines
Be the way that you pray
Get up
Step up
Never let up
Get your setup
Set up
Get recording
Get stories pouring
Ignoring your calling and calling you ‘boring’
Is boring
You need to be touring
What are you doing - you’re basically stewing
No space for day dreaming
No place for that feeling
No place for pacing the building or facing the ceiling
There’s no way that it is dealing
Your brain it is stealing
And there will be no change to you
And there’ll never be any change to that ceiling
I’m basically feeling that art isn’t hard
What's hard is your heart
And it starts in the past, but the past’s in the past
So love who you are
Pass a rush of blood till your arteries blast
And let the blood rush to your arm and let your artistry start
May your pen express upon the page every feeling you’re in
May your white page – Yang
Love your black pen – Yin
May the ball in your ball point roll ‘cause that’s the point of the ball
And if we can’t make our points then what’s the point of it all?
May the lead in your lead-pencil lead you astray
We spell it L-E-A-D ‘cause we’ve made leaders this way
And I know it’s hard but easy to say
But I mean what I say
When I say: “Mean what you say”
Potentially my pencil be the deftest thing you’ve ever seen
Adept at expressing everything that you’ve never seen
Especially when you question me
My pencil, man, she gets to me
She comes to me and comforts me and takes me out to lunch
You see
We have a cup of coffee
Before I know it she’s on top of me
She rocking and she’s rolling me
We’re touching uncontrollably
She likes to switch the roles on me
I'm writing with her
But she is writing with me
It's my life as I desire to be
It’s only right that she’s my wife 2B
She takes me to her bed of white
We try it in the dead of night
Pages till we get it right
We make love between the sheets
May your pen grace the page at the same pace as your brain
May your grey matter
From now on
No longer be grey
May you mean every word that you say
And may writing your lines be the way that you pray Show Less
Please Resist Me
'Please Resist Me', written and performed by Luka Lesson.
Please resist me
Colonise me, compromise me, conflict me
Please don't risk me
If you see me at the airport
Please come and frisk me
Please resist me
Colonise me, compromise me and...Show More
'Please Resist Me', written and performed by Luka Lesson.
Please resist me
Colonise me, compromise me, conflict me
Please don't risk me
If you see me at the airport
Please come and frisk me
Please resist me
Colonise me, compromise me and conflict me
Please don't risk me
Please call me stupid
Because your resistance
Brings my evolution
Please resist me
Call me a wog
It’s brought us so close together I could call me a squad
Please resist me
Lock me in solitary confinement
I'll close my eyes and admire the quality of the silence
I'll write rhymes in my mind honestly and define them
Solidly redefine and memorise them
Until like a diamond
When I come out I’ll be better than when I arrived in
Please resist me,
Keep me under the thumb
Keep me down-trodden keep me under the gun
Keep me working harder under thunder and sun
Son - haven't you heard?
I'm becoming a gun
Please resist me
Because resistance brings evolution
And you've resisted me consistently
I thank you for your contribution
I'm a happy man
Your stupidity has made me strong
I've developed wings
A thick skin
and this here opposable thumb
It holds my pen which loads my explodable tongue
So without loading a gun
I'm killing high quotas of unemotional...
punks
Sorry
You also taught me to speak French
I learnt it when you kept keeping me at arms-length
And then I learnt Italian just to expand my head
And Greek to learn from where my ancestors had fled
And then I learnt some Yanyuwa
Just to show the people of this land respect
You see
It's been your example that has led me to leave you for dead
So don't trust me
I'm risky
Insurmountable unaccountable
I'm an undeniable unreliable maniacal liability
I fire soliloquies and my liturgies literally leave a literary litany
You see
When I was little
They told me I was:
Illegitimate, illiterate and limited
Little did they know that in a minute I'd be killing it
I'm vivid like in cinemas
So my synonym is vividness
I stick it like I'm cinnamon
And kill it like a militant
I live it like a citizen - you live a life like imprisonment
Besides Indigenous, immigrant might be the most legitimate of citizen
So it’s better to live a life like us...
Isn't it?
Please resist me
Colonise me, compromise me, conflict me
Please don't risk me
If you see me at the airport
Please come and frisk me
Please resist me
Colonise me, compromise me and conflict me
Please don't risk me
Please call me stupid
Because your resistance
Brings my evolution
Please resist me
Call me a wog
It’s brought us so close together I could call me a squad
Please resist me
Lock me in solitary confinement
I'll close my eyes and admire the quality of the silence
I'll write rhymes in my mind honestly and define them
Solidly redefine and memorise them
Until like a diamond
When I come out I’ll be better than when I arrived in
Please resist me,
Keep me under the thumb
Keep me down-trodden keep me under the gun
Keep me working harder under thunder and sun
Son - haven't you heard?
I'm becoming a gun
Please resist me
Because resistance brings evolution
And you've resisted me consistently
I thank you for your contribution
I'm a happy man
Your stupidity has made me strong
I've developed wings
A thick skin
and this here opposable thumb
It holds my pen which loads my explodable tongue
So without loading a gun
I'm killing high quotas of unemotional...
punks
Sorry
You also taught me to speak French
I learnt it when you kept keeping me at arms-length
And then I learnt Italian just to expand my head
And Greek to learn from where my ancestors had fled
And then I learnt some Yanyuwa
Just to show the people of this land respect
You see
It's been your example that has led me to leave you for dead
So don't trust me
I'm risky
Insurmountable unaccountable
I'm an undeniable unreliable maniacal liability
I fire soliloquies and my liturgies literally leave a literary litany
You see
When I was little
They told me I was:
Illegitimate, illiterate and limited
Little did they know that in a minute I'd be killing it
I'm vivid like in cinemas
So my synonym is vividness
I stick it like I'm cinnamon
And kill it like a militant
I live it like a citizen - you live a life like imprisonment
Besides Indigenous, immigrant might be the most legitimate of citizen
So it's better to live a life like us...
isn't it. Show Less
The Future Ancients
'The Future Ancients', written and produced by Luka Lesson.
In the future
the history books will study us
our cities will have been renamed
our languages slanged into something new
and this moment
will one day
be ancient
The future...Show More
'The Future Ancients', written and produced by Luka Lesson.
In the future
the history books will study us
our cities will have been renamed
our languages slanged into something new
and this moment
will one day
be ancient
The future ancients
dig theoretical trenches between settlement and invasion
shoot rifles at each other across the plains
and place prayers within the screaming bullets
they shroud their heads in mourning
and afterwards line their soldiers up in cemeteries like voodoo dolls for God
The future ancients
will be encased behind glass in museums
Greek ragtag squadrons
with backpacks
and shards of Athenian columns for weapons
will be installed in exhibitions
of either terrorists or freedom fighters
depending on who it is that wins
this time
they will stand side by side
with wax dummies of 'good men'
in shirts and ties
who never leave their suburban blocks
but are called to duty through computer screens
shooting unmanned cannons in far away places
and are called things like
husband
son
sweetheart
and Lieutenant
The future ancients
will have their artefacts locked in storage
shards of Molotov cocktails
from the Egyptian revolution
will be tagged and filed
next to Michael Jackson albums
smartphones
Playboy magazines
and the Australian Flag
The future ancients
will be found by future archaeologists
preserved and embalmed
in tequila and Chanel Number 5
alongside pop-star prophets
who thought they were somehow saying something new
this time
they will find them
praying to gods who believe in Science
on a planet of do's and don'ts
of factions and fractions of us's and them's
and we's and whatever's
and maybe never's
and never again's
the future ancients will be found in thombs
of cheap liquor
in databases of tradition
on screens called culture
as relics of broken signals
They will hardly be visited as bones
but remembered
in the symbology of pixel
and paranoia
The Future Ancients
will be remembered or lost depending on what we decide
Since democracy has been paraphrased
sustainability called primitive
refugees criminalised by the first invaders
and Indigenous cultures lined up side by suicide
in prisons
like voodoo dolls for the future
the textbooks will study us
our cities will have been renamed
our languages slanged into something new
and our stories will be the only link left
between objects
and their meanings
They will try to twist and turn our histories
based on what they find of us
so our voices are the only aretfacts worth keeping
alive
So whose lips will we honour?
on whose tomb will we lay our tears?
those that risked everything to spreak
but spoke anyway
those that gave meaning in the darkness
those who not only spoke
but gifted us a moment of silence in this madness to so that we could lear to jear
ourselves
Those thoughts are your artefacts
your jewellery
jade
and bronze
and your words are your monuments
your stone
and bone
Parthenon
and Colosseum
everything worth leaving behind
In silence is how we surrender
speech is the architecture of fate
So are we pharaohs of fallacies
empresses of nothing?
What will they engrave below our statues?
In the ancient future. Show Less
Yiayia (Grandmother)
'Yiayia', written and performed by Luka Lesson.
My Grandmother
grew up between two wars in Greece
lost her brother Xristo to the Germans
and named my mother Xristina after him
Rare for a Greek woman she had a divorce at 50
has lived for 30...Show More
'Yiayia', written and performed by Luka Lesson.
My Grandmother
grew up between two wars in Greece
lost her brother Xristo to the Germans
and named my mother Xristina after him
Rare for a Greek woman she had a divorce at 50
has lived for 30 years by herself with his photos still in the spare room
She is a green thumb
She makes cordial from her own mandarins
drinks tea from her own chamomile bush
and picks and tomatoes from her garden whenever I say I feel like a salata
She hardly went to school
But one day when talking of my time at university
and admiring all three different types of basil she has growing in her garden
she says to me:
"Eat two leaves basil everyday
good for the blood
good for the brain
- the don't teach that university"
and when my brother Eliah says to her:
"You know Yiayia - you know a lot...you're really smart."
She always says:
"Yes Eliah, I'm a very ...education"
So recently I decided to ask my Yiayia what she thought about racism
and whether it was ok that Greeks still ahte the Turks
for what they did in the past
and she said:
"Just because some people naughty,
doesn't mean you throw the rest in the rubbish!"
Her name is Katerina Batounas
but her maiden name is Sarandavga
Sarandavga literally means 'forty eggs'
and as the story goes one of her great-grandfathers
was challenged by one of the other villagers
to see if he could eat an omelette of forty eggs without getting sick
Anyone that knows my appetite
will know that I'm proud to say
...he won that bet
And so his nickname 'forty-eggs' was then turned into the family name
and was passed down every generation
to my Yiayia
and today
it's her birthday
so I tell her what we always do
'Na ekatostisis', 'May you live to one hundred'
but she is 83
so instead of thanking me she says -
"oh god me!
a hundred
no thank you
i have enough
maybe couple more years ...then I go to sleep"
Where will you go to sleep Yiayia?
"in the cemetery
I already I buy a little house there...
I don't afraid!"
Until then she will keep calling me to see if I am too cold living in Melbourne
keep stooping me from doing the dishes after she cooks us a meal
keep trying to slip a fifty dollar note every time I visit
and keep telling me:
"Eat two leaves basil everyday
good for the blood
good for the brain"
They don't teach you that at university Show Less