Jumping rainclouds

Armidale, your heart is cold but your beds are warm.

Just did a series of pieces for Beyond Empathy in Armidale and their Just One Less program. You can check out the vid here. I'm one of the first artists to get involved with their work so far, so make sure you show them some love! Check their youtube account out (again) for some of their other work, they're doing some pretty forward thinking arts stuff and it's all amazing!

It was great to hang with some old Armidalien mates and get up to mischief in this small town. It's got to be one of the most picturesque and beautiful places in the country. Cold but. BRRRrrrrrrrrr.

In a small moment

I’m not trying to tell you what to do but...

You’ve gotta make something bigger than yourself

In a small moment.

You’ve gotta see the moon through the eye of a needle

and splash oceans when jumping puddles

You’ve gotta give the finger to meteors who just wanna

rain on your parade

You’ve gotta take a shot and

pin robin hood to the fuckin tree

Dip your fingers in a bubbling pot of

make believe

and lick the bowl clean

Be sated.

You’ve gotta make something bigger than yourself in a small moment.

Hand David a small rock

and teach him how to throw it

Make a deal with Medusa just so you can taste her venom.

Ask him if he knows where god is

Ask her if she’s spoken to father time

You gotta tell a scientologist “hey man, you might be right…”

and ask jesus to fix that wobbly leg on your dining table

you gotta rewind a melody secretly hopin you will

hear the devil speakin.

You’ve gotta make something bigger than yourself

In a small moment.

Tell him you love him like the mountains love to caress clouds

Tell her she makes you believe in

porn again

Stick a toothpick in the earth and move mountains

Move a tongue and move history

shoot epiphanies out of clichés and rock the walls with a slingshot

You gotta perceive love in a sentence

hate in a question mark

read between the lines

but burn the fuckin paper nonetheless.

You’ve gotta make something bigger than yourself

In a small moment.

DWD 2011

Jumping waterfalls!

Wallaby Ck Fest made me remember why life is for living for another year. My 3rd year at Wallaby Creek and the festival's tenth anniversary, what a blast.

Bands like Kooii and Barons of Tang are a fundamentally vital part of Australian music. (Also: everything else that was there.) I've got a real soft spot for those guys n gals, we've done the festival together for a couple of years and it was great to jam again. Poets and musicians jamming, it works beautifully. It's called songwriting fools! Ha.

So anyway: waterfalls, streams, trees, forest, butterflies... you get it?

Jumping rainbows man!

The last few weeks have been a surreal and impressive series of events squished into my soul.

First off, please know - I effin love these guys. Yeah, the ones to the left there on the page. They're awesome.

Although I will humbly admit the hairy one and the female one are a bit more impressive than me.

WE, yes WE as BRC went to Canberra recently for the first national Australian Poetry Slam summit. We got to hang out heaps and do guerrilla poems on the streets of Canberra with random beatboxing kids called SlimTim.

Oh, and then the poets arrived.

It was great to perform and be a part of workshops with heaps of amazing Australian poets as well as Ken Arkind and Jive Poetic from the States.

If you wanna know what's happening with slam over the next few years, well we're gonna have a few extra rounds for the finals in Sydney. And that's really it!

It puts us in a bit of a good spot with similar rules as the states, which - it was talked briefly about - could tie in with the Oz contingent for future international slam things.

Dated 1832

Smooth sailing

down the coastline

scurvy and chlamydia in plentiful supply

We will take the head back

to England

for display

Fortune shine on us

there may be a few in for a hunt!

Those eyes when we entered the channel

Falling whispers

Otherwise smooth sailing

down the coastline

Other vagrants

It's been a busy year and such... Uni + Poetry + Relationships = Crazy. But I've been privileged to know and get to know many amazing artists, teachers, organisers and general vagrants of the world.

Most notably I have been a part of The Broken Records Collective for the past year with Betsy Turcot and Doubting Thomas.

Check it out, we like you, don't be afraid.

Just last Sunday I was involved with a new Spoken Word event in West End at a great lil space called Jam Jar. It involved accapella, acoustic spoken word/slam/performance poetry (so NO mics!) in a dynamic area out the back of the restaurant. The way the space sat, the crowd involvement and the abilities of the poets/rappers/slammers combined into a truly unique view of the spoken word world.

Joelistics, Doubting Thomas, Fern Thompsett, Geoff Lemon (check out his new job at Going Down Swinging too), and myself all had a lot to share and the crowd went away NOT saying negative things. Happy days. In fact there was a discreet air of people impressed with something a bit new and a bit different, kinda like if you go to Bread Top and buy a crazy roll made from green tea and it's actually yum. So yum... Damn green tea rolls...

This video was made on the (supposed) last day on earth. Rapture baby...

Darkwing Dubs - If Jesus Was Born Again. from thomas on Vimeo.

Made by Thomas Day and Darkwing Dubs sauntering through West End's main strip.

When the world begins again

So I've decided to give this another go. When last I blogged stuff it felt really weird and uninviting, especially to me. I don't think there was anything bad about what was on here. But... I dunno... it just kinda got the better of me until I convinced myself to tear the fuckin site down. Which is impossible or something because it's still here, blinking at me like the eye of Sauron.

The picture is from my recent trip to NT and a small Indigenous community I visited to volunteer in a school holiday program. I spent much time writing and exploring the surrounding countryside, when I wasn't playing basketball with kids who taught me to swear in Arrente language...

There's a road that leads to

nowhere

and everywhere

at once.

Where the earth stares at the

stars

and can't hide its

lust.

Where they roll out the

red carpet for you.

Red sky

and

red dust.

On this road that leads to

nowhere

and everywhere

at once.