* Dedicated to the memory of Steve Kurtz (radical art collective Critical Art Ensemble founding member and friend)
run> 600 light years
this is coming from 600 light years away
that place where things came to an end
red blood trickles down from under the Garland
a vastness like a new dark black bird
a green that is almost black, a black that is scarcely green
the vagrant, casual wind, the face of night
before me a meadow, before me a brightness
there is no shape and no images,
my entire body transparent and empty
sky deepens to grape blue
everything unrecognisable
strange objects proliferate
lo! a baby, with wings and tusks
small sparks of lightning are glittering
she sleeps, wakes laughing
use the axe
an epoch of disorganisation and revolution
criminalisation of woodlands, valleys, bodies
shuffling hordes of the dispossessed on the move
silhouettes against pauper pale sand
a never ceasing state of agitation and social insecurity
the operative has become merely an accessory to, or a part of, the machine
Capital incapable of ensuring the bare existence of its Slaves
debt slavery, accompanied by Terror and Fear
everything fixed and stable vanishes
everything holy and venerable desecrated
our bones mixed with the bones and ashes of bombed cities
the pace of repression outstrips our ability to understand it
our bodies were seeking joy in the songs
the bodies that disappear, the abused bodies, the bodies we miss
the bodies that march together in protest
the bodies that are being controlled
war should be regarded as a funeral
wherever armies stay
thorns and brambles grow
to initiate a battle for taking a land
the deaths of people are full in the field
fields overgrown with weeds, storehouses empty
to fight for a city
the deaths of people are full in the city
children without shadows, arms without a hand
this is what is called to consume humans for occupying land
a crime that cannot be forgiven
even when punished by death
I have the heart of a fool, so ignorant
our discourse is a vehicle that leads to the wondrous
our silence leads to the mysterious
we saw the cosmos in a point
night falls down from the stars
the voices of those dead
the soul’s companions
mira!
the messengers we sent ahead
they’re dancing
run> control|total
the voices of the accused
reach us strangled, altered, distorted
in many cases, they haven't reached us at all
growing hostility toward marginal groups
frenzied searches for scapegoats
the scrawny and reactionary slogans of nationalism
ghosts drawing circles around us
imprisoning us, leading us on
the vain struggle of a calf against its slaughterer
the journey of the living into the world of the dead
as the repulsiveness of our work increases, income decreases
being abandoned by everything and everybody
vanished before the icy breath of their selfish calculations
fascination is a social phenomenon
a crackpot posing as a genius
always has a certain chance to be believed
what prepares people for totalitarian domination is that loneliness,
once a borderline experience usually suffered in certain marginal social conditions like old age,
is now an every day experience
I know the emptiness
the perpetual-motion mania of totalitarian movements
which can remain in power only so long as they keep moving
and set everything around them in motion
easier to hide behind 40 atrocities than a single incident
ten minutes after we get artificial general intelligence
we will have nano-folk
go, Gadget, go!
no, let’s go bad goblin
crypto-network states, 4Chan on fucking acid
vamanos!
the sky is in flames, heaven is on fire
it seems as if a way had been found to set the desert itself in motion
to let loose a sand storm that could cover all parts of the inhabited earth
do not doom loop on this, eat the chaos
loneliness, the common ground for terror, the essence of totalitarian government,
the preparation of its executioners and victims,
is closely connected with uprootedness and superfluousness
to be uprooted means to have no place in the world,
recognised and guaranteed by others
to be superfluous means not to belong to the world at all
as I said, I know the emptiness
identification with the movement and total conformism
seem to have destroyed our very capacity for experience,
even if it be as extreme as torture or the fear of death
I saw His sweet face as it were dry and bloodless with pale dying
and later, more pale, dead, languoring; and then turned more dead unto blue
and then more brown-blue, as the flesh turned more deeply dead
we know the burden
we dance, we dance
in ironic splendor
run> triple helix
may I say a few words?
I want to say a few words about this matter
my understanding was lifted up into Heaven
and there I saw three heavens
the continuous evocation of unity
which merges and abolishes all reference points
a solitary cloud
and wild crane beyond constraint
secret formulas in cloud-seal script
luminous and pure
stars
stars casting their cool, pale, glinting light
resort to language that leaves space to silence
to the unspoken
silence is the foundation of the word
it's liberating
the inward draweth the outward by grace
and both shall be oned in bliss
without end
it requires fanatical determination now to become a Crone
the dead don't stay where they are buried
on all sides the enemies of the old order spring up, as if by magic
anarchists, vagabonds, witches, Gorgons
we are a harvest of survivors
if we're a good pack, and we work together,
we have a chance
let them see how an insurgency adapts
we can impose beauty on our future
baila, baila, baila sin miedo
ama sin miedo
estamos aquí
synchronise with the dust
run> coda
For days I have been feeling the platinum coolness of the wedding ring around my ring finger. A ring lost decades ago. Never married but I bore a child. That child had two children. I buried their placentas — silver vermilion heart, silver cerulean lung — next to the purple velvet swaddle of their great-grandmother’s ashes. A shallow grave in the clay of the garden that my son and I had played in. Four generations of DNA and memories in that soil. Mob lines of red backs, blue tongue elder, Shadow Tree. Arriving on the Orient Line’s SS Oronsay as bottom-berth settler-migrants to Australia, my tiny family rooted itself in land that became home. Beneficiaries of the British Empire’s pinked-mapped colonial project.
The lie of terra nullius.
By what authority do you occupy our land? asks Dr Irene Watson.
This is no rhetorical question.
Demonisation of people associated with Blak Sovereignty.
Coloniality across the planet, festering.
‘Blak and Arab writers in conversation’ came together at Rivers of Reason on 2 March 2026, as part of Constellations. A compelling Indigenous-led, community-based non-festival of writing propelled by an act of political interference in the 2026 Adelaide Festival Writers’ Week. Shared anger, grief, tenderness, joy ran through the day.
Palestinian poet Najwan Darwish reads three poems dedicated to Iranian poets. The coordinated bombing of Iran by the US and Israel started on 28 February 2026. An illegal act of war that the US renames a special military operation, following Putin’s description of his invasion of Ukraine in 2022 as spetsialnaya voyennaya operatsiya.
Darwish reads in Arabic — Arabic by itself is a miracle, he later declares. Adelaide poet Mike Ladd reads the English translation.
Iran, Iran
I have something to say.
Words that echo those spoken by Sojourner Truth in 1851, who started life enslaved. Spent her life campaigning for liberty and equality.
May I say a few words?
I want to say a few words about this matter.
I hear no one speaking about technology, platforms, AI, digital commons or copyright. Instead we have coloniality, racialised violence, practical solidarity, memory, story keepers, ethics, trust, relationship. Daniel Nour quotes an ancient Alexandrian writer — the story leads you beyond the facts to the meaning. Micaela Sahhar describes weaving gifts of stories into the fabric of your own stories. Poets, writers, campaigners, casting spells of language to reveal that which Power works to bury.
So much is denied when truth hangs dismal in the air, says Ali Cobby Eckermann in ‘Story Tree’ (co-written with Joy Harjo). Later, in an eloquent public conversation about grandmothers, stolen babies, and experiences of home with Dr Randa Abdel-Fatta, the poet describes the Australian story as the story that sits over and shrouds our sacred country.
Residing in a country that was stolen in broad daylight, residents moving between Dantesque circles of Hell in which no one is out of danger, for Najwan Darwish poetry is a spiritual attempt. His contribution to activism, to the cause, focuses on the craft of writing. Poems sometimes emerge fully formed from stories that others share — like the elderly Palestinian in the Shatila Refugee Camp in Southern Beirut longing for their family, to which he only adds the closing line:
An old woman in Shatila.
----
References*
* Lines from the following inspirations have been gleaned, hexecuted and woven throughout this piece using rules-based methods.
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, San Diego / New York / London, 1973 (1951).
Hannah Arendt, What Remains: The Collected Poems of Hannah Arendt, edited and translated by Samantha Rose Hill, Liveright, 2025.
Jesse Armstrong, Mountainhead, HBO Films / Hot Seat Productions / Project Zeus, United States, 2025.
Bad Bunny, Bad Bunny Super Bowl LX Halftime Show 2026, performance video, Super Bowl LX Halftime Show, NFL / Apple Music / YouTube, United States, 8 February 2026, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6FuWd4wNd8 (accessed: 11 April 2026).
Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower, Headline Publishing Group, London, 2019 (1993).
Elaine Castillo, How to Read Now, Atlantic Books, London, 2022.
Man-jan Cheng, LAO-TZU: “My Words Are Very Easy to Understand.” Lectures on the Tao Teh Ching, translated by Tam C. Gibbs, North Atlantic Books, California, 1981.
Najwan Darwish, No One Will Know You Tomorrow: Selected Poems, 2014–2024, translated from Arabic by Kareem James Abu-Zeid, Yale University Press (The Margellos World Republic of Letters), New Haven and London, 2024.
Vince Gilligan (creator), Pluribus, television series, Apple TV+, 2025.
Tony Gilroy (creator), Andor, television series, Lucasfilm, Disney+, United States, 2022.
Carlo Ginzburg, Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches’ Sabbath, translated by Raymond Rosenthal, Penguin Books, London, 1992.
Lorraine Hansberry, To Be Young, Gifted and Black, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1969.
Natalie Haynes, Stone Blind: Medusa’s Story, Pan Macmillan UK, 2022.
Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, ed. Grace Warrack, Methuen & Company, London, 1901 (1373), https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/52958/pg52958.txt (accessed 11 April 2026).
Louis Komjathy, ‘Sun Buer: Early Quanzhen Matriarch and the Beginnings of Female Alchemy,’ Nan Nü, 16.2, Brill, Leiden, 2014, pp. 171–238, https://louiskomjathy.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/SunBuer_Komjathy.pdf f (accessed 11 April 2026).
Ursula K. Le Guin, The Space Crone, eds. So Mayer and Sarah Shin, Silver Press, 2023 (1976).
Lorelle Meets The Obsolete, Corporal, Fuzz Club Records, https://fuzzclub.com/products/lorelle-meets-the-obsolete-corporal.
Helen Macfarlane and David Black, Red Chartist: Helen Macfarlane 1818–60 The Complete Annotated Writings and her Translation of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto, Red Antigone, London, 2024.
China Miéville, A Spectre, Haunting: On the Communist Manifesto, Head of Zeus, London, 2022.
Gordon Pang, Dao De Jing: Unfiltered Thoughts in Motion, Self-published, 2024.
Isabelle Robinet, The World Upside Down: Essays on Taoist Internal Alchemy, translated from French by Fabrizio Pregadio, Golden Elixir Press, Mountain View, CA, 2011.
Sojourner Truth, 'On Woman’s Rights' (transcribed by Marius Robinson), speech delivered at the Women’s Rights Convention, Akron, Ohio, May 29 1851, published in Anti-Slavery Bugle, Salem, Ohio, United States, June 21 1851, available at https://www.thesojournertruthproject.com/compare-the-speeches/ (accessed 11 April 2026).
Jwing-Ming Yang, The Dao De Jing: A Qigong Interpretation, YMAA Publication Center, Boston, 2018.
----