All page material © Geoff Lemon
Geoff Lemon is the new co-editor of Going Down Swinging, one of Australia’s longest-running lit magazines, and former poetry editor of harvest and Voiceworks.
Geoff founded Wordplay Collective and runs its online spoken word archive at wordplay.org.au. A six-time slam winner, he has performed at shows and festivals across Australia, been broadcast numerous times on national radio, and supported music acts like TZU, True Live, Paris Wells, and (at Word in Hand) The Church’s Steve Kilbey. On the page his poems and stories are widely published in the likes of Best Australian Stories, HEAT, Griffith Review, Blue Dog, and Island. His first book, Sunblind, was published in 2008. He keeps busy as a freelance journalist writing mainly on music (MTV, Citysearch), the arts (Beat), and sport (The Roar), as well as writing a regular literary blog for Radio National’s The Book Show. He posts new work, tasteless humour, and excoriating personal confessions at heathenscripture.com.
Here's a sample...
(The Commandments was first published in Cutwater. The link in the title below is to an audio version)
The Commandments
1. When writing commandments, do not feel compelled to use Biblical language. ‘Thou shalt’ has been very much overplayed as a phrase. Let it die with Charlton Heston.
2. Never fall in love with the promiscuous. When they leave you, they will take sleep with them.
3. Remove the thorns from your commandments. They should look safe and approachable. Try inscribing them on tablets. This can make them easier to swallow.
4. Never trust your friends. They will fuck you in the eye for a dollar or a wet spot. The closer the friend, the more likely that someday they’ll be there when you fall asleep.
5. Blame anything you can on nearby animals, plants, appliances. Always remember that the Nature of Monkey was irrepressible.
6. Always go down on women. Imagine you’re eating a mango – enjoy it. If you’re a gay man or a straight woman, do it anyway. It’s hardly going to make the world a worse place.
7. When eating a real mango, start from the stone and work outwards. As you split its skin and emerge, you will have the element of surprise, and the blankness of the newly baptised.
8. When walking, try to use left and right feet in equal measure. Horizons can be relied upon to be ahead of you. If you can’t see one, remember that your feet are drumbeats and the earth is a skin. Play one into existence.
9. Mock anybody who is different to you. Do this quickly, before they realise that you are different to them, and mock you for it.
14. Do not feel compelled to use sequential numbers, or multiples of ten. Some of the best numbers are palindromic. Others spell humorous words when turned upside down. Some have no distinguishing features at all. All of these are available to you. Which leads us to commandment
12. Explore the possibilities, in any arena. Remember that you are a hound, hunting infinite rabbits. Don’t forget to stop and sniff the air for signs.