all material © Randall Stephens
13.7 billion Years ago an infinitely dense singularity existing without time or space exploded for unknown reasons, creating the universe. Then for a while not much happened. In 1980 “The Empire Strikes Back” came out, and Randall $tephens was born.
He’s a poet. His many and varied pursuits include writing poetry, performing spoken word poetry, writing spoken word and occasionally typing it too. Described as ‘the Michael Caine of spoken word’ His delivery style puts emphasis on having emphasis, and combines a strong stage presence with clear, direct and personal writing.
After travelling around performing poetry in New York, London and India, he returned home to Melbourne, Australia. Randall is currently living in Denial, while visiting other emotional states in Australia. After coercing friends into helping him produce a spoken word album Product, he’s spent most of 2010 touring throughout the country with the CD, alongside collaborator and good friend Steve Smart.
Between trips he haunts Melbourne’s own poetry scene, also volunteering as a sound technician for Roarhouse (a community group for marginalized and disadvantaged artists) and sound editing poetry podcasts for Wordplay.org
He frequently collaborates with other poets and musicians, adapting many of his poems into duets, and recently devoted a two-set feature, Under the Covers, to performing covers of poems, songs and speeches that have been influential in his work.
To find out even more about Randall $tephens, or make large non-tax deductible donations to him:
http://www.randallstephens.blogspot.com/
Or via email: brainthatweighsatun@gmail.com
or the blog: Tales Told By An Idiot
( http://www.randallstephens.blogspot.com )
TWO SHELLS –final redux 2010
I'm glad that you're glad that I'm here.
it was one of those
odd
one in one thousand
-odds
sort of things.
We were just eggs
once
amongst thousands
of the hopeful hopeless
living lives unfertilised
waiting exposed on shore
coasting lines
fighting random chance
the fickleness of beach sands
as a cradle
and the lap
of every wave
that did not want us.
We have these shells
and we've held
our moisture within ourselves
kept wet this way
scales on our skin
while following faint footprints
slowly leading us away
to where land becomes liquid
from the shore
now finding the tide to take us out
into oceans to explore.
Now we can
learn to ocean-swim
I can
teach you my smile
you can
show me how to dive
we can
make bubbles underwater.
We’ll float on our backs
cast shadows below
only needing to look up
to avoid
the occasional speedboat
buoy
or other human garbage.
Watch me attack the waves
with my flippered limbs
splashing around like an idiot
you can show me ways
to breathe
out here
just beyond shallow.
I will
fish for your compliments
watch schools of tiny creatures
almost invisible
go scatter around our legs.
We will
lose
the smudged shore line
forget
where I left my things
get
salty all over
tread
the clear water
prune
this pale skin find
where our fins
won't scrape the bottom
come
right out of our shells, and
wait
long enough for it to get cold.
Then
we’ll swim back
for the sore now we know
for sure
the depths out there
down below.
We know it deep
that there’s life out there
it's liquid
and fragile
and colourful and poisonous
fast and deadly
and it was ours
for those short hours
before our darwinian amphibian swim
had to come back in.
Because
we know deeper down
when back on dry ground
we’ll need then
these hard shells,
once again.