BRENTON BROADSTOCK AM - COMPOSER
POETRY and ART WORK
by
Brenton Broadstock
These poems were written as inspiration and preludes to the eponymous compositions.
The art-works below were painted in two intensive bursts of creativity and all are based on my music. They use various types of paint on board approximately 1m X 1.2m.
Beast From Air (2002)
Beast From Air
Beast!
Mushroom of repugnant residue…
Nebulous…malicious…
Malevolently meandering…
Mindless mogul of decay…
Fatal…fearful phalanx…
Fingers gouging at our existence.
Deformity – infertility – pollution – death,
Slow agonizing death,
The harvest…
A millennium of harvests…
Beast from air!
©1985 Brenton Broadstock
Beast from Air
was published in the German magazine Frau und Hund (Zeitschrift für kursives Denken) No.10 2006/2007 pp1678
Frau und Hund ("Woman and Dog") features art, poetry and related subjects, including politics, published thrice yearly by painter Markuz Lüpertz and edited by writer G.H. Holländer. The subtitle Zeitschrift für kursives Denken (Journal of Diagonal Thinking) plays on the German term for italics ("kursiv") and the German equivalent of (dis)course, Kurs as opposed to Diskurs.
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Voices From The Fire ( 2002)
Voices From The Fire
Eternal clouds of man’s desire
Blackened heart
Bloodied hands
Voices from the fire.
©1992 Brenton Broadstock
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Toward The Shining Light (2001)
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I touched your glistening tears....
I stroked your hair
helpless,
watching as the life ebbed from your body.
Your eyes, like mirrors
lifeless,
reflecting only the life outside of you.
The sun shone through a nearby window
giving radiance to your face,
making the tears in your eyes glisten
I wiped away your tears.....
I can do no more.....
©1998 Brenton Broadstock
Born From Good Angel's Tears (2002)
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I Had a Dream
In memoriam Michael Easton
(yes, the title alludes to the speech of Martin Luther King)
I had a dream,
I had a life, I had a soul,
A life, a mind, a soul.
I had a dream
I had love, I tasted love.
Am I a dream?
A life?
I once had a name.
How do I know? Have I been good? Have I been right?
Am I a dream? Am I a life? Am I a soul?
Or am I nothing?
A dream?
I am a dream. I am a soul. I am a mind.
I am love.
I am in everything.
I am a life
And I am known.
I am remembered.
©2004 Brenton Broadstock
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Angels (2002)
Angels was featured on the cover of Contemporary Music Review Volume 26 Part 2, 2007
Contemporary Performance edited by Barrie Webb (click on link below)
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My Feet Want To Dance but My Eyes Want To Sleep
My feet want to dance,
My feet want to dance,
My feet want to dance,
I want to move,
To feel the music, the rhythm, the primal pounding course through my body.
My feet want to dance,
My feet want to dance,
My feet want to,
I go from venue to venue, into the night
I want to move.
My feet want to dance,
My feet want to,
My feet want,
But I am slowing up, I can’t keep up.
Am I unfit, too old, lacking in resilience?
My feet want to dance,
My feet,
My,
My,
I want to move,
I love to move,
To feel the primal pounding course through my body,
To be alive,
but....
My eyes want to sleep.
©2010 Brenton Broadstock
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Celebration
I celebrate life,
I celebrate love,
I celebrate death.
Such a strange word - celebrate.
Love dies,
Life dies,
All that is left to celebrate is death.
Such a strange word - celebration.
Death is the end, it is not the beginning of something else,
But it is, by far, the best to celebrate.
Such a strange word - celebrate.
Death reminds me,
Death encourages me,
Death challenges me,
Death demands that I love and live.
Without death to celebrate, love and life are meaningless.
I celebrate life,
I celebrate love,
I celebrate death.
I celebrate.
©2004 Brenton Broadstock
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And No Birds Sing
The title comes from a Keats’ poem ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ (1819)
However, it first came to my notice as two lines,
The sedge has withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.
quoted in Rachel Carson’s book ‘Silent Spring’, that I read as a student of politics at Monash University.
Oh what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.
Oh what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel's granary is full,
And the harvest's done.
I see a lily on thy brow,
With anguish moist and fever-dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.
I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful - a faery's child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.
I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She looked at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.
I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A faery's song.
She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna-dew,
And sure in language strange she said -
'I love thee true'.
She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she wept and sighed full sore,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.
And there she lulled me asleep
And there I dreamed - Ah! woe betide! -
The latest dream I ever dreamt
On the cold hill side.
I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried - 'La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!'
I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill's side.
And this is why I sojourn here
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.
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Exploding Flowers (2002) This painting is now owned by Berni and John Griffiths.
© 2021 Brenton Broadstock Contact Me