Within Reach

 In Poetry
Artwork Theme:
Identity

Medium / Discipline:
Poetry

Artwork Tags:
Artwork Description:
Within Reach is a suite of seven poems which looks at the self, gender, human rights, hope, love, living without shame and acceptance. The fifth and 6th movements of the work is specifically looks at our human rights and the core of our natural being. The complete set of work was performed alongside sound artist and flautist Alice Bennett at Melbourne Fringe 2017.
Artwork Text:
V
No entitlements
No rights
Teetering on the outer fringes of life,
Who would want to lean their bodies into someone so undefinable, so open, so vulnerable?
Who would want to know a man or woman trapped in unknown physical spaces of the universe?
****
Our voices drowned out by those who know better,
By those who claim to know the answers to sexuality and gender
Politicians and conservatives with their narrow-minded views on who we are,
Truly try to rule over us with an iron fist but we will always fight back,
We will persevere and continue to strive for the lives we desire and deserve,
We will fight for our rights as part of the human race,
Those in power preach equality but act in accordance to their own fears and have tried to bend us to their will and leave us to be broken by the strongest of men
The strongest of women
Or the strongest of universal forces
No space to breathe,
No space to feel
The only place in sight is
Falling into an abyss of nothing,
Scraping the surface of our skin and making ourselves bleed,
A flame diminished before it could lap up the oxygen it needs
A beating heart told not to believe itself
A tired mind told that life is for a conservative world where narrow walls cave in on the brave,
Where carbon dioxide steels the sanity from your mind
Fight back, always fight back
Fight for what you believe in,
for your right to hear your own heartbeat
Your right to love,
Your right to live,
Your right to a bright a future and
Our human rights

VI
I look back on my past and understand that everyone knows,
The silence of the night know,
The surrounding sounds of the day know,
The high winds beckon me and know,
The mountainside invite me to its heart and knows,
The moon smiles upon my soul and knows,
The sun brings me new days, new time, new paths to travel and knows,
They sense every gesture my body makes, and
Send the rain to relieve the burning of my outer shell, to wash away my old self
The road ahead becomes clear and I know I can just be.
Artist Name / Alias:
H.S. Botha
Artist Age:
35-44yo
Gender:
FtM
City:
Penrith
State:
NSW
Country:
Australia
Artist Bio:

Hanli Sean Botha is a composer, sound artist, performer, poet, researcher and writer. He is currently a PhD candidate at Western Sydney University - School of Humanities and Communication Arts. He completed his Bachelor of Music in Performance - Classical Guitar, in 2014 and obtained her B.Mus. - Honours in 2015. Sean composes electronic works, by means of improvisation which include voice, noise and sound recordings, and experimental pieces for classical guitar. Sean's compositional focus is on natural sound, silence and quiet spaces, in order to create textural pieces filled with expectation, uncertainty and to explore unknown spheres of the human condition.
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