Joelistics is a rapper, writer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer. He founded alt rap group TZU in 2004 with whom he released four albums. He then went on to release two solo albums with Sydney label Elefant Traks. Joelistics has produced music for a number of local and international artists (most recently Mojo Juju’s Leave it all behind) and is the co-creator and performer of the critically acclaimed theatre show In between two.
All of the lights
All of the lights
All of the lines
All of the liars
All of the shadows
All of the shapes
All of the sirens
All of the minutes
All of the merits
All your admirers
Let me take you on a tour of a house made of mirrors
You are not at all who you thought you were
You used to write love letters now you print brochures
If old you had of knew me
Old me would not have liked you
What a limp handshake you have
I used to share my tunnel with a spider
Another photo opportunity with a fake backdrop
See them cuddle up to the camera like that lens is god
This is my Cis gendered big send off under golden showers
Sometimes I just say stuff
Then shoot up the place with an information sawn off
Get me to the part where there’s no more secrets
Get me to the part where it becomes fine art
I am pre-internet innocent
And when the light shines, just so
I am reminded of the nature of loss
More zeight than gheist
And there’s no fast forward
and I don’t know much but I do know this
I’ma hold on to you in the storm
I’ma hold on to you in the storm
Magpies
I dreamt I was a thousand feet tall and I could see all the way to Sydney
And I could smell the desperation and the fear and the excitement
And I was drunker than I’d ever been and had an endless supply of ciggies and I could flick
away the satellites and blow kisses at the clouds.
I could step on all the pretty girls and squish them in the pavement and all the boys who
laughed at me were chicken bones, pissy pants and orange peel.
My teachers were cicada shells.
The weatherboards were paper weights
And the hills hoists were tiny needles I could prick in to my hands
I trampled on your doll house you know and I flattened all the school rooms
There were no creases in my stockings and no scars along my knees
I dreamt we were abandoned and left the world alone
And you and I ran hand in hand and danced to disco on the road.
I dreamt that I could skip to heaven and I dreamt about your mouth
The black soot in your iris and your pleated leather pants
I was bloated by the panic and groaning in my underwear
You shake me when you look at me and I tremble at my ugliness
Your eyes are like the beach and I’m sunburnt brown and drowning
And there’s sand inside my cossie and I came here for a look
The kaleidoscopic channel flip of thoroughbreds and rejected ones
And the caterwauling compressed regret that underwhelms my days
Charming spit and tickle mama don’t you hear you me crying
I was dreaming of a better me, I was dreaming of a better me
I dreamt I saw myself reflected in a mirror in my old bedroom and I resequenced my self-
loathing and walked back the way I came
I made a plastic bed of empty crisps packets and faded good weekends and I dreamt I slept
and never woke up again
They say magpies are the smartest birds and sing the sweetest song but those fuckers still
swoop down and try and pluck your eye balls out.