Luka Lesson is the current Australian Poetry Slam Champion and Co-director of The Centre for Poetics and Justice based in Melbourne.
Luka has been active in utilising hip-hop and poetry as a form of self-determination and raising awareness for marginalised young people through community development projects for many years.
He has also taught Indigenous Studies at Monash University for the past two years and holds a first class honours degree in the same field.
This fantastic film clip for his poem “Please Resist Me” was produced by Icon Kinesis in collaboration with the Centre for Poetics and Justice. You can buy his album of the same name at www.lesson.bandcamp.com
Please resist me
Colonise me, compromise me, conflict me
Please don’t risk me
If you see me at the airport
please come and frisk me
Please resist me
Colonise me, compromise me and conflict me
Please don’t risk me
Please call me stupid
Because your resistance brings our evolution
Please resist me
Call me a ‘wog’
It’s brought us so close together I could call me a squad
Please resist me
Lock me in solitary confinement
I’ll close my eyes and admire the quality of the silence
I’ll write rhymes in my mind honestly and define them
Solidly redefine and memorise them
Until like a diamond
when I come out
I’ll be better than when I arrived in
Please resist me
Keep me under the thumb
Keep me down trodden
Keep me under the gun
Keep me working harder under thunder and sun
Son, haven’t you heard? I’m becoming a gun
Please resist me
Because resistance brings evolution
and you’ve resisted me consistently I thank you for your contribution
I’m a happy man
Your stupidity has made me strong
I’ve developed wings, a thick skin and this here opposable thumb
It holds my pen which loads my explodable tongue
So without loading a gun I’m killing high quotas of unemotional…
punks
Sorry – you also taught me to speak French
I learnt it when you kept keeping me at arms-length
And then I learnt Italian just to expand my head
And Greek to learn from where my ancestors had fled
And then I learnt some Yanyuwa just to show the people of this land some respect
You see it’s been your example that has led me to leave you for dead
So don’t trust me
I’m risky
Insurmountable, unaccountable
I’m an undeniable, unreliable, maniacal liability
I fire soliloquies and my liturgies literally leave a literary litany
You see
When I was little
They told me I was illegitimate, illiterate and limited
Little did they know that in a minute I’d be killing it
I’m vivid like in cinemas so my synonym is vividness
I stick it like I’m cinnamon and kill it like a militant
I live it like a citizen – you live a life like imprisonment
Besides Indigenous
immigrant might be the most legitimate of citizens
So it’s better to live a life like us…
Isn’t it?