My love for the land means little

When

Concrete and bitumen burn my feet

My presence does nought for my tribal name

I’m living and drinking the devils brew

On a Whiteman’s street

I cannot hunt in car parks or reserves

The bush tucker has gone

I cannot show stealth or throw spears

I am lost forever ‘

As

A Fringe Dweller

Sad days
Nothing changes in the dust and heat
The winter cold
The dirty clothes on street side camps
Blackman at a loss
A coke bottle disguised as a thirst quencher
Laced
The staggering gives the game away
Why can he not find the gold that built this town?
And
Knocked his favour down

Fringe dweller no Christmas or New Year
That’s white fella stuff
So
Where do I go now
I still enjoy the filth and grog
The welfare
The challenge of a failed life
It’s a Merry Christmas for me
Under a tree somewhere
Ill drink til dawn
And well into tomorrow
Theres nothing else to do in my stupor
No white god can save me now
And
Could not save me then
But truthfully
I cannot save myself

What did you think we were capable of?
Against your guns
Against your madness
Your alcohol
Your desire to steal land
Unarmed blacks watching ships sail in
Back then
We just stared at the horizon watching
Our
Terror was free
It came from the survival gene
A raider was on our shores
Without permission
We should have killed you all
When we had the chance when we outnumbered
You white bastards
And still owned this land

We are older now
Wiser
We hurt privately much more
In ways inexplicable to white fellas
We were close as little kids to our tribal glue
We were learning of the land the gathering
Hunting
The dance the Corroboree
Not of religion
Not of white education
Or books
We read the seasons and the wind the fire and the rain
We wanted our brother and sisters
Our mothers and fathers our birth trees
Our hunting rights and our black land
Our brown footprints still own this land forever
But we were stolen
And
Scarred forever
We lost our mum and dad
Our brother and sister
Worst of all we lost our black soul
But
Never our fight

He told me about the war
Amongst themselves their own fellas
And the grog the jails the police
He did not want to talk about the women
Ne’er mention their fear
Ne’er mention the children
The despair
Told me how the relatives just fell down dead
With Whiteman’s bottle
Tucked wonderfully under their cheeky smiles
Eyes wide open as death hovered
In painful last hours
Oblivion was
Their best friend so often
All
Sad men black men
Dead Men

He Looked up and saw the white fella coming
He saw the loss to a black nation
Of
Their land
Their future
Their right
Flags alone are not contractual
He said
They waver in the wind
As does a claim without historic merit
Through a dodgy pen government owned and scribed
That calls only for the yield of natives
And
The day ends in sorrow for those white thieves
As blacks rule again
Their own land and birthplace
For now

He danced around the camp fire
Emu like kangaroo spectacular
With
Dingo cunning
Snake like through the waving eucalypt thread
Soft trails in the sand
Fire ash in a skyward spiral
Left leg thumping the warm sand
Right leg supporting historic events
Elder stories of the older world
For those with an aboriginal heart
In a white city he could not see
The gathering he could not hear the stories
Anymore
He saw the white man’s dance
And
Was broken
The break dancer revealed little
To this Blackman about his future

My task is to kiss the land
My love my soul
Roam and hunt with my band
Of blacks
Whilst forever
The kangaroo fears your white skin
But will stand in my shadow
With a crocodile
Behind any anthill

When the land swallows your white arse
You will call me as you have always done
The blacktracker

Heatwaves are bandwidths to my freedom
Out here
Where I talk to the spirits
Where I feel my aboriginality
Where I am the guardian of all
That is really Australian

A
White death knell
Our sacred interior
Our black space

No technology
No water
And
No Blackman skills
You will take your chance without me

My land tells me all I need to know
And has done for forty thousand years
So I ask
What have you brought to this land
That would make me change my mind
Or
My Aboriginal purpose

The dogs are barking
And
It’s what happens when you allow leash free areas

It’s just one too many mornings
Of black discontent

Ownership was always a white man’s dread
His own laws may very well be
His own demise

A tent embassy
A disaster
A black place in a white place
A white place in a black space
An embassy without face

A modern day disgrace