1988


australia, oh australia
i have seen in your belly’s roar
that there’s nothing downwind
and the country’s offshore.
what have you done with your
mine-led recovery,
your destabilised dollar?
your people are grim
and your humour’s gone out the same door
others’ money’s come in.

where now are
the glad givers of the rape of our rivers,
those impertinent soldiers made absurd
by the black man’s dance
on his river’s curve?
and we,
we arrived on these shores
like shell-shocked pink angels
after a storm.

and deep down in sydney,
where the traffic’s roar
on a saturday night
is stilled by the heartbeat
of the city’s poor,
the bone moon shines,
shedding a light that is thin
through a sky that’s as large
as an idiot’s grin.

but i love the alleys and the highways,
the streets where it always rains;
the parkie-darkies round their campfires
in the dreaming of redfern;
the scud of clouds across the desert’s brutal sky,
the lap of words against
our gentle shores.

and there were wheat carriages,
their tarpaulined corners turned
through which a lad could slip
with his boy’s young loins.
and deep in the wheat a journey began
through this place that we call the common land.
from toorak through fitzroy;
from reform schools through jails;
from deserts to seas;
to cherbourg, redfern, toowong and sale,
this land has been trod
by a sod with a poem whose voice wants to speak
of the australia he’s known;
of this land of fences and diatribes,
where distances cannot be described by maps.
but that is the matter of this country
where we dwell,
a place where the stars are as close as a smile,
where the winds are not tempests
but a spell in the weather,
where no longer our dreams
are of penny ice-creams
but macdonalds that cost you a dollar.

and are we to be reduced to anecdote,
the time when, the time where
rather than now?
alone where we stand is a beggar’s land
where the blackfeller’s dreaming
could give us a hand.
for this is our black brudda’s country.
its bruises and wounds are now theirs
for we have made this land untenable
for even the poor on the stairs.

look around you bruddas
to leichhardt, poor buggers they were;
chewing green leather sample bags
and dying within sight
of a murri camp.

they say that blaxland, wentworth and lawson
were the first to traverse
that rugged blue mountain range.
but the koorie had used the hieroglyphs
of wallaby maps
and the echidna’s scratched calligraphy
to show the way;
long before the gubba’s foot had trod this scrub
the dreaming tracks were made.



fitzroy


come out of fitzroy
like a swimmer coming up for air.
the total degradation of a race
is never so obvious when you face
streets full of children sucking lollies
next to old men with no tomorrows
who rock on broken chairs
and stare at a bitumen sea
and bashed people sleaze along the loneliness,
noses bleeding.

we are in mourning, bra, says reg.
aboriginal week
for us is the not so gentle touch of the gubba.
at least we know the family.
my cousins i can trace as far as perth.
you don’t hurt me none bra
for the wind is different here in fitzroy.
it is our land won by fists and diatribe
where we can stalk the remnants of the sense of tribe,
where within ourselves we count.
this i.d. card we shrug.
we know who the fuck we are.

undeniable is our dream and we count for it
as much as weeds count and we are as indefatigable
and knowing that the buildings that surround us
are not of our making,
we sniff out what’s beneath the stuff:
salutations are warnings of places not to go,
spaces between the applause.
we have survived despite you. our turn will come.
it is not beyond us to dream
but my gall rises
like thin clouds across a thinner moon
as if you sit inside a chair and move it round the room.
we know the certainty of the streets much more than you
this place beneath your feet
is our dream, the place we used to meet;
much more than you we know the street.



if ever the point is made


if ever the point is made
that for the dreams to succeed
we can only bring time together.
there is no struggle without pain.
no pieces left to complain of in the streets
of fitzroy
where there is silence.
on this day of all days we are alone,
fractious, as bewildered as the wind.
sometimes the rain comes
washing our senses,
clearing the synapses,
readying us for the anger of the heart,
the rage of our sensibilities.
the children come through the sleek parks
from the butt end of nowhere
full of hugs and flowers.
yet fitzroy is empty,
everyone’s on the koorie march
except me and the parkie darkies,
drinking port on australia day.



nebuchadnezzar


i am nebuchadnezzar
my balls are caught tight with white wire.
i am caught in extremis,
falling,
paying the price for the poor,
my body pays with fire.
for i am nebuchadnezzar, the king of fitzroy.
the clouds scud
and the subtle landscape of trees emanate from me
for i’m the king of what’s loud.

i am nebuchadnezzar and i am the king of fitzroy,
my skin is black, my heart is strong,
you see my gardens there in gertrude st
beneath the high rise flats,
that’s my babylon,
the land that long i’ve fought for
on behalf of all my tribe
for this is my country and i am its king
whose balls are caught taut with white wire,
who sees blind on a starry night my gardens
whose peace is kept by police from the city of tyre
for i am nebuchadnezzar,
aflame i fall through fitzroy skies
(my diamond studded haven)
afire i fall into gertrude st
my fingernails become claws
and my hair to feathers forms.

for i am nebuchadnezzar
whose balls are still caught in the fire,
who goes to the brascoe for an eloquent piss
and find a hand, graffiti-ing the strange words,
‘meme, meme, tekel, uparshin’
almost an indecipherable scrawl
etched lightly on the dunny’s wall.

and on a saturday night in my kingdom of fitzroy,
wet with the dew of heaven,
i prowl with the lions through my parks,
grab lionel, he laughs,
he loves to congregate with lions –
such is lionel’s spell.

for i am nebuchadnezzar
doing my time in the cells,
seven years in exile smoking lebanese gold
in that putrifying hell.
i have moved among the beasts,
stalked with them behind the forest of the bars
and on the starlit nights
have dwelt on savage dreams
while listening to murmurs from my beloved babylon.

for i am nebuchadnezzar
my heart has been stalled
by the fury of the streets of fitzroy,
the police are out with their batons
and my brothers have been felled in the gutters,
their black skulls are bleeding
the same blood that’s on the lion’s claws.

but i am nebuchadnezzar,
bastardry and beauty surround me
though i am still the king.
i dream a fitzroy tree
whose roots are deep in gertrude st,
whose shadow gives shelter to the beasts of the field

and the fowls of heaven find home along with my kin
for its leaves are as broad as the sun
for i am nebuchadnezzar, still the king of fitzroy,

still afire and falling
still blind on a starry night,
still dreaming the gardens of my beloved babylon.

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