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States of Poetry

The things us Murri blackfellas have to go over in life's
Futures is hard.
Love's gone bad and less money and work.
This easy going one got the flour tea sugar our mothers and fathers worked for.
We were black men before the lot say, Ah ah, what's colour got to do with it?
Well the light comes from the dark.
May our babies never forget the black men who washed clea ...

Beyond a man's face stands a skilful
         Command of changes
Beyond a woman's face stands a weep
       Over the sweet peace beauty
Borrowed emerging naked rage
      Made these times emptiness
Being at the advancing haunts came
  The hunter's stamping leaps ...

They swing on real dreams of freedom.
Peace is like things of the past.
Justice is like ice on the lands never seen.
The dream he had was his own.
For he got pay for his speech.
People now can't dream in positive.
For money to dream became working to scream.
Years went by things same lay at the beds and rooms.
Pain anger injustices seem to be their lifelo ...

The need to recall the journey
Is her gift to her children?

They are the perfect journalists
To inscribe her tombstone

Outside my bedroom window
I see them walking the path to my door

Who understands the logic?
That they look so much like me

Meanwhile what a lousy deal
They will also in heart my life

This heat reminds me of a cert ...

She was pretty young Borobi being put in the tree by her human father for four hours.

As he walk back to the other Jarjum, they ask where Borobi was. He say, Oh she jump
into a tree wanting to eat leaves and looked like happy, so I let her be what she wanted
to be, a Borobi.

Many Bilin Bilin flirted around flying high and low seems like listen to old Kargaru sing

for Aunty Nancy Bamaga

rising sea
takes and
breaks into backyards
to trouble families

we cannot live
with the seas in our bellies
we cannot rest
with the sea at our legs

the tide
is coming
to stroke
our dead

we want to know
who unplugged
our island
of childhood

island
of love and tr ...

Can I say
white people really bore me sometimes
to be exact
I grow tired with what's unmentioned
idling in surf club bathrooms
nothing wrong with the chips
but they're talking about Tasmania
my thoughts haunted by islands
maybe I'm dying
I've too many chips
teeth like stones
take me to be flossed
and cleaned
I need new soles
...

No name or rank supplied

We’re looking down the barrel of
a.303 Lee Enfield,
standard issue through until

the early 1960s.
The others in the firing squad
have all been cropped away, it seems.

He is an officer, we think –
that small, smart cap betrays him.
His hair’s well-trimmed and business-like;

he seems somehow unduly clea ...

Suck until you burn the room
and the heat numbs
reduced to a sound
wet
like the come and go
of the ocean
water enters
my hand in your hair
my hand
if you leave me childless
this will be yours alone
these marks you make
openings, persuasions
of the woman I will become

Ellen van Neerven

It seems I'm always walking
into the scene of a crime
moustached copper
and fuck-off tape
don't look too closely
you won't be able to sleep
I'm new to this building
I live now by the river where
the ducks look like shoes
in the water
I go to the department store
we used to frequent
I look at grocery receipts
to see how I'm saving< ...