Terra nullius
Like hell
Years
Before Mr Cook
And
Some British flag
Did my people roam?
Or
My name is not Koiki
King of Murray (Mir)
A rock or
A pile of stones
On limits
Tested
Had legal reason
And proof
Of my peoples boundaries
An ownership
Way before time
And
In a white mans court
Therein lies a truth
Therein lies
A native title
Therein lies
Justice

This white man’s melting brow
Took its toll
Shimmers and visions of shapes
Danced their own tune
To nothing in particular
With other illusions and delusions
Except flies
Reality
To the fallen
The weak
The meek
Delusions of a glorious life out here
Gone wrong
And
The occasional history lesson
In ochre
And spat on rock
Of real outback colours
Life
In it’s truest form
So old
And
A million years in the making
Didn’t seem to bother my black friend
It only bothered me
I struggled to grasp the magnificence of the aborigine
And nothing out here would save my white arse
Without him

Is it a death song?
A Whiteman’s lament
For
A Blackman’s lament
Those dreams
Is it
Another
Black failure
Or
Do the cave walls tell all?
Of
Victory’s long gone
Or
A strange dream
Or
A Whiteman without a heart
Yet to come

The minute you heard the word
Aborigine
Your demeanour changed somewhat
You asked for a good man
I found you one
That was until you realised he was black
He can achieve I pleaded
As well as any man
And you tried to be so polite
As you rejected my plea
But I embarrassed you
When I took my friend away
Without explanation
Of your ignorance
And he thought no less of you
Because you are white

I’m lost in this place?
This concrete place
I am not without education
Or skills
Or intelligence
I am not without compassion
Or love
Fear and understanding
The desire to work
And the want to be liked by others
All I lack is white skin
And a fair chance

My black face is so well known
By my mob
I’m always in trouble
Most days
You know nothin’ to do
Its 45 degrees here
In the shade
Red sand and struggling trees
Always hot
And we have nothing to drink
Or eat
Most times
My eyes are swelling a bit
And I’m sad for my lil’ sister
She got raped yesterday
Or so she says
Yeah, so she says
The grog takes my Dad to Paradise
Often
He tells me he’s
Looking for Mum
I am so lucky
I have friends
And a Dad that cares
Who let me share?
Their petrol and glue

I woke today and nothing
Changed the fact I am Aboriginal
So I made a coffee
One that would last a while
A long black
And I went with measurable anticipation
To the employment section of my paper
A daily ritual it seems
A to Z
Accountant to Zookeeper
Nothing Aboriginal came up
Un-Surprisingly
After
All those pages
Black and white
Oh! the pun
I was looking for an interpreter’s job
You know
Where I talk to an Elder from a bush tribe
Who knows little of the English Language?
This old hunter gatherer
Who can gasp in all languages?
After I have explained
Your excuse for a nuclear waste site
A dump, dumped
On his land, in his peoples backyard
And I will continue to seek this role
Whilst you may consider that as an aboriginal
I should just keep dreaming

Seventeenth century
Black Australia
Imagine
Forty thousand years before
Island hoppers were White men
Seafarers in dugout canoes
New scenario
Why
Now
Cook is black
Banks is black
England is black
Europe is black
Americas are black
Skinned
Aborigines are white
And
Happy still
To be left alone
No understanding of colour
And no need to know the difference
Australis a new nation of blacks
From the Old World
The world is black
But whites run free outback
In this unforgiving place
White natives
With kangaroos
Emus
And strange things
From Gondwanaland
They must be rounded up
Chained
Shot
Starved
An evil
Blight on the new world
Driven out of traditional lands
A white minority
That would be un- Australian

And why if a Whiteman talks
Of a Blackman’s strife
Of support for his black brother
Does another Whiteman feel twisted
Why will he not see?
Colour is not a crime
And all people are surely the same
The crime is not being able to walk next to each other
And talk
At length
Black with white
White with black
But for Whiteman to disagree with Whiteman
About the right for another Whiteman
To write man
About blacks
And empathise
Is
Shame and misunderstanding

I find my smile radiates
Outback
It draws adventurous comment
A smile plus a smile is a bond
In my country
My outback
And laughter follows amid my kind
My black kind
A white woman looked at me
I smiled
I cried
She acknowledged not one single part of me
A smile wasted