Hear me crying
My children are dying at your white hands
My black skin fades
Ever so slowly to white
Your
Money saves not one of us

Black lives thrown to the wolves of Canberra

Our children’s eyes still weep with puss
Our noses run
Our bodies are racked with pain
Our rights are gone
Our kids are in gaols
Our women are raped
Our children feel hopeless
Our teachers despair

For

We own no land in Toorak
Yet
Gondwana land was ours for a while
About 40,000 years

Everyone is crying here
Mothers are sobbing
Our men still drink to excess
Our children are still sniffing glues and petrol

Your schools offer little hope
For blacks

Christianity has not preserved our race

Can you not hear our cry?
Can you not hear a Blackman’s voice?

To save our children
And
Give Toorak back

Her man just belted her
Three kids crying
Her bloodied mouth splutter’s a message of love
And the kids settle for a while
After he goes

Two little girls and one little boy
Terrified
What is this aboriginal culture Mum?
They ask
With no knowledge of Dad’s wisdom

Drunken wisdom
A man unemployed
In a depressed state of mind
A man losing respect all around
White and Black

The government cheque is cashed now
He is loaded and loaded
Cash and grog the fortune and wisdom
And
Two little girls and one little boy
Terrified

And a wife waiting for another beating

She’s Aborigine

Some one made a decision long ago
Black or white

Make them black?
Make them white?

Blacks can live white
Whites can live black

Doubt it

No one is trying
No one is caring

If anything red with embarrassment fits well
For all

Which culture
Where do you go from here?

Where will you go?

Another two hundred years
Is not negotiable

You must embrace something
You must belong

Full blood you are not
Hunter gatherer you are not
Tribesman you are not

And
Is the blaming not enough now?
Cook and the Europeans are long gone

Has the modern white man not opened his heart?
Has the true Aborigine not opened his heart?

Will you not take the bitumen road to success?

Is two hundred years of living on the fringe?

Not pain enough?

I wish you well my friend
For I will be gone before you choose

It’s
My memory of a black station
A reserve
And
It won’t go away

The memory that is

It’s been years

And still

I
Recall the broken glass
The heat
The kids with one eye closed from puss
The snotty cheeks of a kid without even a handkerchief
The misery of youth
The teenage boredom

A burnt classroom

The mistrust of my white skin

Most of all I recall the skinny dogs

The shyness
The sadness
The trepidation
The fear

The disgrace

No education black or white
For my black brothers and sisters
Only an alcohol fuelled binge
Fully
Government funded

Black Skin
More obvious than other skins
It seems
Some one says “He’s Black” “She’s Black”
Yet white goes unnoticed

One hundred whites in a bar
Notice black

One hundred blacks in a bar
And white blends well

Nothing said

Pretty black girl
Pretty black boy
Whites love the fantasy

Or the racism

Pretty black man
And
White men are threatened

Pretty black girls
And
White man is an “ass”

As Usual

I sat by a big iron gate
Waiting
Waiting for my Mum to come back

And black kids like me beckoned
Are you coming in?

I laughed then asked if they knew where my Mum had gone
You are one of us they said
Stolen
Come on in

We are all waiting for our Mum’s to come back

I’m going now
I apologise for my sudden demise

Leave me a place to sit
Alone
And
Uninterrupted
Above sacred land

A black seat
Where no white man has been
An aboriginal view
Just to mend my broken heart
And
Contemplate my father’s losses

Whites Drink
Whites get drunk
Whites get drunk and violent
And
That’s why blacks drink

And
Probably get violent

Whites were the teachers

The devils in disguise
Back Then
And
Now

Are you looking at me?
Is
My black skin catching your eye
I am one in thirty people, passing
A stand out
But
I smile, you wink
Its nice that you acknowledged my smile
And not my difference