Australia’s arrogance

Lets look back
Back to when Nature she
Set out her palette
And reality was born
In those moments
The enduring core
Solid and tangible
Within the law

We came into being
The aboriginie
Wild and conversant
With life, we were free
Out there in the forests
Were animals too
Wild souls to run with
Inherent and true

Each to their own
As Softly we trod
We learned to respect
Nature our god
All were connected
All mattered so
Frontiers of enchantment
Where ere we did go

Enormous areas
Great cliffs so high
Forests of trees
Under a blue sky
Boundless the quality
And intensity
Of grandness and grandeur
As far as we could see

Great animals thundered
Over the plains
Blood curdling cries
That shattered our veins
We lived in the caves
With the shadows and we
Escaped from the heat
Feeling that we were free

Walking upright which gave us
A superior stance
We had thoughts we commanded
Respect at a glance
Wildness was everywhere
And simplicity
The air felt clean
And unblemished were we

In the terror we felt
When the darkness would fall
Our palette the rock face
Loved by us all
Pigments we scooped
From the earth at our feet
And painted the joys
That we saw as complete
B
Dream time was our time
Our thoughts where we
Saw imagination
Behind every tree
The kangaroo’s
Those fearful who came
Who leapt and who swept
With their purpose to claim

We learned by observing
Their unnerving plea
How they loved their children
And their family
Equipped with such talent
And able to be
Distant yet close
To what was history

Their locomotion
As part of the whole
They possessed such integrity
They knew their role
The call of the wild
Undiminished infact
And inseparable bond
In which to react

They were feral a strength
Astonishing souls
They languished together
With recognised roles
For millenia we flourished
Duty bound we
To the earth snd the sky
And the rivers that be

The riddle of all riddles
The Kangaroo
Whose speed and agility
Came into view
Vividly suited
To our vast terrain
To withstand the great heat
And enchantingly gain

Much from the pedigree
They the wild child
Born for the outback
Indeed they were wild
They came into the caves
Self sufficient were they
Inventive and brimming
With joy and with play

Many centuries passed
And a realisation
The wild souls around us
In a way our salvation
Totems their being
Was freeing and we
Learned so much from them
And just loved to see

They have a fine tuning
Soft padded soles
They leap and they sleep
They attain many goals
They are the true natives
The bush angels who
Looked after this land
That we share yes they do

Over millions of years
Mobs developed to be
Centred and focused
The hostility
Of the heat and the lack of water
Around
They adapted they had to
For out on the ground

It was almost unbearable
We all need shade
That blanket of coolness
That sometimes is laid
Over the earth an expression of care
Loved and regarded by all
Of us there

Then the white man arrived
With his arrogance who
Demanded attention
And started to screw
The life out of everyone
Clearing the trees
Raising their cattle and sheep
If you please

Totally ignorant
Selfish as hell
How they resented us
We had that smell
Of wildness about us
The bush was our home
Nomads perhaps
But yes we could roam

Anywhere really
For we understood
The great ways of Nature
And all that was good
We lived for each other
Our great mother too
Our ancestors mattered
In what we all do

They came with their guns
They seemed callow and green
Unfledged and ready
To conquer and wean
We were the primitives
Dust on our brows
Feudal and difficult
Nothing was ours

They were the freshness
The battle of youth
We were looked upon
As mostly uncouth
Lost in a timeliness
Inopportune
We the indigenous
Somehow immune

To their ways of thinking
To predestined thought
They saw the Kangaroo
As giving sport
To their hunting traditions
And thus instantly
Did murder the roo’s
With primordial glee

There’s a power and and
A mightiness
Living in the wild
A learning a burning
A spirit each child
Is taught how to live
In the out back and be
Self sufficient and able
Native will constantly

Instinctive knowledge
The wild folk possess
Placed by the almighty
Our mother no less
We learn from observing
And ancestral sight
That is our strength
And that is our right

The weakness where arrogance
Has taken hold
Who fails to hold reverence
And who is cold
To the workings of wisdom
To the great natural world
To its laws and its spirit
In which all are hurled

Destruction of habitats
Ensued and we
Soon suffocated
The air constantly
Failing as methane
Rocked into the sky
From the great herds of cattle
Whose numbers were high

The hard hooves soon damaged
Their grazing did too
The outback the wilderness
Suffered a view
The wild souls not able
To quite understand
Why the white man was
Ignorant of the red land

Still to this day
The newcomers feel
They dwell in the cities
In Their great towers of steel
Their feet seldom touch the ground
All wearing shoes
They just cannot feel the outpouring
They lose

Track of emotions
stemming from the earth
And the wild folk who know
just how much worth
The ways of the wind
and the souls snd the sky
And the ancestral knowledge
That came from on high

The Kangaroo tribes
The reds and the greys
Who run with the wind
In the heat in the haze
Our iconic relative born just to be
Part of the red lands for an eternity
Already we are seeing them shot
Everynight
Mothers with joeys
Bound in their flight
Suffering so being lost to this earth
And replaced by the cattle
Whose immodest worth

Is to ruin the soil and also the air
Is to die in the slaughterhouse
So unaware
Having seen off the wild souls
Who got in the way
Of the ranchers the farmers
Who then made us pay

The call of the wild
That we represent
Given short shrift
As if we wern’t meant
To be on this earth
And so they destroy
Creatures placed here
Who give so much joy

Millions a year
Were shot down at night
Their joeys Are stomped on
As if its their right
To murder and maim
The indigenous who
Were guarding this land
Along time before you

They give this land vigour
With such energy
Such zest and such relish
They need to stay free
They are the stimulus
Trenchant and right
Who shouldnt be sought out
And shot dead at night

Their flesh fed to pet dogs and cats
What a waste
Their skin becomes shoes
And belts and a taste
For their flesh their bush meat
Butchered out in the rough
Laden with bugs
Enough is enough

Survey teams flying
And their estimation
Worked into killing sprees
Across the nation
Tagging the males
But killing them all
The mothers
And others
It so does appal

The shooters are true brutes
With no empathy
Its all about money
They think they can see
But their eyes are on dollar bills
Thats their intent
Murdering kangaroos
All heaven sent

Hot blooded bad ass
Rampant and wrong
Unruly slickers
Who do not belong
Eruptive tempers
Explosively
Angry inside
And failing to be

Humane and observant
To bush angel ways
They paid assassins
Whose thuggery pays
Bloodshed and butchery
Out on the truck
An annhilation
Then passing the buck

A purpose made abattoir
A knackers place
Out in the bush
With the moon in your face
The urban guerillas
Deprivers of life
Murdering joeys
With their boot or a knife

Its throwback patriarchy
Females shot they
Are not getting head shots
They dont pass away
Seeing their joeys
Lost to the world
Ripped out of their pouch
And possibly hurled

Into the darkness
Some sexusl thrill
Auto erotic from the blood they spill
Who can be comfortable with all this pain
As the meat trade then rises
For monetary gain

Flogging the torture
Flogging the need
For joeys and pinkies
For them to just bleed
For their loving mothers
To be butchered and skinned
And for heads and the offal
Bloody well binned

What we do to those guardians
The first people who
Ran with the wild
Who learned what to do
Over the millenia
They studied well
Creating a heaven
Out of the hell

And now their reward
Is a rotten display
Of destroying their land
And making them pay
Of killing the wild folk
Who equally must
Be given their freedom
Not our disgust.