Empiricals

this is a poem about feelings
here’s some money
to collaborate with invaders
how do you feel?
if this poem is white supremacy
there’s a euro boot on your neck
how do you feel?
if this poem is a dominant force
do you resist?
do you understand your oppressor
forgive them and heal them
be nice to the boot
as it crushes you to death
if this poem is oppression
if this poem is about land theft
whatever you do, don’t judge whitey
that won’t feed them
this is a poem about irony
it’s not about me
it’s never fair
divide and rule
they take your share
can’t you see
it’s not about you
they’re never kind
they have your absence in mind
this is a poem about hegemony
this is a poem about genocide
when there’s none alive to object
nowhere left to hide

October 16, 2023

Gaza Guernica

Those who remain silent and pretend to be neutral about deliberate psychopathic criminality, which Israel has conducted against the people of Palestine since 1948 in order to steal their land become complicit with genocide.

As Desmond Tutu said:
“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”

Raz Segal, an Israeli expert in modern genocide:

‘I think that, indeed, what we’re seeing now in Gaza is a case of genocide. We have to understand that the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide from 1948 requires that we see special intent for genocide to happen. And to quote the convention, intent to destroy a group is defined as racial, ethnic, religious or national as such that is collectively, not just individuals. And this intent, as we just heard, is on full display by Israeli politicians and army officers since 7th of October. We heard Israel’s president. It’s well-known what the Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on 9th of October declaring a complete siege on Gaza, cutting off water, food, fuel, stating that “We’re fighting human animals,” and we will react “accordingly.” He also said that “We will eliminate everything.” We know that Israeli army spokesperson Daniel Hagari, for example, acknowledged wanton destruction and said explicitly, “The emphasis on damage and not on accuracy.” So we’re seeing the special intent on full display. And really, I have to say, if this is not special intent to commit genocide, I really don’t know what is.’

The parallels with British colonial genocide of Aboriginal people in Australia are striking.

‘The analysis of the frontier genocides waged against the Aboriginal Tasmanians, the Yuki of California, and the Herero of Namibia reveals a surprisingly congruent pattern despite the fact that the cases took place on different continents, under different regimes, and in different periods. The pattern divides into three phases. Colonists initiate the first by invasion. Economic and political
frictions then develop between the two groups as they struggle for limited resources and political power. Unable to compete with the invaders’ technology, arms, and wealth, the indigenous people find their economy fundamentally threatened and basic political rights denied under the settler regime. Aboriginal people begin the second phase by attacking settlers and their property in an attempt to regain access to economic resources, reclaim lost land, protect political rights, or exact revenge. Settlers and their government then retaliate, but cannot quickly defeat the indigenous peoples’ guerilla insurgency. Out of frustration and expediency, the invaders choose a “final solution” to the military conflict.

During and after the genocidal military campaign, the settlers’ government initiates the final phase by incarcerating Aboriginal people in camps that bear comparison with the Soviet gulag. In these reservations, settler governments continue genocidal policy though a varying combination of malnutrition, insufficient protection from the elements, inadequate medical care, overwork, unsanitary conditions, and violence.’

Referendum Day

Scrub Turkey
I go to vote on stolen land
while across the world
another criminal mob of European settlers
slaughter mercilessly again
though she’s married to another man
stolen because the Beast says they can
the myth of empty land common to thieves
convenient nullification of the locals
for demonisation and extermination
if they didn’t have Western agriculture
how could they deserve their native home
I sing Treaty Yeah and Kev Carmody
Midnight Oil and Paul Kelly
I sing of never ceded sovereignty
as on a British constitution
there’s no end to the colony
a no means yes and yes means no
rubber stamps for white supremacy
while Albo cheerleads Israel’s bone harvest
holding his sickening white pride high
caring only for colonizers’ tears
yet the chant of Jimmy Blacksmith
rings in my ears
this sordid settler colonialism
when never again meant never again
yet again there’s genocide
usual suspects backpatting cheerfully
the latest vicious lawnmower regime.

Jinjirrie, October 14, 2023.

ChatGPT Pretends To Be Me

Rooxette and Roofus

BACK TO AI SCHOOL

On the wall of a mate I’ll call Carl G
We played with our thoughts intelligently,
He asked our new toy to write poetry
In the style of what it believed was me.

It gibbered and gabbled not plagiarized
The atrocious crap was no sight for sore eyes,
Since stolen creation was way too hard
We sent it off to learn from the Bard.

Then if upstart AIs dodge royalties
for their purloined global repositories
May I sue to liberate my verse
And require them generously to reimburse?

Jinjirrie, February 2023

Down With Blackhawks

All was well till the blowhard arrives,
with his wind of white supremacy
sneering across the verandah,
he sucks on his beer, lights another tailory
and applauds Albo buying yank Black Hawks.

Is Albo’s tongue further up the US crack
than Johnny da Rat, the Grabbit
and Scummo combined, way past his tonsils, I query
and await his explosion of outrage.
He worships at the altar of the AUKUSPORKUS Quad
and I am the blaspheming heretic.
I’ll make another cuppa lovely tea
and hope he leaves soon with extreme prejudice.

Jinjirrie, January 2023

Global Warming Survival 2023

Swimming through torturous February air
we curse the BOM’s fake promises.
Before the net we’d watch for ants
who infallibly appear before rain –
do they sense pressure, heat or humidity
or all three at once to stimulate
their ordered hunt for supplies
to keep them fed during coming deluge?
Yet no dark chain of command cheers us.
Even a brief breeze would be welcome –
in the forest, Lewin’s honeyeaters argue,
cantankerous and driven like us
by unbearable, flesh-tearing itchiness
to plunge through the dam’s oily surface
to relish our secret white clay-lined
lemon myrtle, eucalyptus and ti-tree spa.

Jinjirrie, February 2023

Termite Night 2023

sudden sickly smell of doom
uncertainty of transience
evil has an odor
toward the light
they fly briefly
then wingless crawl
inexorably burrowing
into life to winnow out
the richness within
collapsing prey
in search of a queen
so the forest grows
as the house decays

Jinjirrie, January 2023

Valentine’s Day 2023

He’s left me a soppy love note on the keyboard
and i wake in time to throw him chocs for later
we promise more kisses and cuppas
when he’s back from work in the stifling heat
because we’re still slaving away
together and apart while the planet cooks
the cat on the bookcase watches me accusingly
i turn on the fan to disperse the humidity
remember times long ago when we could be cool
on a hot day without carbon-debted guilt?
outside the roo family under the verandah shade
seem to ask for permission to shelter in advance
from the big storms to come that knock us offline
then we’ll celebrate our private forest valentine.

Jinjirrie, February 2023

George the goanna

International Women’s Day 2022

Kangaroo Mother and Children
No to reflexive acceptance
of unacceptable patriarchal narratives
No to worship of colonial baubles
to pad hollow best lives
No to climate change
unless toward cooling
and they don’t have a plan
for our children’s children
all they give a f*ck about is bucks
over our f*cked dead bodies
and concocting plausible deniability
to shield them from deserved fates
their worst lives are realised only in ours
No to lies, to conjobs, to war except class war,
to whiteness, to empire, to the man on the screen
who sells it to us against our own interests –
does he think they’ll save their mouthpiece
after he’s served their purposes?
filling a hole with fluff satisfies hollowness
with the illusion of fullness
all those best lives are empty
tributes to emptiness
No to life without truth and the planet’s healing.

Jinjirrie, March 2022

Fly My Pretties

Witch cat

Samhain 2021

Hear me friends, heed the call,
around the bonfire gather all,
to cauterise its endless bingeing
patriarchy needs a singeing,
Our broomsticks now wait in the wings
for sophisticated modern things,
3d drones printed in the thousands
to swarm the warming world unmanned,
We’ll guide them swift above the land
and torch oppressors where they stand,
locate them by their hi viz vests,
divest them of their treasure chests,
seize power from wealthy old white men,
incinerate the deadly capitalist system,
With eye of newt and skin of toad
remove the crushing brutal load,
cast a pure contemporary spell,
send the colonisers straight to hell,
as they consigned our beloved sisters,
corrupted flesh will melt and blister,
On Judgement day their bones won’t rise
while we’ll embrace the end of lies,
Off, you ghoulies, to the kitchen,
we’ve better things to do – more witchin’,
We’ll heal the forests, mend the breach,
before the tipping point is reached,
Now fly my pretties, straight to prey
so our planet lives for another day.

Jinjirrie
October 2021

Related Links

Caliban and the Witch (Silvia Federici)