POETRY SERIES: Blackfella: 10 Poems from Down Under. Well, I'm not home in the US to celebrate Black History Month. But the diaspora is everywhere. And if you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with, as CSNandY sand back in the day. So here is the first of 10 poems about being down here observing as an outsider relations here between black and white, acknowledging that it's complicated (as dove whites say).

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Blackfella: 10 Poems from Down Under

by John Kendall Hawkins

This is a set of 10 poems reflecting on the Black experience in Australia, where I've been ensconced for nearly a quarter of a century, more on than off. In America, my native land, one who pays attention is constantly made aware of the legacy of slavery and the continuing barriers in the Black experience of democracy when it comes to their Constutionally-protected mandate of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Here in Australia, white quietly rules the roost, and Aborigines are largely faded in the background, only brought forward occasionally for paid gigs where elders literally consecrate the ground on which a convention of whites takes place. (Someone will whisper to them, on the way out, to be sure to report this income to Centrelink, as it may affect their Newstart payments.) It would be like Americans inviting indigenous tribes in for a demonstration of a rain dance, then telling them to ixnay out the back door afterward, where a courtesy Uber is waiting to take them back to the reservation. There is no legacy of slavery, per se, in Australia; no one had their ar*e dragged here against their will from Africa (although many a mighty whitey had his ar*e dragged here from England) to slave in the cottonfields to make Che t-shirts. It's mostly a case of dispossession and displacement and Jim Crow. Below is poem #1/

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Terror Nullius

It is the function and form of paper

that arrests us -- warrants, bonds, leases, writs --

that wipes away our grins, gives us the shits

when we read about the latest caper

among the native title tribunal

lot, another land grab and another,

and mocks the largesse of their White Brother

who means well, despite the contrapuntal.

There are times it makes mates bristle and seethe

to meet rich elders, niggardly disposed

to reconciliation, all reposed

amidst the rich splendor that we bequeath.

What is the problem -- white paper, black ink?

A jail beating will provide time to think.

(Article changed on February 27, 2021 at 01:42)

Authors Website: https://tantricdispositionmatrix.substack.com/

Authors Bio:

John Kendall Hawkins is an American ex-pat freelance journalist and poet currently residing in Oceania.