Redemption

1. Contemplation

It’s the alcohol that makes me white

the magic of intoxication

suits my dreaming fine

takes away the memory

I want to be civilized.

The harder I drink the whiter I get

O how I want to imbibe

like a gentleman

get home to the wife every night.

Working hard for the man

kids don’t want to go to school

up at dawn every morning

might stay home on welfare 

do a course—certificate IV 

teaching something white and airy.

I want God to make me white

and rich and fat

next week we get royalties

as well as welfare cheques.

No more blackeyed payback wives

no more paedophiles

alcohol does not make love

we out here are all alone

come in and lose your chains.

Sing and dance wildeyed

in blackout dreams

demand sovereignty.

I want to drink like I want to die.

They put me in their gaols

the backs of divie vans

they beat me good and turn me black

from lack of alcohol.

I see the sound of moonlight

striking water in the night.

2. Metamorphosis

As the white inches from my blood

I become aboriginal 

black

as a matter of evolution I am

culturally erased.

The leaves fall

one day at a time

soberly 

serenely they lay me naked

in a fourth dimension.

Unentombed and resurrected

God appears within the landscape

becomes country

without any bright colours.

The brightest colour of them all

is blood.

Everything is round

the storylines in circles and cycles

the owners and the owned

are the same thing.

Nobody speaks in straight lines

it is considered rude.

What owns me is round.

If you go from here to there

you should walkabout a bit.

The best hunters know the cycles

of the hunted.

The art

the land itself

which owns me

which caused me

breathes in and out

like a horse’s flank.

From day to night

the climate walks around the tides

from where my gods come to speak

into which my dead die.

They are always near

circling

flowing through my veins

as blood the brightest colour

over which the sea folds

like a shroud.

Mick Ringiari