LUCKY COUNTRY SAD LOOSE SOCIETY
by Lionel G. Fogarty
An ode to ‘Tracks Wind Back’ by Jeanine Leane.
Guest-edited by Mykaela Saunders, the Odes series invites six First Nations poets to write an Ode to another’s poem.
Can’t not put a line when Doctor Professor Jeanine Leane
As her written poem read or said
Not all my wind words fill her world of winds word
But the art words that fulfill are lost
As it gifts on roads camp sat a talk stories
Tracks wind back, gives me a present look
Smell a touch
Australia not owned by anyone?
The turn rivers flowing given by
Godparents as ebbing souls ancient
But leavening modern feel logged beauty
Australia can be better to beggar in rich classes
Lucky country sad loose society
New shut waller – New South Wales
Where’s the carbon date tax
Refund off one hundred thousand years
Without rents/arrears
Wiradjuri
Australia takes the land away from dark peoples
The story still invades our hearts
Australia don’t be a yellow cake pussy
Australia is a community not societies
Australia not given by godparents
Australia not your country the countries
Belong all natives
Yes, it’s your society stay there???
Australia not the future mooring
Mourning lovers when you’ll war on poor
Mind kicks the spirits higher
Australia your sport man sport woman must be in your
Number out in the antilog
Aboriginals day walk run fly to cellmates
First Australia first spirit
Of health first foot arm bodies to do it and do it rights
Partners to what land is the housing
Hum your wind open deep tracks grounds
Dr Jeanine has lots of history’s poems,
For as new growth to learn easy over the style by colonial writing
It not pleasures to rewrite over her works
Cause word art works like this: as a Black First Nations egalitarianism
Feel power a vision
Things changed a wind air on mouth bodies times
We all need development and write art our ways
For our truth to the they and the thems
Weapon in conquest feed no racisms
Winds off untimely lands
Teach us the life where lights have no closure
After wars, life.
Here comes a tranquillity incarnation
Merited the sensation birth to facts
For cariocas don’t rush doctrines
Most of her stimulates wander
Romantic affection on Black futures
Of cause history
The bottomless will blackish
Gundagai not disappearing
Yoway best in thousand fires burn towns
Gun = Duggai
Lionel G. Fogarty is a Yugambeh man and was born on Wakka Wakka land in South Western Queensland near Murgon on a ‘punishment reserve’ outside Cherbourg. Throughout the 1970s, he worked as an activist for Aboriginal Land Rights and protesting Aboriginal deaths in custody. He has published numerous collections of poetry, including the award-winning Connection Requital, Mogwie-Idan: Stories of the land, and Eelahroo (Long Ago) Nyah (Looking) Möbö-Möbö (Future).