30/10/96

She Owns a Fish Shop

What’s Black, white and redneck?
Listen to the Fish shop mutterings -
confused, angry, but mostly ignorant.

This is the place where half-formed thoughts will lead

we want to make you clean!
White is purity, the colour of acceptancy

no funny dressing either.
Just be like us, cobber and she’ll be right!

Mate - a word reserved for the straight
Aussie blokes and sheilas fading fast.

swamped by a supposedly yellow wave
underneath a black undertow they drown, unattended.

The disenfranchised attack, hateful,
the scapegoats reply with stubborn resistance.

Meanwhile, the self-proclaimed Shepherd looks on
in mute silence, comfortable and relaxed

She sacrifices memory
and swaps blue singlets for white sheets
to do their work

fogetting is in fashion. Again.