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16 May 2014

Straya

Because it's not all about cricket and prawns.

Endless beaches
Parrot screeches
Desert sands of rusty red.
Tiny cozzies
Giant mozzies
Spiders that can eat your head.
Oil refining
Big pit mining
Possums, snakes and kangaroos.
Beer for sculling
Sharks for culling
Sweaty Southern Cross tattoos.
Racing horses
Border forces
Offshore gaols for refugees.
Children stolen
Cities swollen
Wilderness devoid of trees.
Budget crunches
Coward punches
Freedom to insult a race.
Climate stalling
No point bawling
Better than another place. 

2 comments:

  1. Bizarrely, our beloved, new, cigar-smoking, promise-breaking Federal Treasurer happily sits in a government that condemns World Heritage forest to the chainsaw, but considers windfarms a blight on the landscape.

    I guess he just doesn't like tall things.

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  2. Anonymous9:15 am

    Dear Shelly,
    This is the second one of your poems that has reduced me to tears without warning. (The other was "first world problems"). I beseech you to consider a wider audience somewhere and share the smart. The Saturday Paper? The SMH?
    In awestruck appreciation,
    Anonymous

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