Tiddalik say I’m such great thirst I will drain the land and drag my big fat belly across the empty sea Bunyip say I’m gonna gobble you up if you step waters where I sleep and with wet claws I will snatch your spine and ankles to fill them with stain and stench what the Mopoke say don’t need saying if you grown up under his eyes now here’s the part you write Black Snake down for a dilly of national flair true god you don’t know how wild I’m gonna be to every fucking postmod blinky bill tryna crack open my country mining in metaphors for that place you felt felt you somewhere in the Royal National Waagan says use heart but I am rage and dreaming at the gloss green palm fronds of this gentry aesthetantique all this potplanting in our sovereignty a garden for you to swallow speak our blood if you’re taking that talk you gotta scrape it from my schoolhouse walls filter gollywog ashtray snugglepot kitsch into your pastoral deconstruct fill four’n twenty pies with artisan magpies if you sever their heads you can wear them to the doof I say rage and dreaming for making liar the lyrebird for making mimetic the power Baiami gave when Ribbon’s mischief swallowed first life ochre dust creation breath ancestor song we aren’t here to hear you poem you do wrong you get wrong you get gobbled up
Image: illustration from Blinky Bill, written and illustrated by Dorothy Wall
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