Australia - Laura Jean

Trapped by tides

Led by liars

Specks of light

clinging to telephone wires

Surrounded by desert pyres

about as foreign to me as my distant sires

Europe and the Americans

send their artists down here to vent

I’m afraid to sing in my own accent

culture cringing like an adolescent

Here upon this artless wedge

We struggle not to fall off the edge of the world

Caroline Springs

and she floods the fields

Cities bitch

high up on four wheels

I know they just want what’s best for their families

but I want to live in a community

where there’s no need to pray that it’s them and not me

and I’m allowed to be what I’m meant to be

Here upon this artifice

the Australian Dream falls off the edge of the world

The oldest people

the oldest wisdom

beyond the grasp of an infant kingdom

We come from people who risked it all

We come from people that broke the law

Now I need a stamped piece of paper to take a piss

like we’re still a gaol for the English

Two centuries on an ancient land

pretending that we understand the world