Can we make the invisible visible?
Our downtrodden
Trembling masses
Casting their waning shadows
On forgotten plains
Our near silent
Our near vanquished majority
Our shameful oversight
Hidden with our tacit knowledge
In plain view
Living on the borderline
Our most shirked
Our most forgotten
Fellow man
Disenfranchised
Misbegotten
Woeful creatures
Rooted unbeknownst
To a fractured and dimming spotlight.

Can we not just shine
Just for an instant
A piercing
Penetrating beam
Into the recesses
The crooks and crannies
And truly see
Not glazing over
The uncomfortable truths
Of our oh so comfortable lives?

If we had the slightest inclination
Could we not draw our collective breath
Inhale a little more deeply
And exhale a defiant challenge to our status quo
One that now so obviously benefits our elites
Our carefully manicured role models
Born to fortunate privilege
Primping and preening
Believing it was their talent
And not their postcode
Those who walk in wilful ignorance
Seemingly across water
But if you took the time
And peered closely
You would see
That this is on the arched backs
Of our drowning brothers and sisters
Asphyxiating in a system corrupted
No longer a meritocracy
No longer part of our vocabulary
Perhaps it never was…

Corporate greed is now our mantra
Our secret state
Profits at exponential rates
Inflation pressures we’re told
Must keep wages down
Out of reach of common man
While they wallow in their big fat juicy bonuses
At the top end of town
Peddling a perverse, inverse stew
Of capitalist socialism
Peddling us false prophets and propaganda
The pinnacle of populist views
Shamelessly, triumphantly echoes
“What’s in it for me?”
Where sowing fear and distrust of strangers
Left from right
Black from white
Race and religion
Is the new regime
What’s in vogue
Our new status quo.

As if there is no other honourable way
That being poor means you need to be punished
That instead of sharing the spoils
For your own good
When you are down
We will not pick you up
We will not help you
We will beat you into a final submission
For you are not worthy
You in your miserable state
We will smite you
We will shame you
We will subjugate you
We will fuck you when you are down
Simply we don’t give a shit
Who sees
Who knows
We are untouchable
For we wear the crown.

We could draw a line
If willing
We could wake
If willing
Challenge our indoctrination
Turn off mass media
Owned by billionaires
That numbs our senses
Hysterical infotainment parading
Thinly as news
Desensitising our minds
Falling into a stupor
Leaning further and further
To an alternative point of view
Playing into capricious goals
Of a skewed, racist agenda
A horrendous dystopian view of reality
An Orwellian state in the making.

All in the name of progress and equity
Because that is the American way
Our brothers in arms
Our star spangled role model
Australia
The poor wannabe
The fifty first state
A lapdog
Leaving behind all sense of decency
All sense of morality
For what
To bask in the shadow of another’s making
To catch the snacks that fall on the floor
For what?
To be their slaves?
No more.

Let me tell you of the everyday Australian
In our vernacular –
The fictitious honest battler
Let us keep their stories alive
Let us hold them ever so briefly in your minds eye
Shine brightly
Our beacon
To illuminate
Get close
Smell their desperation and despair
And use our teeth
To snap
To bite
Rip
Tear
Fray
And eventually
Snap
The knots that bind our fallacies
Our inbred prejudices
Our intemperance
Of those not worthy of our might.

Let us hold ourselves accountable for our intolerance
Our scorn
Our ridicule
Our unwillingness to accentuate
Their unfair
Pitiful plight
Let me tell you of their story
But let me ensure it is not simply a flight of fancy
Easily dismissed
Fingers snapped
In an instant due to naive simplicity
The optimism of our youth
But something oh so grounded
In a brutal
Uncompromising
Visceral reality
An awful chilling
Heartbreaking tragedy
An unending brutality
That surrounds
So pitifully
So many
In their unfair
Unjust
Everyday lives.

Can you imagine that in our lucky country
Full of overflowing riches
One in eight
Of our brothers and sisters
Live in intolerable subsistence
Below that shrieking, shameful poverty line
That in this land down under
We have a tale
Of haves and have-nots
Thirteen unlucky percent
Do not unfortunately share
Its embarrassingly rich bountiful fare
And to add to that injustice
One in six children
Share that miserable fate
A dire and destitute state.
And if your skin is black
And if your only sin is to be born Into a sunburnt land
Born as one from our First Nation
Then that shocking number escalates
Shatters records and shoots to
Thirty percent
It’s incomprehensible
Beyond comprehension.

And then to pour further fuel to a beaker that is already full
Let me take away our most precious commodity
What should be all of ours inalienable right
By taking away a precious gift
A span of ten years from an inglorious, unfair existence
Our people
From the First Nation
Born to fail
Bereft of the gift of life
Quickly and quietly dispensed.

And where do we house our invisible?
How do we sweep them out of plain sight?
Giving them no realistic option
But to live on the fringes
In distant urban dwellings
In sleepy country towns
Far from opportunity
To live below the poverty line
Many eeking out a meagre existence
Challenging them to find
Safe harbour
Where out of twenty-four thousand homes around Sydney
Only fifty are affordable
For a family on the borderline
Just fifty.

Putting all on Newstart
Regardless of age, health or family
Soul destroying politicians
Cynically peddling bullshit
A false
And evil ideology
That their amounts are fair
Indexed with inflation
Punishment with perpetual poverty
A shame they must continually bear.

And in the same breath
Voting though their shameful pay rises
Perks and bonuses
Tax cuts for those that don’t need it
Leading us all into oblivion
Corporate greed at its finest
Our final solution
Perpetuating a cycle
With major inequalities
Institutionalised
Built into the very fabric of Australian society.

Can we make the invisible visible?
Yes we can
But
Only if we are willing
To open our eyes
Only if we have the will
And the way
Only if we finally
Finally chose to look
And not look away
To say enough is enough
For a time will come
Where we must all pull together
To save our land
To save our planet
From our shameful history
Our indulgences
That has raped and pillaged
This land
Heartbreaking mismanagement.

Otherwise I propose
That we will all vanish
Screaming and scratching
In pain and agony
Sliding into the blackness of despair
Realising only on the way down
That we too will vanish
Vanish into the bleak and bleary night
Invisible.

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