Never Worked

By | 1 August 2016
He wave his fingers saying he’s a worker

     Work to the breeze off pride,

        Word winner made heat powers run.

Work together in sunshine machine society,

    Brings version over our sensuality.

Harvest highways for the drivers find,

       Safe life living eyes on the ears.

Boiling to top my feet seems weak

Being down on the ride arm out of reach

Pride every day must not astray.

The breeze that never air inner gave,

Non-powers was un-kind.

The cities around worlds unknown,

       Saw the hurt before it caused bloods to flow.

The flowers a brighten a morning dew passing,

By bodies not yet entwine.

Work what to day no numbered as if dogs and cats are priceless.

Man wanting space of séance to be the last forest,

Man using our minds for rich around speaker’s words.

Working in silence brings not the thing wants on needs.

Boil now the tea; boil now the wind on rains we and I needs.
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Lionel Fogarty was born in 1958 at Barambah, now known as Cherbourg Aboriginal Reserve, in the South Burnett region of southern Queensland. Since the 1970s he has been active in many of the political struggles of the Aboriginal people, from the Land Rights movement, to setting up Aboriginal health and legal services, to the issue of black deaths in custody. His first collection of poetry, Kargun, was published in 1980, and he has gone on to publish eight further collections, as well as a children’s book, Booyooburra, a traditional Wakka Wakka story. Fogarty has also travelled widely in the United States and Europe, reading from his work and participating in conferences of Indigenous peoples. An unabashedly political poet, Fogarty’s poetry employs Aboriginal English in innovative ways, challenging readers to reconfigure cultural assumptions.

More by Lionel Fogarty on Cordite Poetry Review →

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