Tug Dumbly # 66 - My Country

My Country*

After Dorothea Mackellar

The love of truth and virtue

of humanitarian aims

of decency and justice

runs through other veins.

Compassion for the suffering

of folk from other skies

I know but cannot share it

my love is otherwise.

I love a stunted country

a land of weeping shame

of ragged locked-up strangers'

incarcerated pain.

I love her stubborn meanness

her fat-cat lawyer fees

her litigatious terror

of bindi-eye and bee.

Majestic old-growth forests

for whom the woodchip tolls

are chewed up to produce

a billion toilet rolls.

Put a planet on the barbie

those gas emissions thick

can melt the polar ice caps

like an esky brick.

Core of my heart, my country!

land of the handshake gold

where cash for comment shockjocks

fatten up their rolls

where flashy corporate swindlers

find greasy palms to oil

where pollie wants a kickback

and bankers scoff the spoils.

Core of my heart, my country!

her pitiless squalid lies

sick at heart surround us

thick as rancid flies –  

But then an election gathers

and we can vote again

for some punchless little Judy

whose vision we sustain.

A flinty-hearted country

a compassion pinching land  

built upon a bloodstain

we fail to understand.

It's black and white, cut and dyed

penned in our private sty:

‘bugger you, I'm right Jack’

the Lucky Country's lie.

* This poem will appear in my debut book of poems, Son Songs, coming out next week through Flying Islands Press. I'll be sticking up some poems from the book over the next little while, with details on availability to follow.  Needless to say it should be available where all good poetry is sold. Failing that, try my Facebook page.   

Here below is a link to me doing the poem live: 

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=tug+dumbly+my+country