The People’s Justice
by Soreti Kadir
My people have always known justice through song
My people have always known justice through song
When feet started pounding the ground to resist the coming rampage
the Songstress stood by closely
if you choose to see what most see
which is mostly
misperception
“Why are you busy with those sounds? How will they sway parliament and the crown?”
But my people have always known justice through song
When war comes we sing strength into the masses
When lose is known we sing spirits back home
When confusion comes melodies male way for sureness
When victory is known we stamp our feet on the earth returning it’s mud and fire
We sing praise into the moment
And sorrow out of memories
Misdirected is not what we are
Divert the distraction
Parliament only holds a fraction of the power it parades
The people’s song is know charade
We know justice through it
Do you want me to prove it?
Heavenly Queen by the Maribyrnong
by Lian Low
Home
The Chinese, my father’s ancestors sailed into the Straits of Melaka and settled into the Malay peninsula,
They prayed to Datuk Gong, his altar hidden in forests and crannies
Gave him offerings, they wanted to make peace with the spirits of the land,
Where I now live, call home
Heavenly Queen Mazu gazes steadily over the Maribyrnong / bidding seafarers safe
On the lands of the Kulin Nations / I pay my respect to elders past, present and future /
In solidarity, with all First Nations Australians
Whose sovereign rights, ancient wisdoms and stories were never ceded
Australia is Melbourne is Glen Waverley
Australia is Melbourne is Glen Waverley is my new home. Where the moisture is sucked dry, where I can trace a cartography of where Malaysia ends and Australia begins on the contour of my papery skin; but connection to place is beyond physicality, I had yet to uncover.
Connection to place is about a love for the familiar, tracing a memory, and finding that sweet spot where you just know you’re home. Wherever home is. Whatever home means.
In 1991, I’d moved continents, settled into Kulin Nations country the year before terra nullius ended, and hope for a new nation was stymied, stunted, bludgeoned by the fury of anti-political correctness campaigns. Howard. Hanson. Racist rhetoric.
Australia is Melbourne is Glen Waverley is my new home. Connection to place is about a love for the familiar, tracing a memory, and finding that sweet spot where you just know you’re home. Wherever home is. Whatever home means.
The Heavenly Queen
When I craved love, I would look to the heavens, hoping to catch a glimpse of paradise in the sky
Stars twinkling like fireflies
Melbourne’s overripe moon glowing an outer space gold
I looked, onwards and upwards
For that invisible road to Heaven’s Door
Hoping the Doors would burst open to show my destiny
Little did I know that Paradise lay at Footscray’s riverbank.
Grounded along the Maribyrnong,
Oblivious to industry, machinery and heavy traffic
Glimpsed by thousands as they sped across train tracks
The sixteen metre Heavenly Queen’s gaze is serene as she looks past black swans, cormorants, swamp hens, red-rumped parrots, marbled geckos and Pobblebonk frogs
Her gaze drifts towards Footscray Road, floating past the Yarra, until her wide- open eyes contemplates the Bass Strait.
In her fingers, a small ball of light,
Beacon to shore.
Patron of seafarers, demon destroyer, rainmaker and healer
One legend tells that Queen Mazu’s origin was humble
Not yet 18, with supernatural powers
She fell in a trance when her fishermen father and brothers were caught at sea
Their lives about to be loss in a storm
She manifest in spirit, guided them to shore
But before all were safe,
Her mother broke the trance and her father died at sea.
Up close, Queen Mazu’s gold paint is chipping,
And the lake surrounding her base is filled with weeds and rubbish
Duck feathers and shit
A swamp
No tossed coins from lovers wishing for good fortune
The Queen’s slow decay mirrors the fallen stars I’d found along the river near Newell’s Paddock,
An exoskeleton of five arms,
Yellow speckled in purple stripes and tips,
They lay unfurled, arms spread equidistant
Sometimes scrunched up
Unnervingly still
Underwater creatures stranded on land.
22 broken, crumbled, dried, sun-burnt to the bone
Northern Pacific Seastars / marine pests
Plucked from the muddy riverbank and weeds, not far from the mussels and the patient fishermen, after bream or yellow eye mullet or silver trevally.
Someone wanted to piece together paradise on the pavement,
Maybe it was someone also looking for love.