those lives matter

Kaya

From the loungeroom
To the boardroom
To the war room
To the courtroom
I can’t breathe

And Black Lives Matter
because all life shatters
With a bent white knee
to your throat

Whose lives matter
Black lives matter
Noongar life matter
Yamatji life matter

In custodial boxes
you suck back thick toxic dead air
On a sovereign stolen land

Get that sweet capital taste
of constructed race
That deadly sound
of the undefeated oldest culture

And we punch the wet sky
and stride those sombre wet streets
of Noongar Boodja city

We stand in the park
and chant at the concrete
and glass

and listen

And dance like emus and yongas
and kiss the Red red earth
and the Yellow sun
and the Black body talks

So strangled voices
will whisper
and shout
at the fences

Scream at the hill
to the houses of suits
guarded by monarchs and guns

And we listen / And we listen / And we listen
And we mourn

Whose lives matter

And you watch
and you squirm
under the boot
Of those in uniforms
that protect the few

That will shoot you / that will fine you
That will chase you / that will drop you
To the dust

I can’t breathe

And the faces won’t fit
in the shape

Of aunties and uncles
and families and mobs

None un-affected
as the curtain draws now

So brothers and sisters
and fathers and mothers
and children and cousins

Wake up stand up
light a fire and burn
stoke the flames
and poke the silent folk

And whose lives matter? / Whose lives matter

Boordawan