paddling

paddling

under the stark imperfect structures, the halogen glare, we gather to kill the states of industrial gauge dispossession. the black sky a rigid scar of Christmas, a fence in the barbed wire sea.

here brother you have the right to perpetual desertion, disparity, dysfunction for certain, you and yr family in the wet salt face, the constant nauseous rumble of a diesel toxicity - the fossil peak drowning in a bat shit mountain, a shattered dreaming, a tattered cloth, a photograph of sisters lost.

and the roll roll roll as the nights heave closer to the excised zone - yr neck deep in jargon, a slight of the razor hand, and they slash n slice into race, they turn people into gates of words. our messages lost in the hegemonic trail of glass and fire. a tragedy in one foul act an outright victory, a cousin on ice, on fire on fire on fire...

and this week the riot is funded - the nearest broken computer, a missing key on a calculator - and I'll see you later, he said, his face crooked with rage.

and the batons in yr back as you approach the doors, the pack thinning to trickles, the horses high and hostile. and they spilled over the metal in droves, scaling the bloody walls, the children tossed to running doctors and lawyers and mothers and brothers and sisters and fathers.

and the setting desert sun, the thin orange dust in yr teeth. the star maps of this journey, this paddling farce to reach an open sea, to reach an open door, a concrete crack.

and in the bitter forests of 5000 islands we sing as the ripple of oar to ocean tears a new path, the rainbows chased us to the ridges, to the fences the fences.

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performed at Kulcha, Fremantle as part of the "paddling for refugees" event hosted by Project Safecom... (See: Perth Indymedia Feature - More...)

BACKGROUND: In mid July 2007 Simon Keenan and David Corlett (freelance writer and author of Following Them Home: The Fate of the Returned Asylum Seekers) will embark on a sea kayaking journey in and around Australia's 'excised zone' - those parts of Australia's north (including Christmas Island, Ashmore Reef and almost 5,000 other Australian islands) that have been legislatively cut off from the migration zone in order to prohibit any asylum seeker arriving there from applying for protection in Australia. Asylum seekers who are found in the excised zone can be forcibly transferred to Nauru or elsewhere where their applications for protection are assessed in a system without an independent appeals mechanism and which is not subject to judicial oversight. Nor do such people have a right to independent legal advice. There is compelling evidence that this system has led to the return of asylum seekers to situations where their human rights have been violated. Some have been killed. Those asylum seekers found to be refugees have no right to be resettled in Australia or any other country and can wait for extended periods of time in limbo while their resettlement is negotiated between governments. Excision and its denial of access to Australian territory and the onshore protection determination process remains one of the key outstanding issues in Australia’s response to asylum seekers... Read More