You called it the Great End of course you did your world had never ended your world of buttoned coats and polished shoes of dusty halls and empty rooms of blood-stained borders and blue-stained crowns of cold-walled prisons in every town of taking to the sea to exploit the foreign lands of bullet holes in black bodies, under your command of violating women, making them your ‘own’ of taking all their babes, removing them from home of clearing all the forests and digging up the ground making way for progress in million-dollar compounds of great churning machines, made larger than their maker large enough to decimate, large enough to break Her this world of yours, this world you mourn, now coming to its end of rising sea and burning sky, the things you can’t amend this modern world, however, is not the first to fall surely you must know this now, you did it after all our world that prospered for over 100,000 years long before you arrived, confirming all your fears that we are of this land, we know its secrets and its ways we’ve seen your plan in motion, see it reaching final phase you tried so hard to snuff us out, our culture and our song you almost won, and yet we’re here, proud and standing strong thus herein lies the answer to your existential dread it’s in the ones who’ve seen your ‘Ends’, hear our voice instead. We called it the Great End for surely you won’t let it happen again.
Tamala Shelton is a Bundjalung and Lama Lama actor, audiobook narrator, writer and spoken word poet. She has been working professionally in the arts for over 10 years. She was born in Naarm (Melbourne, Aus) and continues to live, work and be inspired by that country.