Samuel Wagan Watson

1972 / Brisbane

Monster

I can't speak my grandmother's tongue and I've never been on my grandfather's land,
I've travelled here and I've travelled there,
my culture replicated in government-funded laboratories;
I am Frankenstein of the Dreamtime,
I am Frankenstein of the Dreamtime.

Reanimated flesh that once sung natural song-lines
surgically removed my Christian soul and repaired it with Indigenous design,
a patriot to a black, yellow and red flag, yet I am colour-blind.
I am Frankenstein of the Dreamtime.

I am a mutation of the white Australia policy!
I am Frankenstein of the Dreamtime!
I am the Australian Dream's living nightmare; I am an educated Aborigine!
I scare some white people with my English; I am a Frankenstein of the Dreamtime!
In today's society, my neighbours will sing, Advance Australia Fair, and like the abomination that I am I can only ask Advance Australia Where? Thinking black is a thought-crime, I have no need for Queen or desecrated country and only Australian nationalism can define, I'm a renegade of Indigenous context; I am Frankenstein of the Dreamtime . . .
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