Long Bushman Poems

SLAVERY AND REPARATIONS
I am a descendant of slaves - from India!
Anyone who demands REPARATIONS shake & quake at my words
Competition? So, we have competing tales of bondage?
The Jewish people's perhaps the longest & cruelest,
With smaller...

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Alms Inn, there is the place again, and here
I, far away, muse in the house I grew
O this village of my love, has grown too
The golden hills with lilacs filled, the sweet
Soft of morning dew,...

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This poem is written with a fair of Jamaican Patois but I hope you all get the drift.


Cow Cock Soup


Boy things a get bad, really sad.
Went to bed last night
Mi wife feeling fruity
Mi eyes get...

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Blue was feeling melancholy and was far from feeling jolly 
by the window of his quarters on that moonlight night in May. 
The old mate was broken hearted since young Jess and he had parted:...

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During times of ancient civilization, Khonshu was a god of Celestial Heliopolis, worshipped by Egyptians. He once posed as a human pharaoh then ascended into the role of god of the moon.

Khonshu, the moon god
became...

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All me life I’ve been a bushman who lived mostly in a city
with dodging cars and sleazy bars and no-one showing pity.
A city is a concrete jungle, divvied by ribbons of tar,
and everyone must watch...

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SHOT AT…
Yes I went shooting with some city fellows to the Moonie
We got a place to shoot that had the wild pigs
So we are walking through a crop of something green and blooming
When a porker...

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Aubrey Mc Govern
by Don Johnson ........
Aubrey McGovern and the Deaf & the Deefe
lived down on Cubbie on damper and beef.
The damper was easy McGovern could cook
the beef it was shady  Deaf &  Deefe...

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They Said

Don’t talk when big people are talking
Leave their presence now, start walking
Be a good boy don’t ever backchat
Greet a big person, take off your hat

You got bushman blood, hair’s not straight
To be dark of...

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The Grey Brumby horse
          Don befriended him,
          as he'd learnt from old Joe White.
   ...

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Dirranbandi  plonking

27Australians and a shearer came to bash Bronco Don in 1945
He was just back from Kokoda killing Japs to stay alive
Some carried beer bottles and others 2 handed sticks
I was in hospital being...

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Upon the orange rock
The sun beating mercilessly down,								       Is now replaced by
Relentless rain
Pelting on pavements in the town.

Brushing through the bush
with stick in hand,
Rifle over the shoulder,
Is now succeeded...

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Dougal Cameron 1900s
by Don Johnson
Brisbane..Australia.

Old Dougal Cameron was the man, 
the cruel red desert country crossed. 
Drove cattle cross the trackless plains, 
out where Burke and Wills were lost. 
He'd travel o'er a hundred mile...

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Tell me the secrets to your life, bushman
Show me how to befriend the garish land
Guide me through nature’s surviving devotion
Teach me with dry eye that knows no ocean
Lead me to hope in battlefields dead
Limit the...

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How far down do we go before we hit rock bottom?
When do we stop turning our heads the other way?
Greed and corruption have become acceptable
Is lack of leadership here to stay?

Politically correct, we cannot condemn
It...

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a decade ago, I picked up water colors and acrylics
O the exuberance of being a first-time artist
Who, in myriad poverty of apartheid, scorned art
As the purview of those living in luxury
Yet I was spending five...

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The beauty
Of
Namatjira
White haired
Bark painter's
Of fish
Wandjina
Feathered man
Full sunset
Corroboree
Pintubi
Dancers
In watercourse 
Colours
Of hills
And rangers
Near Henbury
Or was it
Kings canyon
South
Alice springs
Dome like peaks
Of Olga's
Stark landscape
Barren
Barkly
Near Soudan
Where
Dust storms
A common hazard
The faces
Of William Richetts
In the Maelstrom
Those colours
Of time
And day
House Wife's
Bushman
Children of the
Banka,...

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As the orange sun dives 
below the horizon
The bushman long back 
from daily hunt 
and rested
Now tells the clan the 
legend of the ancient 
noon:

'The earth', he says, 'was 
not mostly flooded
The earth, indeed, was...

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TRACKER
A Bushman Tracker knows the way to follow horses here...every hoof is different
He’ll find the track one hoof placed wrong........all have different tracks
And remember it a year!.........If he is an Aussie BushmanTracker
He’d know the colour...

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sitting with his legs apart
raised up by the knees
and his head slightly bent over
like a Bushman
up against a rock
with hands rolling 
some or other 
desert leaf,
his concentration 
never wavered
from the cellular 
device
he clicked
his message on


simply...

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Moon night!
Full quarter, half-moon snow bright;
Mid-day, mid noon, such a boom;
a Moon lit Knight;
Son of a Jewish Rabbi;
Birth given name Marc Spector;
Was a professional boxer?
Did a tour of duty, fought as a Marin;
Leaves them to...

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Give me
A quiet camp
In a remote national park
Any day
Over a caravan park

Where the snakes
Bake quietly
And roo's abound
Fleeting qlimpse'es
Of things between the gums
And dingos howl
From across the other ridge
With the setting sun

Give me 
A quiet camp
Out...

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Hey!
are 
you 
a 
Zulu? 
Am 
a 
Bushman...no 
you 
are 
a 
Bantu,a 
Bantu 
or 
Hottentots? 
Maybe 
an 
Afrikaner.                  ...

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Close 'round the crackling fire we three,
with sweet acacia in the air - 
tell stories of Gallipoli
and digger's bond of friendship there.

We laughed and shared like family
with roof and walls of stars our home -...

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