Ken Canning/Burraga Gutya, Yimbama

Acknowledgements: My darling wife Cheryl Bucaneg Quejada-Canning who
supported and encouraged me to keep writing and gave me the confidence I
had lost. Cheryl’s painting adorns the cover of Yimbama.
To all of my children, Kathleen, Amy, Brigitte, Lili and Scott. Thank you for
your love and growing up to be wonderful young people. My pride in you is
only exceeded by my love of you. Love to my 6 Grand children who have had a
huge impact on me over the last decade.
To my Filipino family who bring love and importantly much laughter into my
life. Thank you to all other family and friends who are too many to name. You
know who you are.
I give warm thanks and appreciation to Michael Brennan and Vagabond Press
for bringing this collection of works to life and for the ease with which we were
able to collaborate, this has been an amazing journey in itself
A very special thanks to my Cousin/Brother, Stanley Emanuel, who has been
the main reason for every success I have achieved, yet remains too humble to
even think he has had such a powerful influence over me. Dear Stanley, I am
who am today because of your lifelong love and loyalty.
Some of these poems previously appeared in: All Ginibi’s Mob: Our Voices
Collected; Balaya: Cultural Law and Colonialism; KOORI MAIL; The Thirteenth
Floor; Tree Talk.

First published 2015 by Vagabond Press
PO Box 958 Newtown NSW 2042 Australia
www.vagabondpress.net

Yimbama © Ken Canning, 2015.
Cover image © Cheryl Bucaneg Quejada-Canning, Tagaraw. 16x20 inches.
Oil on canvas, 2014. Courtesy of the artist.

Designed and typeset by Michael Brennan
in Minion Pro 10.5/14

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic,
mechanical, photocopying or otherwise without the prior permission of the
publisher. The information and views set out in this book are those of the
author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the publisher.

ISBN 978-1-922181-43-5

BURRAGA GUTYA

KEN CANNING

YIMBAMA

Vagabond Press 2015

CONTENTS

Name Game .... 9
Visibility Zero .... 10
J.K.B. .... 12
Rapid Demise .... 15
Isolation .... 18
Psychotic Serenade .... 20
Uncaptured .... 22
Painless .... 24
Nameless People .... 26
Numbered Days... .... 28
Old Clever Woman .... 30
Quiet Fella .... 33
Reality Of Image .... 34
Relapse .... 36
Soulful Wonderings .... 38
The Traitors .... 40
The Way It Was (And Shall Ever Be) .... 42
Warrior Woman .... 45
White Lies .... 46
Urban Legends .... 50
A Time Of Telling .... 51
Advance Australia What? .... 54
Black Diggers .... 56
End Times.... 58
Mother Tongue .... 60
War Of Love .... 62
Without Within Wither .... 64
Temporary Town .... 66
Paths .... 68

Tree Talk .... 70
The Mother Of Love .... 72
Night Journeys .... 74
Lest We Forget .... 76
Sweet Silent One .... 78
Silent Directive .... 80
My Children .... 82
Return .... 83
Incidental .... 84
Woman Justice .... 86
Silent Words .... 88
The Lucky Country .... 90
Political Madness .... 91
We Said .... 92
Reflect .... 93
Solidarity .... 94
Sharing .... 95
Notes .... 96
About the Author .... 97

NAME GAME

You call me racist names
You call me not quite right
You call me the law breaker
You call me a social disturbance
You call me a low form of life
You call me a man of violence
You call me a threat to you
You call and call me
and call me every disgusting
insult your tongue can carry.
But you can never call me yours.

9

VISIBILITY ZERO

George Street
Sydney.
Any big street,
any big town.
People overflow,
spilling to the road.
They are safe
pounding
sacred asphalt.
They know their way
through building mazes.
I walk
into the street
they look past
walk over.
I am invisible,
the visible invisible.
I am black.
Your eyes pierce —
I don’t belong to this
concrete chaos.
When your guns
could no longer kill,
your historians
you know
your programmed robots,
wrote me out
of social view.

10

Beware you devils.
I am Black
and I know
how to de-program.

11

J.K.B.

Shadows falling over
deep set light brown eyes,
a disguise.
Turning cautiously inward,
where to hide,
what reality to see.
Inner or outer
both horrific by degree.
Colours splayed against time,
razor sharp shapes
carving gaping holes,
compacted colours gone wild.
Sickening patterns
oozing from grey eyes.
Nuclear brain fusion,
facial meltdown.
The slowzone layer erupts,
frenzied flesh peels
distorting facial features
to a faceless face.
Red raw meat
red glazed eyes,
blend to a sunrise
that ceases existence.
Quivering, reactive body
slithers to jellied mass,

12

a kaleidoscope of madness.
No recognisable form,
only black eyes
darting, weaving, turning,
searching the unspeakable,
not daring to blink.
There behind the curtain
an impish face grins,
staring, laughing at the eyes
as they plead release,
extremities, absurdities, realities.
Small cheeky face,
smiles of futuristic senses
mock the green hue eyes.
The little one’s laughter,
echoes in dissected dimensions,
taunting, haunting, flaunting,
spirited boy in bloom.
Speckled eyes watchful
of stick legs in flight,
away from collisions.
Horror!!! Blood weeps from bony legs.
Blood escaping opened pores.
Little face looks back,
sparkling brown eyes.
Blood, sweat who cares
as long as it’s warm.
He disappears briefly,
reappears in foetal pose.
Cupboards hem his mind.

13

No tears, no fears, no cheers,
smiling still but sickly,
possessed by visions unknown.
Prepared for more warmth
of uncompromising violence.
He retreats to shelter
of the condemned
and squats beside the mass.
Tentatively touching
the rotten flesh exposed,
only the multi-coloured eyes
touch his hardened heart.
Small fingers grasp, pulling,
trying to shape a used life.
Then it pounces and engulfs,
in flight together.
Resealed, rehealed, revealed
in a belonging place.
Graceful touching hands
welcome them home,
to before it all began.
Old voices whisper sweetly,
you are now whole, as one.
Wait — your proper time is near.

14

RAPID DEMISE

Beating —
breath,
shell fragments splintered.
The hard case of entrapment
deluded by subtleties.
Barbed interludes
of moronic retreats withered — inflamed.
Skeletal skin
exposed in repose,
flighted in pictured infinitely.
Renewed visions,
reviewed perceptions
beating, beating, beating,
clotted.
Irrational reason
chases its prey
closing down of patterns.
Remember — think — respond
the sheltered shock
reverberates intermittently
in the core of profanity.
Events of disproportion
textual or sexual,
the towered empowered
crippled in the exotica
of the singular hate.
Disjointed exactness
precise in delivery,
decomposed —

15

the dribbling of self-exile.
Hunted — haunted
vigilance in motion.
Primal screams —
gushing forth in exposition
of rotted meat
disused to amuse.
Severed feet — dislodged,
in systematic revenge.
Step by step into what
into where.
The lighted tunnel
opens shuts opens
into oblivion.
Moss covered skin
crawling with life
life not wanted.
Tear, rip, claw, bite
the flowing of illusion
or the images of fusion.
Hydroponics growth
furious in maturity
direct enforcement.
Walk, sing, whistle,
run, hide, collide,
explode if you dare.
Cringing cornered rhapsody
rhythmic distorts
seeking the elusiveness
of swirling particles
of what was or is
or can never be.

16

Halted by infliction
rapid fire of truth
burns — incinerates —
into the lives of the dead.
Entrenched in the sludge
that flowed in conception,
the smallness of importance
grows frighteningly to nothing.
Deleted in numerical order
a relay of welled desire
falling falling falling
plummeted into spiralled atoms.
The watered weathered weaver
spins constantly
to divert or revert
the obscene.
The departed martyr
baited by endless decline,
evaporated into stinging mist,
marking with a vapour
putrid in essence.
Walking — stained — maimed
breathing the stenches
of dislocated vacantness,
stripped
naked in whirlpools,
cells of the living.

17