From Mother Football’s womb untimely ripped
– forced release of football gripped
From free and fractious uterine kicking
to aborted delivery
Execration; detestation;
revulsion and loathing
Selectively hated, crowd baited, fated:
terminated!
Viciously victimised by callous tongues,
which lash like nine-tails,
from behind the relative safety of previously-pinched,
picket-fence security
Rip strips of flesh from his hide,
as they cower behind Queen’s skirts
Ridicule and word vomit spews,
as they joust to protect their swollen honour
Their loathing opposition, mocking-character poison
eventually kills him
He, who dares challenge their legality
by throwing down a war dance gauntlet.

Their odium compels his removal
from ovals of poached propriety
– because his presence is an ever-present,
potent reminder of their crimes
These modern-day ‘goodie cowboy gunslingers’
get upset when this ‘baddie’ refuses
to fall down dead on the oval lawn
– like all good little itchy bums should do
These coward punchers, media lunchers, number crunchers
crouch behind the dark of day
Morph into vengeful paranoids
when asked to share their appropriated turf with ‘inappropriate’ others
Or when having to explain why they have
– blood on their hands;
skeletons in their closets;
and the pocketed possessions
of those from whom they stole.

These quasi secret-service assassins
fix him firmly in their cross hairs:
turn both corporate boxes and the outer into the grassy knoll
–Numerous second shooters take aim
They enact the customary,
Systematic, identity slaughter
And then call upon divine intervention
from the shock jocks in order to put the right spin on it
They celebrate the afternoon manhunt
with a plastic glass of sugared-froth and a catcall.

At game’s end, high on moral impunity
– but subconsciously fearing they have played most foul,
the bloodthirsty stream
to wash their hands clean,
in hotels like The Duke of Brunswick or The Earl of Leicester
Elbows up, Crown lager down
Out! Damn Spot! Out!
Twist and shout,
turn pub urinals into carnadine seas.

Then, with a few under their belt,
these bloated second-nation squatters hurry home
Cautiously, they hide behind their well-lit Dunsinane forests,
and ensconce themselves,
in their security-patrolled dwellings
After having done a quick inventory of their stolen goods,
any reflexive display of guilt simply disappears
and they,
partner and wine in hand,
put their feet up and casually download
another zombie movie from Netflix.

Non-Aboriginal writer Chris was inspired to this poem after "the paranoid, nationalist behaviour of racist AFL spectators towards [Aboriginal player] Adam Goodes, and their fear of Indigenous challenge of their appropriated possessions."