Peter Kelly, Byron Bay
The messiah paused for a moment at the spot where The Knowledge Tree of Barcaldine once stood.
With a knowing smile, he turned to a crowd that had gathered to hear him speak.
A voice cried out over the top of the sea of desperate faces ‘Messiah, what should we do?’
With arms outstretched he exalted, ‘You should go to the land of Galilee, take the coal from the ground and send it to a faraway land where the air and lungs of the people will be filled with smoke and fumes. Worry not about the aquifers, the birds, or the land and seas over which the coal must pass for all will be good.
‘Know that I will burn for you every day, every single day, even when I’m asleep; the land will burn, the forests will burn, fish will lay dead in the empty streams and the oceans will slowly die. And all will be good.’
‘But, Master, what of the people of the south? They are against us and want to be rid of us.’
‘Fear not, the people of the south have left the path of righteousness and their cities have fallen into sin and decadence. Remember this, I believe in miracles and you are the chosen people. Come unto me for I am the light and the way. Once you were hungry and now you will be fed, the sick will be healed, and you need shelter so you shall have places to live.’
‘Just one more thing’, came a voice from the back of the crowd, ‘any chance of throwing in a few jet-skis?’
The lord moves in mysterious ways…
Bugger the jet-skis. I am a holed-up woman from
the mid-South calling the thrill-seeking ABC to
rise up against the pretending watch-dogs citing
Liberty…
What rout does this archaic raft take
as it swivels & whips like a cross-eyed snake;
it’s upright because of urgency? No.
Don’t say the Neuro could
put it straight or refer another channeling
– I was dragged up, sogged-up on that.
The Holy See is undermined. So cruel your assumptions.
To be afloat is all that matters. Here,
Marking the breakers I plait my needs:
an almost perfect matter of fact – the act
justifiable beyond the 3 mile reach.
I chew, ensue
a bible of fishers.
All I must do is bleed to attract audience.
A birth; maybe a wake! Soon I’ll litter Mars
or yapping clams beneath the Southern Cross.
How more profuse can one get than that?
People abandoned on your rotten-ness
the tide’s scissored us in reason – it
foams a score to me…
I’ll bottle it back. Be patient.