Mundine, bleaching cream
By Andrew Cox
I was 9 years old when Anthony Mundine beat Danny Green
The first time i remember seeing a brown person on TV
Saw a brown person win something
His confidence spoken about as arrogance
All our stories told in a tone tokenistic
All our truth, twisted until extinction
All my heroes
painted as villains
They won't write about us
So, i guess, someone’s got to
Young brown boys grow like me i’m sure of it
Like how i know those who write the news don’t know
That i’m as derro as it goes
Houso homes on Watto’ road
We grew up fighting to stay afloat
‘Dole bludger’ some kid spit - huh.
‘Immigrant’,
‘Mail-order-bride’ of a mother
‘Mutt’ of a kid, ‘runt of the litter’
Not white enough not brown enough either
There's no light at the end of the tunnel
There’s a spot light on a microphone
A stage
with my name
written all over it
Riddled with second generation understanding
Of how cruel the word home can be
A protest. A megaphone.
A pipe dream,
A pipe dream i’m swinging in the rioting
Watch me now, how I’m dancing
This is my favourite song
Revolutions drum
I know all these words and i sing them perfectly
I broke my jaw on this rhetoric that left me starving to feel
Maybe i’m still beautiful, now with a mouth like a shotgun
They don’t know what I'm about to become, huh?
Swinging haymakers like i’m Mundine,
Even if we
kiss their feet
They will always
Hate us
No matter how progressive we think we are it’s still patronising
Our stories aren't celebrated no matter how much pity is given
A chorus of cicadas are still white noise
We paint on our faces to smile,
Might as well bleed out our melanin
Every moisturiser in the Philippines contains bleach
Oh how long this narrative of polluting beauty
It could be a fluke that we made it this far
It is also magic that we are still here
You’ve got to keep going, bloody knuckled, broken ribs
I’ll hold your fist up, even in the midst of this
Life is the prize,
Life! is the prize.
Keep breathing, keep swinging
When the bell sounds,
The fight has just begun