Solid Citizens

Solid Citizens are the people who said nothing against the war in Vietnam and now say nothing about the war in Iraq, the proposed war in Iran, the mandatory detention of refugees ... all that ... and they voted for John Howard in 1996, 1999, 2001 and 2004. John Howard just celebrated having been our Prime Minister for ten awful years. Some of us see no cause for celebration. Are you "relaxed and comfortable" in the police state of Australia?

Fenced off
From unpleasant realities
Suffocating
On indoor air
Regular meals
Boiled cabbage
Grilled sausages
Mashed potato
And always pudding
Only the custard
Changes colour

Tea at four
Large white buns
Puffy
Sticky topped in pink

Hemmed in
By narrow views
Cocooned in green grass
White paint
In forty years
Nothing has grown
In this garden
Above three centimetres

Doyens of respectability
Accept without question
Everything printed
In the Courier Mail

Paid the insurance
With nothing to collect
Contribute only their compliance

Up by seven
With the smell of bacon
Bed by nine
Cocoa frothing
Homogenised milk
Floral tea service
That hasn’t chipped
Since their wedding day

Still believing in Eisenhower
Menzies
Curtin
A method act of Methodism
In training for old age
Since birth

Now reaching out
For their true vocation
Disconcertingly comfortable
Ready to die
Innocent
Incoherent

Bardon 1995