On the Western Australian State Government's Refusal to Effectively Protect Julimar 'State Forest' from the Threat of Mining (and other exploitation)

 

Herald Patches

 

(i) 2024: now

 

The minister for environment considers

Julimar forest’s availability for mining

 

            more important than its preservation.

            The chief executive officer of Chalice

 

couldn’t agree more, and praises

the official refusal to ‘sterilise’

 

            the forest’s ‘potential’. This is not

            surrealism but a radical departure

 

from the unconscious. There is violence

in city offices that spills out beyond

 

            low maintenance office plants, spills

            into the forest where fewer images

 

move as marsupials, lift as cockatoos.

Rhythm heralds consciousness.

 

 

(ii) 2019: prior

 

Rhythm heralds consciousness.

We seed an awareness in the vibrissae.

 

            Each livid patch, each resounding itch

            brings attention to the greater body.

 

One appears, then others. They will

scratch till the skin is damaged

 

            beyond repair. Make holes that can’t heal.

            A full scale ‘green’ battery industry

 

charges the assault. It’s a psychology

that goes back years. Take the 2019

 

            Indo-Pacific Defence Conference

            held at Crown Towers in ‘Perth’,

 

with a keynote on ‘defence industry

applications for WA's battery

 

            minerals and resources expertise’.

            ‘Green’ revolution destroying

 

all it contacts then making atopic collapse.

A minister’s or miner’s dream journal.

 

            A billionaire’s spacewalking view

            of Earth. A dermatologist’s similitude.

 

 

(iii) now unto ‘the future’

 

A dermatologist’s similitude.

Lost trees heaped for burning

 

            when up on the rise the house

            of the Big Whites overheats.

 

Largesse in the ore. Workers’

accommodation. Minesite infra-

 

            structure heralding State sanction.

            Words on the signs or the signs

 

themselves can be changed ipso facto.

Skill set. Application. Blue pencilled,

 

            each patch is forgotten. Bubble chart

            of raw data. Species lists. Red list data.

 

Environmental scientists, technicians,

supervisors, co-ordinators: on payrolls.

 

            Higher education for the conscious

            and unconscious. Illustrators.

 

Consumers. And open cut or under-

grounded into  the discursive,

 

            the body map

            is drilled into place.

 

 

            John Kinsella

 

 

On Witnessing With Many Others the Destruction of Remaining Bushland Alongside Malvolio Road, Coolbellup

A New Ode to Westralia: Anthem for All Future Sporting Events

The state is killing our souls

The state has murdered the people — some they murder over and over

The state has deployed vicious antibodies to kill the good cells

            and let the infection thrive

The state has equated work with destruction and manipulated 

             the outcome — remember, the state has no love for unions.

The state deployed its shock troops who watched on as poems were yelled

            at them, their commander marshalling attitude, saying: how can we

            shut this one up? Poets of the world, take notice. They will close

            you down the moment you break free of your anthologies,

            your safety in pages of literary journals, the comforts

            of award nights.

The state shapes itself out of the dust rising from underforest

            which is its soul exposed to a caustic, toxic atmosphere

            made by so many other such actions of malice — the shape

            is cartoonish to start with, then like a Hollywood effect

            then just terrifying ectoplasm feeding on sap and blood and grit.

The state chips and mulches because it has heard rumours of Plato’s

            theory of forms and thinks it needs a new translation full of local

            business inflection, full of their own brand of ‘civilisation’.

The state has no intention of letting traditional owners maintain 

            traditional places of worship of culture of belonging — it’s always 

            been about the twin poles of denial and deletion.

The state has reservoirs of species names and the odd pressed sample

            of a flower they wish only to remain as a Latin name and 

            a collectible, gathering in worth, which is the essence of market 

            economics, rolling on through the bushland with gung-ho 

            in-your-face finality.

The state wants you to gasp as the tall tree cracks and is brought down fast,

            the pair of tawny frogmouths lifting to nowhere, dazzled by daylight.

            John Kinsella