POLICE STATE Crits #1

Today is the 80th anniversary of the first day of the World War Two battle which lead to the fall of Singapore.

Singapore fell because much larger British forces could not accurately assess either the size of the enemy or the nature of the British ruled terrain through which the enemy travelled. The British forces couldn’t even talk with each other.

They couldn’t live in The Word. So they lost.

Today my life in the police state of Victoria is in ruins like so many other lives here. That never would have happened if people in Terra Nullius could talk with each other instead of habitually denying each other the basic act of recognition as human beings.

This morning I wrote the poem below for three of them. A trinity. At the end of a service last Sunday to celebrate the 1953 coronation attended by my grandfather Ralph Blanchard and his wife Doris, I remember them in their doorway with their backs to me.

They are human beings without the time to really talk with me. Somewhat powerless. A modern and ancient police state disease. Scribes. Pharisees. Teachers. Doctors. Parents. Priests.

Dear Very Reverend Cannonless Glenn Helen Dean.

I am not scared of God.

But I am scared of evil.

In my words, I still feel free.

You seem proud or scared

or somehow locked

out of talking with me,

but in These Words

I still feel free.

Geoff Fox, 8th February, 2022, Terra Nullius