Blue Injustice

The lost men

Image by Daniel Schrader.

Can you hear the salient silence?
wait, wait, justice in waiting…
SPLASH
sepulchral hands reach up
breaching exigency from
some submerged glaucous grave
bOiLiNg pOiNt
and the sirens never sound
why would they?
the careless leviathan arms of
“the law”
verve shaped as venial
GUILT

Yet these balustrade boys were
never on trial, never banausic
!checkmate! suits
clad in cobalt blue, due to
SERVE
and protect, prognosticate
lyricists with lethal tongues
spouting panegyric lies
see how
they run to this precipice
the deep dive of hive
HATE
another gay man succumbs

Decades pass for perversions
of perversive acts of unjust
HOMOPHOBIA
a peregrination of bigotry
were they scared (no), of
gay pariahs?
as they wilted at cliff’s edge in
cavil handcuffs
EYES
turned a bastardized shade of
navy, guerilla gusto
seeing no carceral crime
only cadaverous plenipotentiary

Gyres of Lazarus, a redemptive
arc for eidetic echoessssssssss
atavistic screams still sever the
air, extolling no virtue nor
VERACITY
truth bows to KoWtOw
emptiness, shapeless victories
for the virulent end
of all those miraged men
yet the ice cold cases, spaces of
finality blame
burden one warranted word
POLICE.

Four guiltless decades
Denouement decorum act
Charge our charged anger

© Edward Swafford 2025

Graphic created by Harry Sinclair.

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From 1970 until 2010, gay men were murdered by “gangs”, many of the victims were thrown off cliffs at popular meeting spots along the Eastern and Northern coastline of Sydney.

The police response to these hate crime murders was appalling. Australian documentaries like Deep Water (2016) showcase the bigotry, the deception, and the cover-ups in the New South Wales police force.

While the official number of deaths is unknown, some public memorials erected by local councils estimate the toll to be as high as 88. Many of these murders were swept under the proverbial carpet by NSW police investigators (particularly in the 70s and 80s) and classed as cold cases from day one.

Out of sight, out of mind?

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*Originally published in The Howling Owl