Smoke Encrypted Whispers (2 page)

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Authors: Samuel Wagan Watson

Tags: #Poetry/English Irish Scottish Welsh

BOOK: Smoke Encrypted Whispers
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new farm is closed
the ex-muse is on her way home for good
to the walls of stale inspiration
her little boy in tow
while a lone figure of the shadows he has cast
stands in the doorway of an upstairs balcony, waiting
rain falls of this morning
cleanse the streets of the valley
water upon arduous attempts to dream
this rain is his last witness
as the car is packed
typewriter and clothes await the still room across town
yet, his smell will linger for some time in the halls
and it has been quiet
and there will be nothing good to come
of his presence here
and there is no love poem preserve,
goodbye magnesium girl
the debate has faded
with the feelings of eternity
drowned in the misguidings of gringos and dingos
the typewriter waits, a patient mistress
he says goodbye finally to the emptiness
darkness ever and always faithful
but in the surrendering there is solace
and the last parody in this passing is conducted
he locks the door and hangs a sign out-front
NEW FARM IS CLOSED
white stucco dreaming
sprinkled in the happy dark of my mind
is early childhood and black humour
white stucco dreaming
and a black labrador
an orange and black panel-van
called the ‘black banana'
with twenty blackfellas hanging out the back
blasting through the white stucco umbilical
of a working class tribe
front yards studded with old black tyres
that became mutant swans overnight
attacked with a cane knife and a bad white paint job
white stucco dreaming
and snakes that morphed into nylon hoses at the terror
of Mum's scorn
snakes whose cool venom we sprayed onto the white stucco,
temporarily blushing it pink
amid an atmosphere of Saturday morning grass cuttings
and flirtatious melodies of ice-cream trucks
that echoed through little black minds
and sent the labrador insane
chocolate hand prints like dreamtime fraud
laid across white stucco
and mud cakes on the camp stove
that just made Dad see black
no tree safe from treehouse sprawl
and the police cars that crawled up and down the back streets,
peering into our white stucco cocoon
wishing they were with us
the crooked men
my Dad straightened out the crooked men
in the old laundry shed
above the fishing gear and jars of nuts and bolts
where on a rack
their naked, twisted forms did hang
from the neck
body hair like pine-needles
restrained by welded g-clamps
and steel-trap teeth
hydraulic arms and pullies
and a shiny drip-tray on the floor
to catch the expelled, blackened hate
sometimes eight sometimes ten
the crooked men
with faces like prunes
tattoos and scars
and tongues that could no longer work
but engulfed by obscenities
as they leaked night and day
in that old laundry shed
and they were not grateful
or ungrateful
the crooked men
nor were they in debt to my father
and his amazing rack
in these days when their hate
would trickle through my backyard haven
drowning the smells of Saturday afternoon
and freshly cut grass
and the yap of the labrador
and innocence lost
to the crooked men
brown water looting
hardly stopping to think
that adults can hurt you
we'd wander the mudflats alone—
brown water looting
make-shift fishing poles
and mosquito song
for hours and hours
wandering
away from our parents
away,
looking for where the feral pigs slept
or where swamp wallabies crash through
and us, never thinking
about the kids who don't make it home
kids who were just like us,
innocent explorers
brown water looting
with no shoes, no money
no fear
just the eternity of the mudflat
the sun never setting
jetty nights
it was an arm that stretched over the mud and sharks
from under the song of the swaying pines in the darkness,
the night water fondles the pylons
as mullet dance in the cold blackness afraid of nothing
we too, walk against our curfew
we see the eyes under the jetty,
phosphorescence and ectoplasm
under the death of the floorboards
looking up from the muddy grave
stealing a glance at the clear cover of stars
a fishing boat drones somewhere out there on the water
and in the distance a buoy flashes red lights and green
and you suddenly feel the loneliness out there
that's where you can escape to
the smell of mashed potatoes and chops hang in the air
drags our attention back to the shoreline cottages
Ray Martin chatters somewhere in the glow of sixty watt lighting
we turn and face the clatter of dead wood
our lifeline home
and leave our jetty,
leave away the mystical squawks of curlew in the swamp
that eerie bleakness we came to love,
this innocence we behold
that we had nothing to fear but our parents' scorn
carefree
you'd never forget the pelicans
because it was their home too
and that occasional one who'd try and swallow your baited hook
while we cast out into an endless mould of brown and blue skin
sometimes catching our line in its enormous and clumsy wingspan
floating around the jetty constantly boasting that huge gullet
so close to the pylons covered in poison oyster shells
that waited for the bare flesh within our gait,
inviting our bare flesh to dance
Mum worried that we'd get sick from eating them
Dad saying the sewage from the caravan park
would sometimes flow near where we fished
and that the oysters bathed in it too
little buckets of a few bream
silver catch of a meal
and the persistent cats at our ankles
lapping up the smell
running up past the shop
a front window necropolis of stonefish in vegemite jars
suspended in a vault of clear alcoholic brine
still deadly in death
and us in bare feet all the time
three kids in stonefish-infested mud
playing Russian roulette—
one good pair of running shoes between us
deadman's mouth harp
walking along a bitumen shoulder
'round the witching hour
it comes through the darkness
an unwelcome companion
that levels the grass and foliage,
a whistle
like a crystal spear
cuts the stillness into fine pieces
a maiden carried in the wind
sultry, yet hollow,
a tune from a deadman's mouth harp
a cry that follows the night
chilled and evil
it echoes the little spirits in the breeze
black lips and diamond teeth
it strays beyond the ebony cover of sky
spat out of a deadman's mouth harp,
played over and over
a monotone symphony
from the tired beast
of damned and lonely eternity
a verse for the cheated
growing up on the southern fringe of the Sunshine Coast
we often heard adults rambling on about the local economy
and saw the bright plumage and wealth of tourists
those who came with an odd hunger for visitation
and soon left as tourists
some who copped the brunt of our youthful grievances
those buying postcards of pristine beaches
that were nowhere near us
and purchasing painted coral stolen from hundreds of miles away
and branded with the tag, MADE IN TAIWAN,
they arrived in their brand-new cars that sparkled
upon a strip of bitumen that we regarded as a petulant beast,
a highway that carried some of us away
forever
young and unaware of the finality of death
its greedy black claws lubricated on the nectar of broken dreams
my mate who had his licence for only a week
...the sister of a friend on a casual drive home
...an academic in the senior class, the world at her fingertips
...another mate taken on a motorbike
and a friend who ended up as a plaything for the monster
pulled from the wreckage screaming, fed on painkillers and nightmares
all of this and the tourists taking photos of the roadside crosses
thinking how fortunate and cool we kids looked in this haven
how carefree it must be approaching adulthood on the Sunshine Coast
and the recalcitrant animal
prepared to deliver us on our future paths of success
and to pick a few off on our way
the fatal garden
don't judge me by my skin
at 4.30am
under
the street-lit madness
black—white—yellow—red
all the people
of the spectrum,
like an arrangement of flower-show blossoms
peace is plausible
but
it seemed easier to create
a mockery
of the human condition
born
of immortal Greek philosophers
well, how immortal is it?
it didn't last long,
until the tulips and the roses
and snapdragons
and poppies
began slaughtering each other
the killing season
bitter harvests:
spring
summer
autumn
winter
and
escape
radio thick blood
I sit in my room
as they advise
that another united nations envoy
has been captured to the shock of their country
by another country
another suffering
we kill a few of theirs
so they kill a few of ours
and the beers won't pour all night
but five dollars will get you a look
at the darkside
in all our hearts
to a charlie parker tune
and even he had his own hell
that we're still looking after here
when someone else visited china
people committed to bring about change in chile
and the beer is going down twice as fast
but the contraband didn't even make it past airport security
and someone praises botulism in our hemisphere
and radio thick blood
while I just sit here and get narrow
like a crowd at the bullfights
where hemingway made it,
approaching the dregs like a slow dawn,
tears inconceivable
midnight's boxer
midnight's boxer he has become
that the ghosts from the ‘tents' of long-ago pay homage
memories that fill a boardinghouse room
busted knuckles soothed endlessly with goanna oil
and on the soul, scars that can't
stories in his eyes
could have been an olympian
try and extract the truth from his fists,
although
he wouldn't know how to sink in the boot
a tender honour picked up off the battlefields of assimilation
midnight's boxer he has become
fifty-seven-year-old gas tank that can't see empty
blackened skin like blackening memory
and hard
plain hard,
the urecognised pillar of his mob
and
after midnight has gone
way gone
and his time is over
will he be missed
and his triumphs mentioned,
midnight's boxer he has become
surgery music
they're always cooking bacon in the cancer ward
it's tuesday
and head injuries last
until monday
but they're still cooking bacon on a patient's bed
a face blistered in fat
as screams reign unchallenged
until the surgery music
softens all
but the few
few to die
few to live
few to cry
and darkness takes care of the rest
few to die
to feast on the bacon with death
eyes to eat with
hands to choke
white sheets to catch pain
soaked in purity on a stick
and a corner in which to breathe

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