Smoke Encrypted Whispers (4 page)

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Authors: Samuel Wagan Watson

Tags: #Poetry/English Irish Scottish Welsh

BOOK: Smoke Encrypted Whispers
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cheap white-goods at the dreamtime sale
if only the alloy-winged angels could perform better
and lift Uluru; a site with grandeur
the neolithic additive missing from that seventh wonder of the world expo,
under the arms of a neon goddess, under the hammer in London,
murderers turning trustees
a possession from a death estate
maybe flogged off to the sweet seduction of yen
to sit in the halls of a Swiss bank
or be paraded around Paris' Left Bank
where the natives believe
that art breathed for the first time;
culture, bohemian and bare and maybe brutal
and how the critics neglect the Rubenesque roundness of a bora-ring
unfolded to an academia of art
yes, that pure soil in front of you
the dealers in Manhattan lay back and vomit
they're the genius behind dot paintings and ochre hand prints
rattling studios from the East Side to the Village
and across the ass of designer jeans
porcelain dolls from Soho wanting a part in it so bad
as the same scene discards their shells upon the catwalks
like in the land of the original Dreaming
comatose totems litter the landscape
bargains and half-truths simmer over authenticity
copyright and copious character assassination on the menu
sacred dances available out of the yellow pages
and
cheap white-goods at the Dreamtime sale!
the mosquito room
a melody on the edge
of monotone madness
rampant
unstoppable
uncompromising
in the mosquito room
it knows not an end
out of respect for the thunder
it does not pause
for the seductive summer rains,
millions of black, micro-winged demons
playing violins at break-neck speed
zipping through the air
malicious
flirtatious
at home
in the mosquito room
mudflat
dried up and cracked
remnants
of prehistoric reptile scales
huge and menacing,
a chocolate flesh
that twists along the shores of the wetland
—but waiting for the veil of the incoming tide
is the monster
content when cold and hungry for
the mass that rolls with the current
it never sleeps
it starts
it starts
from the darkness of mangrove dreaming
unable to surrender to time,
later stalked in death,
the stoic's domain is the open marshland
under a red sky looming
where the arthritic bones refuse to bend
broken in the blatant malice of the elements,
and even then
its dignity is only served
by the chilling shrieks of stormbirds
astride crumbling limbs
whose space is a waiting graveyard
and valuable a wooden tear
where no mercy spills from the thousands
of lush, green enveloping peers,
so laden with life
so unsparing
that no two trees help one another
amid the birth and dying cycle of this wetland
if only it could speak
and touch human ears
someone may then appreciate
the frozen insanity
that accompanies
the greying presence
of a decaying mangrove tree
1986
he pays no heed to the thunder god
yet he is wary and tired
'cause you see funny things out here
as the heat gets you,
twigs snapping behind him
when suddenly in some places the breeze just stops!
all his hair stands to attention
this black man from a northern people
whose world has nothing to do
with the road ripping through
the wetland
but he is sensitive
is conscious
with dealings and bills
and mouths to feed,
a witness to the machines eating the tea-tree
clawing the soil
burning this patch of bush
for someone else's lust of bitumen and noise
well, he just has to keep moving
despite the dark shadows of ochre and skin
that tempt the mind's eye to ponder
what was
and never may be
again
boondall wetlands
poem 9
how do you know?
that the mud doesn't feel the pain
of your weight upon its resting place
how do you know?
like the snake that rushes before your feet
and you the only audience
a gift only for your eyes
from the old people
maybe?
how do you know?
the tree that moves in the breeze
its branches caressing your head
maybe a touch of recognition?
maybe?
how do we know that this could be
our final resting place?
or sacred to someone else
but how can you tell?
is it voices or wind that pushes
the afternoon tide?
does your shadow talk to the land
or is it just a shroud of light?
are we asking the right questions?
and can they only be answered here on the
wetlands?
are the answers here for our blindness
or was blindness the only answer
our ears were content with?
once was a rifle range
all that remains now is dirt
always dirt
where so many years ago
adventurous young would fill it with lead
and heat
for the sovereign
eyes fixed in the cross-hairs of victory
on foreign soil
and something called honour
but this is also where
on the muddy banks of the creek
a father shared some final moments
with his little boy
and advised him to watch the mystical water
to wait, and never shed a tear
while his father travels away to fight the Boers
in a land called Africa
finally the man took his carbine rifle
fired several shots into some distant mounds of
earth
the child's frame jolting with every hideous blast
until this father was content
ready for the long haul
trying to ignore the tears in his little boy's eyes
watch the tide my son
and wait for me to return
upon a distant tide I will be home
but until then my son
wait
and watch the tide...
the kabul manifest
there is no stopping
the brutal freight-train of pure muscle
that manipulates billai dhagun
the likes of kabul
a wise old man
the last of the great contortionists
upon a dogmatic path
where many have tried to cross
to capture
to thwart
the shape-shifting
shedding skin
that comes with the immortality
that is kabul
unpredictable in his sudden appearance
disrespectful to the laws of gravity
yellow eyes the dominion
and has kept the old one's language
his song of slither through the grass
constantly dreaming without horizon or
parameter
uncompromising his force to the marsh
loathing at human tramples
waiting for the hunt at dusk
free in billai dhagun
and honest to his foe
endless in campaigns
the almighty kabul...
hotel bone
the job
B R Dionysius knocks on my window one morning
flesh on glass seems to create its own separate taste
upon the middle-eastern-mayhem blasting from a radio somewhere
in the vicinity of this maze
and I almost mistake the tapping for someone else;
asking me to move my car again
people being restless,
restless, restless
into the Ramadhan air
and my dreamtime has little chance
of getting me into
that
party
but B R is present now
to offer me an assignment,
some cash and more cred.
we sit in my mouse-trap kitchen, my boardinghouse atmosphere,
nothing short of a Casbah
as we gesture and negotiate the terms of a future poetry reading
with the flair of African mercenaries
over drinks out of tainted crystal
it reminds me of the reason
for why I came here in the first place
and B R with his good vibes
as always
neglecting to comment on the ectoplasmic-urine of this stucco shell;
this chasm for my reinvention
taking it day by day
and just accepting it,
as a job.
hotel bone
the street resembles a neck
from a wayward guitar
with Hotel Bone sitting idle on a vein,
wedged between two frets
where the bad tunes can reach her
these white stucco walls, I imagine, once carried a vision of pearl
now a gourd for asylum seekers
Iraqi, Indonesian, Sri Lankan
and one crazy Aboriginal ... who lives with a typewriter
but not with the brevity of a visa on my head; no,
my longevity was guaranteed before I was born
in the 1967 referendum
the freedom to practice the voodoo of semantics
within the marrow of Hotel Bone
existence only 2 minutes walk
from some of the best latte lounges in the city
yet, white faces don't come down here
until they've been classified unfit for duty
no longer permitted upon the chorus line
of the cappuccino song
where multi-culturalism is in an airline format
first-class, business and economy seating
but those of us who submit to the chance of mystery-flights
end up on the tar, of Hotel Bone
a haven from Saddam, Suharto, the Tamil Tigers
and One Nation
this Hotel Bone;
it is hard
it is reachable
it is home
when dogs gamble
lying on the floor
with its concrete and ammonia tongue
reaching Charles Bukowski, “Living On Luck”
my split-level mind and its contradictory ghosts
at once condemning his ribald desires of flesh
and praising the simplified schematics of his Richard Nixon landscapes,
I've placed a block of cheese on my doorstep
and the ants are drawn to it,
I have no couch to lie on and read
thus, the ants attack my flesh
and I reciprocate, squashing them between my fingers
to produce a gasoline inspired perfume,
the smell of victory
some guy is at it, upstairs, screaming at an accomplice
but between breaths he allows the other tenants movement
and loads a fresh tirade into the breach
under the smoggy glow of tube lighting
frozen images of dogs playing poker
accommodating the warm reception
of a surprise attack
from within the whites of their eyes
tambourines tied to their feet
(untitled)
the
late shift erupts;
Greek boys in turbo-fitted 4s
open the back streets
of bitumen lines built for mice
a gear-crunching
nightscape howl
simultaneously
embraced and ejected
into the dire congestion of the city's spectral pitch
like the fading trumpet oratorio
of an emphysema-riddled jazz musician
bone yard, south brisbane
the swings in the Musgrave Park night
rattle a morose and deserted song
throwing their voices
silhouettes across an abandoned canvas
a jungle-gym resembles the half sunken remains
of a prehistoric beast
ribcage reaching for the moonlight
or an arthritic fist
frozen in protest
the stoic in this wilderness
feeding on the scraps of light
tossed down from the pedestals
of the city's neon gods.
itinerant blues
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
From
Four Quartets
by T.S. Eliot
cold storage
bussed it into Mitchell
from out of nowhere
and found it on ice
to the horizon line
a smothering layer of cold political rhetoric
the hopeless arguments of history palpitating
gently into the cracks
of stoneware earth
hurting
is the season here in the bush
and winter is the additive that comes with it,
the storm shutters are up—
every second store closed or having a closing-down sale
the hunger pains of the city end here
the spirits are being sucked away into this gas-pipeline
as the Beast just keeps taking ... tak
ing ... taking...
black and white struggle to reconcile
slashing their own bloodlines
the kids packed off to the Big Smoke
where all the opportunities now manifest
a rainbow-serpent dormant on cryogenic dreams
chilling over into the landscape
while a secret war is fueled on urban innuendo
as a country-town loses another generation of its young
to the lust of the city
a main street void
of the laughter of its children

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