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    Smoke Encrypted Whispers
    Smoke Encrypted Whispers
    Smoke Encrypted Whispers
    Ebook159 pages1 hour

    Smoke Encrypted Whispers

    By Samuel Wagan Watson

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    About this ebook

    These poems pulse with the language and images of a mangrove-lined river city, the beckoning highway, the just-glimpsed muse, the tug of childhood and restless ancestors. For the first time Samuel Wagan Watson's poetry has been collected into this stunning volume, which includes a final section of all new work.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of Queensland Press
    Release dateJul 1, 2004
    ISBN9780702250446
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      Book preview

      Smoke Encrypted Whispers - Samuel Wagan Watson

      Copyright

      smoke encrypted whispers

      Samuel Wagan Watson, born 1972, is of Bundjalung, BirriGubba, German, Scottish and Irish descent. He lives in his childhood domain of Brisbane, but still feels the lure from time to time of his teenage stomping grounds of the Sunshine Coast. He has worked as a door-to-door salesman, a public relations officer, fraud investigator, graphic artist, law clerk, film technician, actor, and arts bureaucrat.

      His first collection of poetry of muse, meandering and midnight won the 1999 David Unaipon prize for unpublished Indigenous writers. In 2001, he published a collection of ‘road poems’ titled itinerant blues and a chapbook ‘hotel bone’ for Vagabond Press. He is also the co-author of the award-winning website, ‘blackfellas, whitefellas, wetlands’. In 2003 Samuel toured throughout Australia, New Zealand and Berlin.

      acknowledgments

      Several of the poems in the new section, ‘Smoke Encrypted Whispers’, appeared in Heat and Southerly.

      of muse, meandering and midnight

      a prelude

      dropping a knife

      on one’s foot

      is nothing like

      dropping tequila

      on one’s tongue

      yet

      her floral dress

      begged me to...

      whereas the night

      well,

      it just stayed outside

      magnesium girl

      I was kissing the girl

      with magnesium breath,

      all over me

      her burning hot magnesium

      ahh to touch

      the boundaries of delight

      and pain

      for you only hurt those you can love

      when lust becomes a mercenary

      for the weak hearted of humanity

      the magnesium breath

      inviting me to her bowl of splinters

      nothing but the frozen tears of her last love

      picked up in the rain

      and our relationship,

      a shrouded threesome,

      death always being

      that silent partner

      oh that magnesium girl

      with the strawberry hair

      how my black flesh and rye once lingered

      to be one with you

      my magnesium girl

      after 2a.m.

      I wept along with the night

      two

      black

      hideous dimensions—

      myself and 3a.m.

      releasing a crystal tide of bottled insanity

      while the shadows mocked

      our embrace

      and from then on

      I knew that forever

      night

      would be my mistress

      back seat driver

      love me

      oh back seat driver

      love you

      into a state darkest under covers

      and wilful damage of day

      entice me

      oh back seat driver

      to the dove of peace

      maybe your bulldog tomorrow?

      with any luck from yesterday

      save me

      oh back seat driver

      from the bitterness

      of phobia waste

      and packages of human frost

      kill me

      oh back seat driver

      for an older audience at dawn

      and with my blood taken

      make a name for me

      nothing else matters...

      on the river

      it was a drive through the sleeping industrial giants

      and thirty minutes before a flight

      along Brisbane’s vein of union disputes

      to a secluded spot on the river’s edge

      with its cold sea breezes and dead things,

      we kissed

      and said goodbye

      discovering that we both had feelings for deserted factories

      and abandoned mechanical bits

      and for each other

      thirty minutes before a flight

      and two writers can’t find the words

      to ease the tearing of departure

      serenaded by a blow-torch on a rusting iron hulk upon the water

      grey smoke billowing from the old power station

      the landscape studded with electric fences and weeds

      her and I at home amongst it all

      we kissed

      and said goodbye

      waiting for the good man

      we kissed goodbye at the terminal

      and upon seeing you for the last time

      I felt the good man leaving,

      the good man that existed in the hotel room

      the good man that loved you across the table, linen and fine wines

      the good man that appreciated your perfume

      and ran his fingers gently through your hair

      catching in his rings as for you he listened

      for the laughter while resting in your breasts

      I felt the good man leaving

      as if I couldn’t convince him that I’d changed

      that you had made a difference

      and that I could breathe easy in the darkenss of early morning

      I felt the good man leaving

      and now

      I’ll be missing both of you

      raindrops fall in vain

      for Rebecca Edwards

      raindrops fall in vain

      and abuse

      the kindness of my soul

      I hear them landing outside,

      an audience to a short-lived affair

      continuum of vertigo, a song

      soothing,

      yet, absolute

      a spiral dance to an unwelcoming ground

      where they are of little regard

      but slaves and remedy to dry spirits

      that one can envy such courage to fall

      in the open

      and share their end

      alone

      chloe in the window box

      in the darkness

      it’s increasingly difficult to find the corkscrew

      and Chloe in the window box

      with that bottle of pinot noir

      or the memory of her

      that left six months ago

      and light no longer shining through

      her window

      where as a sentimental act

      we clasped and watched the stormbirds

      that no longer cross the shoreline

      Neptune no longer taunting

      peering through his transparent keyhole

      no more 2am’s

      cut out of the darkness with a corkscrew

      and as time stretches on

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