Free Smoke Encrypted Whispers by Samuel Wagan Watson

ghosts of boundary street
    New year’s day, 2003. The sun was loud, but as bland as yesterday, last year, 2002AD. In the early postmeridian hours, the temperature took advantage of the deserted streets, spirit-dancing inches above the bitumen, a seductive helix that undulated on the horizon, like an exotic dancer, you can look ... but you can’t touch! And the breeze was curt, as scarce as traffic on this public holiday. Houses side by side vibrated ever so gently. The lizard rhythms of lounging bodies behind screen doors, lethargic organic masses that slither, physically and emotionally depleted in the lull of celebrations. The siesta of new year’s day ... the only moment on the Australian social calendar when every citizen is almost equal; hungover we are united! Trekking down Boundary Street, West End, Brisbane, the residue of Moet on my forehead, the cinder of last year’s resolutions in my scalp. I needed coffee to pull me up as the bitumen pulled me down. One litre of milk was going to cost me 10% extra for wisdom: a public holiday surcharge worth the returns of a frown. When suddenly my ears popped! A lone shark hooked the rise in front of me, tearing through the glutinous skin of Dreamtime and Earth, scattering the wings of those haze-angels with a high-octane Beowulf growl. Veering past me, I did not wave, because none of the passengers wore a face—expressionless. Just white linoleum wrapped from foreheads to jowls. I stared down into the puddle in the gutter. It was decorated with a petrol-based rainbow. My reflection was disappointing. I hadn’t changed since last year. But if I’d stayed long enough, my reflection might vary.Oil takes longer to evaporate. The litter in the street ruffled briefly in the car’s wake. There was a saunter of hooves from synthetic leviathans. A cool vent of air stroked my ankles as the car disappeared into a solar flare on the next rise. The silt of silence resettled.
    empty coffee cups
    blown across the gutter
    song of city ghosts

dog tired tune
    Maroon tentacles languished upon a surface pledged for human trampling. Veneer walls held up ceiling that was originally pearl before the tincture of cigarettes invaded it. A window hampered by vintage blinds was reinforced with a lifeless drape of lace curtain. Natural light was prohibited, but traffic and insect noise presented itself to the room at unregulated intervals. For what should have been a sterile environment, it lay strewn with the bric-a-brac of a forgotten fashion. A gang of string instruments, rudely piled against a wall, necks sprained and bellies bloated. Grey soot-caked frets smiled dog-teeth ivory. And as sleeping giants are portrayed, a grossly inflated antique television was the most formidable furnishing of the room. It wept an odour of electrocuted dust through aged vacuum technology. He was placed in the opposing corner: the Proprietor. An old man of tubes, frail body commissioned by synthetic vines. The ruins of a cursed temple outwitted by a jungle of life-support equipment. The rhythmic portions of his machine-aided breath sang in unison to the cricket-beat of the excluded dusk air.
    broken guitar string
    falling upon the floor
    makes little music

when I crossed the ditch...
    my arrival in Aotearoa, Wellington, New Zealand : I checked into a room at Booklovers B&B, positioned in the hills above a turquoise harbour. A cable-car rattled past and the world shook, and then a radio spluttered, ‘the second Gulf War has begun...’
    Nothing could have prepared me for the marae. Amongst a group of visitors waiting some distance from a great hall of wood carvings, wondering all the time what the Maori elders would do with me. Large pines towered in the hills around us and poles carved in respected totems studded the landscape, sentinels of an old, quiet spirit. A young woman emerged from the marae calling, wailing, and as a group our footsteps automatically carried on her haunting