Samuel Wagan Watson

I can't speak my grandmother's tongue and I've never been on my grandfather's land,
I've travelled here and I've travelled there,
my culture replicated in government-funded laboratories;
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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
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the pyromaniacs of the gods were kicking it
into that desert sunset
upon a fire pink, burner-blue horizon line
blossoms cherry red
...

for David Gilbey

fire-engine flash of fox pelt
and a plume of tail
...

I remember construction cranes like herds of frozen praying-mantis, high on the steamy Bjelke-Petersen plateau above a brown snake-coiled river. It was from this view, at the age of 4, that I learnt to read the columns of Brisbane city.
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Sprinkled in the happy dark of my mind
Is early childhood and black humour
White stucco dreaming
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"the journey IS the destination"
a quote from a great traveller
Brisbane is a small city, but that's OK . . . 'cause I don't need much room to move . .
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My brothers once showed me the bounty that could be had in bait nets / we were able to catch garfish / bills like half-baked marlin / the rounded quill with a fluorescent orange head; pencil fish, that's what the old diggers called them,
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Midnight's boxer He has become
That the ghosts from the ‘tents' of long-ago pay homage
Memories that fill a boarding-house room,
Busted knuckles soothed endlessly with goanna oil
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For Rhan . . . wherever you are, Brother, I pray your path is a good one and without crossroads . . .
It was a dark and stormy night of clichés! The rain coming down, drowning the shadows, and my motley crew, well, that hotel room just couldn't hold us.
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He had L O V E tattooed across his clenched right fist, followed by P O E M, etched in a vagabond's quill, across the other LOVE POEM. And with these fists coming at you in unison, you copped a taste of his, LOVE POEM. He stalked the crooked lines of this world,
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It's the Lucky Country's closet; a dark interior with frontier skeletons. Whirly-winds run rampant, spawning red-sand mandalas of chaos. These frenetic twisters find easy prey on ochre-kissed Dorothys, carrying them off to Parallel Oz. In Parallel Oz,
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I can't sleep here, on this Wiradjuri land; upon this hill of learning. Awake until the sun comes up and the morose voices subside; the dawn light blades whispers back into the creases of scarred country. I can't sleep here, in the writers centre;
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Fire-engine flash of fox pelt
And a plume of tail
Fluffy . . . like some oil-well ablaze on a Gulf War postcard
And from the body
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"The call of the strange bird is heard
on the pipe of the breathing floor;
so high will become the bushels of wheat
that man will cannibalise his fellow man . . ."
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Today, I am the caretaker for one of Brisbane's oldest evils; the retired gaol of Boggo Road. There are still a few walls, towers and buildings,
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Stand back . . . Keep your body and hands away from the bars . . . The bars, the frets; of the instruments that played with the dark . . . Stand back . . .
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Our Elders are well-acquainted with the Unlucky,
And they acknowledge Death by his sign,
Don't cross a knife and fork on the kitchen table
'Cause you're just inviting the Devil to dine,
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"You talk about terror . . . I been terrorized all my days!"
from ‘Terrorized' by Mr Willie King, Alabama Blues Legend (1943-2009)
All the signs read, SMILE . . .
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it comes to that morning
when finally you realise: it's all going to collapse

there is a conclusion that's yet to be seen
while loose ends are stacking high to a volatile degree

eyes peering through sun-kissed slits
at a landscape bathing in a varnish of itinerant blue
as if the sky has reminded the earth of loneliness
and the old days of communion

a dawn when gamblers get slapped into remission
and the ball starts rolling again with rogue impetus

time to move and abandon what is built
and may later bleed
after days and nights of bargaining into the mirror's subversion

as the only muse that serenades you
is a computer generated image

wishing to advise
you have limited credit to make this call…
...