Example of note written by a conjuror:
We emerged from the ruins and became
nondescript sages whose banality may yield
the extraordinary adventure we’ve been
preparing for since our first noises as newborns.
Note on text:
The Conjurors perfected the art of saying nothing
with the greatest number of words.
They gradually vanished, if they were ever there.
In the beginning they wrote messages
to the world on scraps of paper.
A local newspaper provided the only
documentation of their existence, when,
in 2005, someone wrote a rejoinder
in the classified section: “Thank you, C.S.”
Of course, this C.S. could refer to a person
and not a group of renegade, mediocre poets
who haven’t done a damn thing since then.
I collected thirty-seven of their notes
and have yet to develop what you might call an affinity
for their brand of rubbish. As you can see
they have been largely forgotten.
This city is white
as if it had not been built on brown bones,
as if civilization had sprung easily from beneath Cook’s colonial collar
to flourish here instantly on the coast,
over the ochre and blue-green shore.
Now it bustles sunburn and silk ties,
epilipetic with traffic and mirrored sky-scratchers.
No one looks up or down.
There is no busker’s hope, no grit along the harbor,
no homeless hunger sleeping beneath the snowless sky,
only this proud commute
of sandaled feet over southern streets,
urgent, helpless against the sea.
Where are the starving poets,
the stink of dreams unfurled in this adolescent town?
Where was Sydney when the Beats were dying?
The city wants the light, it wants the song
of more ancient bricks over more ancient bones.
The gold rush is gone,
but it needs to believe it’s own postcard,
knowing that no one suffers
like they suffer up north.
You’ve always loved coffee,
late night coffee, dripped hot
from gaping plastic pots.
I watched you drink cup after cup
peeling back creamer lids,
emptying sugar packets
one by one so wild eyed,
unwilling to miss a single moment.
Around you I stayed wide awake without caffiene,
that thin brown dream,
desire the buzz unrecognized.
My hands kept stealing back to wrap around
the warm porcelain of your mug, how I wanted that sweetness
beside me, we watched night
peeling back into day.
I drink coffee now.
I want to be drinking it with you.
dawn arrived
like an old cowboy dragging into town,
whip-thin and alone.
Asking Miss Kitty is this seat taken
before sliding in for another shot of whiskey.
Already the fog in the fields is gone,
the dew hanging on the first tomatoes is turning crimson.
The world has been set in motion,
the sun a tumbleweed on dusty streets,
that cowboy with his buckskin face
has checked each bullet in his gun.
Now I sing the oldest song:
my man done treat me wrong.
Where’s the one to treat me right,
who won’t drink or cheat or fight?
My man done treat me wrong,
owes me money and leads me along,
squeezed my heart until it bled.
But you bought me milk and bread,
you spent weeks writing me a song
that I listened to as I lay in bed.
We stayed up and talked all night,
now I don’t know where you belong.
You held me close, you held me tight,
when we pitched headfirst off a sled.
New moon like a black cherry,
pomegranate in her hair.
It seems we can’t help but harm
the world and each other.
Her eyes are filling with wind-swept snow.
Hawks are nesting in trees all around us.
I am renewed upon the crown of her belly.
New moon like a black cherry,
pomegranate in her hair.
the other day along the river
i saw a deer
like the scent of my lovers pillow.
sumac berries are the cut open
crisp blue sky
i have found buckshot in my worries.
i have been hunting a song of myself
so long that
i no longer remember the taste of my skin, the sharpness of snow.
The night you lit my hair on fire
we fell asleep side by side,
three in a bed, holding hands.
Already wearing pajamas beneath our clothes,
we were soldiers in winter
shoulder to shoulder. Sister and brothers.
We went to bed, fell asleep, woke up,
our feet tangled. We got dressed, cross at consciousness,
angry at the dawn that would carry us apart.
the universe hums along, to the song of crickets,
beneath my feet the grinding snow growns
as i try to move softly enough to here the choir of stars.
i want it to be spring time.
drunk shouting poetry into the night,
my words are torpedo tongues of wine
making the stars drunk, loader.
rain would drum against my eyelids
like an umbrella
and the drops of rain would dance
in the lights of night.
like a bear wondering between moments of hibernation
i too will scratch at the clear river
trying to get at the pink fleshed fish
suspended in time, unrequited.
i want to write love poetry, like sweet lemons
but these images of a war, i wake up with,
are like a rusted river seen through moss covered trees,
the hum is in the electric cables, and my veins.
We are poor passing facts 