If you’ve heard of me it was a rumour.

I have never been distinguished

in the foreground or against a backdrop

and the beggars are out in force tonight

as I am in the cut-glass air

on the street where tables flourish on footpaths

and blue smoke rises like the end of thought.
Here, where the lost seek restitution

and the monied, overheard, can plot

a new assault on real estate,

I drift and sometimes take a seat

as unoccupied as a vacant wish,

and lift a lighter to a cigarette,

the flame as brief as an epitaph.
Being incognito and unknown

the options dictate I should sit,

my prowl from place to another place

cruelling a clung-to outside hope

that one who imagines me may stop

knowing to lose the sense of the street

is to lose the appetite for life.

This poem first appeared in The Apparition At Large, Black Pepper, 2006.