30+
fictional
Thursday, November 15, 2012
3: 10 to the Dance Floor (Murder by a Pen)
Saturday, November 03, 2012
Infatuation
I accepted your offer to infuse myself with a cup of trivial joy
And with bites of of finger cookies left from last Halloween
Our souls embraced each other like a fly trapped in a spider web
I licked your youthful charm on the brim of my glass
You giggled, showing off your dimples; clothes wet but intact
And from your mouth, another proposition for another day
Monday, January 23, 2012
Kabar Angin di Sebuah Kafe
Konon katanya,
Hatiku memilihmu kerna rapuhmu
Kerna lirih liku jalanmu yang keliru
Terbuyar lamunku, ragumu,
Jadi laguku
Terbetik kabar,
Tiada hak kepemilikan hati
Yang menyanyi rona sara sendiri
Mau itu pun hanya tubuh mati
Yang hantunya meniti
Seolah ada
Ini pernyataannya:
Ketika jari menyentuh bilik jantungmu
Ia juga mengarang fabel lain
Agar matamu terbawa letih mengejar
Lalu terbang terenggut angin
Ayah sejatimu
Ini pertanyaannya:
Jika ketakhirauan lahir dari hirau,
Mengapa jiwaku kelu meragu?
Atau mungkin ini baru setengah jalan
Pasti berujung, pasrah terhenti
Lalu mati?
"Pasti begitu kan?" Tanya yang satu
Di luar masih gerimis, kopi sudah habis
"Kau ini. Tahu tapi pura-pura amnesia sinetronis!"
Yang satu lagi bergerak kepingin pipis
Sunday, February 06, 2011
If I could quit poetry, I would
who reads people’s faces
we hadn’t met for years,
one day, upon seeing me again,
he said, “Why? You’re a poet now?”
there was regret in his tone,
so obvious I felt it stung me
(I wonder which part of my face
had changed “poetically” for him
to say that)
it was two years ago
when I only had a thin chapbook
of eleven pieces of rubbish
I was, socially, ashamed of
while watching my students
struggling with their exams,
I wrote a poem about sea of
rickety tables and chairs
cumulated in desperation with
little fish (the students)
jumping crazily;
my colleague, who teaches
poetry, asked me a copy of
the rubbish, looking at me
with admiration
[subtext: ‘don’t you have better
things to do?’]
love poems, rubbish poems,
a poem about a left shoe
a longing
still I can’t stop wondering
where it could go wrong
about being a poet
then, heartbroken poems,
why love seems so difficult
we’re sick of it if it’s too much
go crazy if it’s too little
too tiring but it seems like
we never really learn from
that that creates panic and tears
poems that cut –
an idea too un-American
they go against what my
creative writing professor said
“a good poem should end with
‘a light coming through the blinding.’
what do you call a poem that causes
its readers to jump to the river?”
I don’t know,
Gloomy Sunday?
chatting over the messenger with
a girl-friend of mine at dawn
basically killing each other with
mockery and dirty jokes,
guys around the globe, hair,
chests, and parodied love-making
rituals, joyfully, so it seemed
then at noon a call woke me
the same girl, weeping,
brokenhearted, telling me this
Fatal Attraction-ish thing
she’d just done in the name of
love
things like this
Aristotelian tragedy / comedy
in contemporary face –
a slanted mirror
if a poem can break, can another
mend? I know a couple can
not mine, I don’t know what mine
can or cannot do; I know how some
of yours are
then there’s Ted and Sylvia,
theirs are too fast, too burning,
deadly
on and off the paper
no, let's not be Sylvia and Ted,
or anyone with such
ammunition
is it so ill-fated to be a poet?
and then, in the shower just now
I remembered an idea of a poem:
cigarettes and me –
our 'relationship' – how it feels
smooth, certain, and everlasting
kind of on and off but
everlasting
‘would it be much better if people can
love each other secretly forever?’
mmnn… it would create another
problem with consequences so scary
I quit the idea
still perhaps I can learn a thing
‘no rush, take it slow, let it flow’
…but it’s not exactly the same!
yeah right, to be a poet
what world’s problems can you solve?
if I could quit poetry, I would
Thursday, February 03, 2011
Every time I sit there
every time I sit there, smoking,
I have some thoughts,
rambling and pastel,
merging with the weed flower
the crows in the sky,
and the dull rooftops.
I’m ashamed, you know,
seeing those cigarette butts
decomposing
with the dead copper autumn leaves.
what would I say to sanity, for instance,
or to my old green veins which
seem to get along well with the
purple yarn of my cardigan?
it’s still cold, you see,
and having a cup of earl grey
is as plastic and drunk
as the questions in my head.
no promises can be made here
but songs can be rewritten and sung.
I hate the smell of the smoke on my body
it always makes me feel, well, dirty
but it can stay there for a while
and when I speak, it’s in the same tone
and pace, the same amount of ellipses,
borrowed joy and learned pride, too
so it might as well be nothing.
I meet the water color version of you
in every coordinate of the cloudless sky
and the breeze, hatefully or playfully
(I can never tell, but it doesn’t matter),
blows the smoke back onto
my freezing cheeks and fingertips.
“what halts you now?” says the weed to Spring,
“the squirrels are nowhere to be seen.
is it the emptiness, again?”
the crows cry way up there,
the wind stops grazing,
I put off the last flickers, and,
for a moment, all that pulse
stop pulsing. haze.
“Save me some of it; this
madness should end somehow.”
and it does end,
every time I sit there,
smoking.
2006
you
until they melt
you don’t stop
in any way
you, there
and nowhere
until they end
you thrive
wants don’t stay
longer than
heartbreak
you brush
this chapter
on and off
until I simply am
a symptom
wet soil
on your sole
one rainy day
you stomp,
leaves fall
until I subside
dew on your window
wounds healed
and opened
by love poems
minds tell stories
then believe
then sleep
and dream
then forget
inanity
until a night walk
wakes me up
to revive this
until I dissolve
in light
lightness
you breathe
you stay
you
2006
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
to none of you
or, rather, I was the one who sneaked in just enough to see you’re
alive, still writing and reviewing and asking to click your links,
still quoting dead men’s wisdoms in an effort to bury your fears of
being told that you’re a crying baby at the church’s door,
of being abandoned by your surrogate mothers
that you collected at the departure gates, campus dormitories,
cramped bedrooms, clogged toilet drains, silent tunnels
I left that day because I wanted to visit you in silence
knowing, now, that you were the joker all along
disguised in a sad, white outfit you loved to wear
remember who had the last words? you
because there are days when words struck me as
irrelevant
now you know I, too, was the joker all along