rorschach

 in the events following april, i breathe thoughts to the wind, bearing sun,

bearing noise, and heavy in fogginess.

the crutch is always there for you, whatever it may be.

the person you'd first meet once you're sent to hell, an ailment of the malfunctioning brain, the living

room's light turned off at night, are all attributes of blame.

they are, therefore, i am.

and even if tomorrow-may, and they were never, you would still be a bore.

have you considered?

pacing the kitchen counter, dissecting the death penalty, filling cavities of a foul mouth,

feeling the touch of a hot stove, hissing tea water boiling in the kettle.

this is the conceptual, where only i, the character, understood the feelings by proxy, and the audience

is skimming a patchy image of what was intruding the mind when i felt it.

those who wail and retaliate when others jab them will live a fuller tale. you must make noises

if you want more out of life. you must be shameless enough to take if you want something so badly.

it did not happen to you, if it's any sense. passing of things is just is.

when the crutches come off, it will feel wrong but sit with it a while

and stretch your palms out only if it's something you'll cherish. pain is only worthwhile

if you endure it for an outcome.

you do not have to be the simmering frog.

stlngd

 in midst of paralysing sleep treading dreams
and desertion of consciousness, surrendering control

as if i could choose to keep it if i try,

i could hear your voices fading.

once you are well over oceans away i promise

to keep myself busy if that's what you want of me.

i couldn't let you know ever at all that i was at wellesley street

on new years crying for something that will happen months after

because in my head it was christmas.

with the blazing summer heatwaves, a hollowness like no other,

struck and cratered.

it happened well before.

the smell of singed hair, a party favour lit,

a single can of cruiser in the back of the fridge.

a sleep that lasts a lifetime and some.

i am not where i want to be.

and the scapegoats i laid against the boulder with machete pressing their necks

bled.

in my recollections, i believed i was wringing the rocks.

these beautiful imageries that are almost biblical conjured up behind

my very own eyes aren't mine

at all.

it happened well before.

dreaming of death isn't death, but metaphorically,

indications, sound of a train passing,

bedsheets ablazed, a man dressed in black, the choir.

an obituary.

incoherently, at 26,

an ego death has/will.

i couldn't speak the languages of those who might

understand my spewings.

my ancestors, do they?

rouletista

my dreams for you in my head will always be that you wouldn't ruin yourself

if you have had a son.

you would've held him up in the air, like a hand mirror, like wielding a shiny sword

and you would've seen god

reflected in him.

you would see yourself in him.

some things just are not possible with inexact paraphernalia.

as i listened to bonehead bank holiday i had an epiphany:

forever will i be charmed by aloofness, until i am not.

the boys i give myself to are fools, jesters, indifferent, loose, amusing.

the woman i am, rue and shatter. 

sobriety is shaking with feverish anger and deluding myself that a white lighter

and marlboro reds unties bunched-up nerves.

it's tying cherry knots,

it's seeing fibre of my being in the colour of you,

blue and bruised, mad at the world that you're too good for the cards

dealt to you.

so you rue. unmoving, letting the world pass you by, you,

would've raised him a cowboy, a sailor, a girl.

instead, you raised me a man.

turn on the television, some debating theology

the host me, panel me, audience me.

my morning show is airing in my head.

for a heathen myself, i talk god too much, about and to.

the fact that the only thing i'd ask for could

never be given.

the beautiful thing has passed.

i sat at the train station, smoking my last cigarette swearing i'd quit tomorrow.

to have and to lose is how i supposed it should be. we should all have

a turn at it.

that's what i naively believe anyways.

FISHBONES

a thorax of a man hollowed out, i carved out some lovely bones from

with hunger, with devotion and in the name

of my own malevolent hands.

sunk my bony fingers between ribbed lungs,

the construct of a beating heart housed by the one who have

no use of it but for me to listen to the conundrum,

a hymn of steady disarray up against the flesh.

throw a small bone to the dog who waits at the door with purposeless

hunger. he seldom bites but should it be starved to its bones,

mad to its brain,

i reckon i'd growl before i pounce.

to find it

just bones, sun-bleached halfway into the floor.

a mad stray, a madder man i was.

graveyards

this soft drum of pattering rain feels like us,

surrounded and unexisting,

in my july tiredness, in your old ways, in my

bedroom and the windows opened halfway just outside.

hold my gaze for a while, see me

for the person i was yesteryear when everything was

softer and easier.

my golden boy, the sunflower i couldn't keep alive in that beer can,

apologies fed it but never the sunny days.

the beautiful thing saw me at my worst.

i am

undeserving.

i am sitting, ruminating, dissolving the matters of a full cycle.

it couldn't have been almost a year, or six months at all. if you'd

ask me, four hours ago couldn't have been when i held my candle

on torbay beach making up my mind,

turning you another rough year.

delicate beginning rush

the 25th,

there's a letter queued in the drafts. it was not my father's birthday but

mum's crying. i was trying to trace back the first thread frayed, when i owe

nothing to not one soul, but i was given nothing else

to make anything worthwhile.

it was the 25th.

stoned as fuck, a pin-hole view of my youth, i, a peeping tom on my own door. 

i couldn't let it go, i couldn't take it back.

it is full well mine but in my head it might as well not be?

standing in front of my home, door open, asking to be let in.

knocking.

funny thing it was, to want a feeling when i was still in it.

is anyone home?

was this it?

this was something worthwhile.

indebtedness is a bitch.

i surrendered good things to time where time is not there yet.

my life, all of the shiny parts, i've mourned before it is taken.

in territory nothing god could've made have yet to touch, my misery made a home out of.

show me off to your friends at the pier

a lifetime or few i would ask for from god, the catch is that each of it

should be short but full.

one long perpetual haul broken into sections, a samsara of my own definition, reincarnation, yes,

but with god's only promise that i

won't belong to time ever.

some lifetimes perpetually decorated and to never slow down.

to crash and burn, to live in interesting times, to understand that the end

is the end, to fuck up in all ways that could be fucked up.

i could be everyone.

three summers it has been and nothing's new to me anymore but the people.

the clockwork is then,

every spring, the worn out road, sun-bleached roofs of homes,

everything about this place that exhaust me to my bones gets rebirthed through lenses

of eager eyes, so foreign and novel, still.

a bystander with camera for a face standing tall aiming for the barely blue afternoon sky.

shoot.

lately, i feel like i'm doing time, staring at a peeling grey wall, knowing so well that there is

something i've got to learn and unlearn before i could be freed.

but you know, again, i can run and change my hair, my name and how i talk.

some of these things will come back and bite me in my ass, but fuck,

i stood and stare in awe of this camera-faced girl, and many before her as

the clock ticks away another one of my short minute.

a moment in-between the takings, i think to myself: how

devoutly i believe that there's gospel in the photo feeds feeling of these tourists.

SALTING OF MALAKAT'S EARTH

abimelech, then, i have had my homeland a rather simple name

to call, so you address letters to malakat, not back to shechem.

in vain, for i have razed it the same you have yours.

some that are not mine, is everything that are not anyone's.

the salting of malakat's earth.

strewn as if stalingrad's frosts.

shall not a person sowing the name have anything shoot up from

its seed on my (waste)land.

MACHINE BREATHING

 i've had images of torbay or st heliers in my sleep where

i buried my feet deep in the sand of a now nameless beach.

and i asked you in helpless whispers to come home to me, please, but the church bells stopped

ringing the moment you shut the door. you and i peeling mandarins in front of the city church.

kissing on the bench.

the world was so small, it was just us: some kids singing on the last bus back to the city, high as shit,

a brewing lover's spat, one-sided anger.

you were in my dreams, brought me to my knees,

a man machine-breathing, a hill over the horizon rising and breaking, my homeland

monsoon made me so unforgiving in december that i've always brought an angry man into

the firsts of each year.

he's been around as long as i can remember.

i couldn't bring you the thrills that you seek out for as much as your phone

never works when it comes to me. dial tones and a sweet ring of a "merry christmas" text far too late.

a summer fling that never had me. i was gone.

listened to big thief's paul on repeat the whole ride home and tasting the metallic blood on

my tongue, grieving or savouring, never accepting, the fact

that you packed your bags. all i knew when i got off the bus

it was time, time was up

i've gotta pack mine up as well.

and that's just what i did.

the only thing stuck with me was when you said pretty girls are never lonely, which

you cursed me to be.

never lonely, or you must've meant never alone.

you gave my summers some meaning, it wasn't the greatest not even the worst, at best, it's painfully mediocre.

but it was all i've ever asked for. that i could love on my own terms.

i was selfish and demanding and left on my own terms. this love was freeing.

you weren't out to cause me pain, but what is there to say when

it was all i felt in the end.

my beloved,

 i religiously believed that you'd take me any way i came or went, and

honest to god,

that's a one-way street i'd hate to stroll down and get stuck in.

the sunny blues.

STH

in truthfully annotating the state of solitude, of a drunken heart

lost and faded, i sat in my grainy silence throughout may.

shut the blinds to my windows, let the mild storm rage and left.

it felt like salting a retched wound.

as if i could get on the southern train again, reach for the tangerines and lemons

from strangers' yards to brine the passing thoughts i had at sunnyvale.

pickle it. make wines out of it.

i'm keeping warm, my love. i worry if you aren't sometimes.

you knew that all i've said were my truth and you didn't want to

plate me things that aren't yours.

i get drunk on blind hopes. you knew all too well.

that's the only reason none of my i miss yous were met with toos.

i'm less gray in may, my love. 

i'm smoking less, i wake up early on days i'm off work.

i write and i let go,

i consciously make the effort to be kinder.

i think of the ocean sometimes for no particular reason.

learning the ropes.

8484

    sebelum relung masa berlopong, aku tuntut lima belas detik

hanya aku, berlutut menghadap pagar diaman tempat anak itu jatuh

berbasikal menggelongsor bukit tar lot tujuh kosong sembilan.

detik satu - tiga

biarkan empat jiwa yang aku tak pernah tahu garisnya, sesempurna mana

selarinya dengan garis jalan aku

bertahun pendek bermain pondok.

aku tuntut kesaksian di detik tiga untuk sejelaskan dirinya,

umur yang aku benarkan tanpa pelukisan berdagang kasih.

mata wang, tak bersyarat, jendela kaca berdiri merangkul ruang empat dinding.

detik empat - lapan

jatuhkan dua kami ke lohong, suntingkan fana khayali yang dia bergarisan

sejauh dari selari dengan hidupnya aku.

gundah aku paling lara hanya dia.

satu detik dia memulai garis masa selari bicara kita, garis bermetamorfosis

idea pedang

tertanam ke tanah.

aku tuntut detik enam melayari dimensi yang takdir aku sebagai habuk antar bintang,

mungkin dia bermusafir ke aotearoa,

mungkin dia terluka tiga daripada tujuh hari,

mungkin dia bercinta.

mana mana fiksi yang kau jual aku beli.

berikan aku fatamorgana yang wanita itu tak pernah terikat, dia boleh menangis,

dia boleh dikecewa, hanya tak terikat.

detik sembilan

sofa biru baldu, tanah menginti kuku, kekosongan senja pertama kali

detik sepuluh - tiga belas

boleh aku minta kita duduk berdua dalam kereta wira ayah?

kau satu-satunya jiwa garis selari yang aku sayang tanpa lompang.

cerita kita cuma tragedi puitis yang sedang

karena cerita terpuitis tak pernah dipentaskan.

kekal jejak ingatan, kita, dua anak kecil di bawah rimbun pokok manggis

buram, tapi terukir sedalamnya.

detik empat belas - lima belas

balaskan pesan suara.

aku tak pernah terima salahku.

garis satu itu merusak aku tak pernah sembuh,

aku penuh amarah tak beralamat.

relung masa ambruk, aku tuntut kejelasan namun bukan dari dia.

dua detik dikejar khatam masa, untuk merasakan,

menerima, merasa lagi.

bukan sepertiku hilang tanpa remuk terdahulu.

bertemulah satu kali lagi, aku se orang yang kau tak kenal sebelumnya.