(no title)

(2009 – 2010)

I

Bandung, yr steel-cold midnight air strangles me so with yr dying lapse of breath that  brought sullen fits of anguish like that faltering frozen lips of an old queen;

Too long i have breathed you, too long, too long i have drown soaked, lying prostrate in your icy deathbed listening to your languishing melody of nocturnal thoughts;

Too long i’ve been in yr vain lapse of searching, hiding, towering cowering and everly falling and crumbling and wailing under the shadowy swarms of yr dead dreams!

Too long when night falls heavily pressing on my chest i pretend to sleep so as to take no heed to yr hideously jesting ghosts that crow under the dark clouds of my sheet whispering mockery in such ungodly tone, preaching humility in such preposterous drone – O let alone the aching of the drone; let alone the echoing of the drone i hear so loudly like a thousand pounding on the wall — “Failure! Failure!”, they say!

Too long i have managed to cope with yr dull yokes of dead souls, dead dogs, dead logs that engrave not a bit worth of memory on my head, that left not even a tiny bit of inspiration to shed!

Three and a half years too long ye feasted over your victory so callously and i fed over my defeat defeatedly; forever now ye’ll plague me like that plague of an unwanted child,

To live in you is like living in a box of mirror rusting itself: i could no longer see myself.

I am whom i long to escape so much, so much like you, ye wretched city that i love only when i’m drunk!

II

O how my heart trembles with glee                                                                                                         as i ride a hundred kilometers away from thee; away, away, to mount the vertical top of some impossible hill, upon which i placed myself before yr city scape, lofty and pathetic, watching yr buildings and shacks bedraggled in rains and fogs that burst from the vehement clouds in which, upon the calming of the weather, spread over its distant frame a rainbow monochrome, that towered with such a sickly hue, and hovering on the top of its curve i see my doppelganger—my first vision of another—grinning in a loud grimace, standing there unaware of the cruel flash its very presence provokes, hovering, pulsating below the bellowing gallow-birds that guise themselves into the form of a distant storm—i thought this is my eyes deceiving but from what else can i see?

My heart?—i forgot where i buried it.

My mind?—i forgot where i lost it.

I can neither see outward nor inward in this plateau of inverted abyss, from the very below of which i saw thousands of human ghouls assuming figures just like me, motioning like ancient apparitions over a sunken ship who see without seeing, who listen without listening, who speak without speaking. . . . . —who are they? are they not simply the consequences of my blank projections? i see how the light passes through them unashamedly, as uncomprehending as a fly passing through a dead screen. . . .

—Humans! vague, senseless moving objects. . . . . ! humans, if not mere gambols! humans, if not malingerers! later, shall this sickness be finally ripe, i shall teach them how the game is to be rightfully played . . . .

(And then sleep too, my one and only recourse, has done nothing but betray me; it grew into nothing but torment; i came out of it ever more exhausted than before i entered—O how the Voice presented itself before me only to later deny me! how close, yet how distant! Spirits, they descend into my dreams—their presence filled me to overflowing—the self, having no autonomous space left, withdrew, clearing up a vast hollow in which words, disemboweled from their everyday penury, scatter themselves like disposable loins—and lo!—the most beautiful poems i have ever seen composed—the most magnificent visions—ways of reasoning i have never thought possible—thoughts i never have thought plausible—wondrous, ecstatic insights—burning maxims, anecdotes, dialogues—the typewriter racking manuscripts after manuscripts without respite—O this god who is so set on expressing himself on human language, pity me! Breathless, i borrowed the cosmic breath—i inhaled the stars, the planets, my whole inner constellation — my dilated chest make as if to burst—but no sooner than i wake up then everything became quiet, i am thrown back again into this worthless mortal morning shell, dumb, paralyzed, pale, blasted; in vain do i try to spread my hand, reaching for the glorious white inks that shone in the bottomless depth of the night i have just been snatched from violently. . . the words dissemble like smoke into the air, nothing is left except this foreground consciousness, this gaol of being in which my rejected genius lay hidden behind the curtain, jacking and wasting itself off into one long empty masturbation that is this life. . . . . .

—O Voice! begone, tease me no more! i know that i make such a pathetic figure, unworthy even of your pity—let alone your charity! Angel, doppelganger, dare not open your masks before i open mine!—O vulgar mortality. . . strange horns that sang lowly in the depth of the night. . . . —O consciousness without body! sparks of divinity that came storming, magnificent as lightning, only to later vanish, as stupid as lightning!

Who, if i explode, could contain me?—Who, if i cried, could hear?—Who, as i speak thus, could understand?

—O futile, useless lament!

III

—Away!                                                                                                                                                  Freed i be from the shackles of the cities!

—Away!                                                                                                                                                Freed i be from the tangles of the world!

But lo! what of it even if it were so?                                                                                                         —For forever I shall stay bound by this thing called self.