A Song of the World
(freely from WS Rendra’s
“Nyanyian Duniawi”)


As the moon sleeps with a rich old lady,
I silently kiss him in the mango orchard
and his heart goes wild with desire.

We trample our earthly concerns
of thirst and hunger underfoot.
Our miseries reach out to each other.

The passion of our rebellion
roars in the dark and his ballsy
laughter gladdens my heart.

In the shadows of trees his body glistens
like a golden deer. His unflinching
breasts are like fruit just ripe;

his sweet fragrance the smell
of fresh grass. I embrace him,
as if embracing existence itself,

and his quickening sighs he whispers
to my ears. How amazed he is at the rainbow
that appears from closing our eyes!

Then all our former boyfriends
appear from the shadows
and come closer to us;

dressed in their ragged clothes
they stand like spectators
watching over us.

Transparent


Even if the sun
hasn’t pierced
the hazy sky
for weeks now,

even if the streets
are still asleep
(given to dreaming
for a change),

even if this city
is left unfinished
amidst bricks, mortar,
and revised blueprints,

and even if
my neighbours’
shouting shatters
the silence

of the neighbourhood,
my love for you
still remains:
transparent.

Comfort Zones


When it comes to choosing men
I tend to stick to guys who fall
well within my comfort zone.
That usually means I rarely stray
towards pushy, ego-centred jerks
(no matter how much they make
my hormones go berserk!).

Guys I cherish tend to be kind,
often sincere, and are I guess
more namby-pamby than those
wankers who thrive in today’s
social landscape. Usually after
the love sours between us,
the break up tends to be

a kind of sticky acrimony:
where once the drama
of falling in love brought out
the best in both of us, the follies
of parting often cause a total
disintegration of our honey-
sweet personalities.

In the end both they and I
feel something akin to the theatrics
of that line from My Chemical Romance:
Baby, I’m just soggy from the chemo.
Cancers like love are either excised
from the body or they kill you
after a short remission.

Don't Pelorian


Years ago I had a friend who used to go around
spewing the phrase Don't pelorian, somethiong she’d
decided to adopt from one of those cutesy Japanese
pencil boxes so much in the vogue in the 80s.
What the words meant, nobody knew.

These days I too feel like some unknown,
made-up language. I ve just broken up with a boy
who’s made me happy these last three months.
One day he decided to casually tell me
he’d also a girlfriend in some town or other.

I refused to call him or return his calls
for a week after that. When he finally got to speak
with me the other day, I nonchalantly told him
I too had found new love. I lied about some guy
in some unnamed suburb in Selangor.

I’ve been feeling out of sorts. He has not
called since. Every time I pick up the phone
I find myself mumbling some incoherent words.
Last night he finally called and asked how I was.
My answer to him was simply: Don't pelorian.


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I found this on the net at http://members.shaw.ca/pelorian/: "Peloria : A botanical term, meaning regularity or symmetry of structure occurring abnormally in flowers normally irregular or unsymmetrical. That is, it's normality in something that's supposed to be weird. So the phrase "Don't Pelorian" would mean don't be normal when you're supposed to be abnormal." Deep!