Jakarta, 2016*

some say the city is stippled with warnings
but nobody took the time to stop and sojourn deep
  into the augur – there was no price to pay
and no song to be sung. only strange silence trying
to renounce the inscrutable weight of peril;

but a while ago, the tabloids and the papers are
dizzy with tribulations – each word assumed not sound
  but force. the once Decembering wind transmogrified into
a penitent squall of smoke until the city was of a veiled mother
    weeping behind the pretense of a shadow.

not much was said, or perhaps we were speaking
  for such a long time, or we did not mean many things
but wounds and cuts and some lostness to which we all have
  gone blind and deaf: coming in daylight’s whisper.
   we cannot hear. all of which may not be revealed, like
a new phrasing that has not been conceived yet, and so we lay
   in the silence for now, hushed by surrounding scenes,
               in pursuit  of heart.