paint me this picture, sonorous color
clutching the quiet ****

             pressed against cloying scenes,
        a loose hand bannering a bayonet.

rivet me waters, and much of the Earth
tightly groping inlands,

                thatched in the branch nowhere alone,
                is the song of God lullabying cities.

again the whole sky with its keen eyes
manifests a gleam worth knowing a cherub,

                 and sooner than it is later, when the seasons
    postpone their flamboyances, chiaroscuros of smoke,
   deceit, uncared for and unheard shrieks bounce off careless corners
    and the song of God is but static with little wings clipped
    and tossed into vicissitude:

song   or    no   song
bearing a fruition of attrition:

                    resounding far-away:  a comatose  of cars,
             a scuffle of powerlines, a melee of battlement and tranquil

continually     fluster the  child
   in  metronomic dance.

such    darkness   is another  fleeting  thing
    and so   is   the   bird  of  your
                        arrival, mine    windows   receiving   bird-song,
  elegiac – pining  against   perennial  trees,
     sounds     of   well-put     strikes    bringing   back
       to   a  time   not    mine but   hastily  endure,

    and    light  is  but  another  figure   posing   for   itself,
       a  backlash  of  photographs  again   not
  mine      but      this   time    masterfully   endure
     all  that   is    mine,    being
       still    and   keeping     what
the  silence  holds   with   its    tumultuous   hands,
     a    song   once   my    roof-beams   heard   but
refused     to   declare: a   fugitive   frisked  out of
  the   nooks    of   depthless  sleep   is    I,   inspected
by   the   wide-eyed   gazebo     of     morning,   and    a    specter
    whose   name    I   cannot   recall,  completing   this  brokenness.
I am    neither      poet
     nor    bard,      stripped  of   words
and   I,    past everything  else that  makes   sweet  music,
   possess    no     mandolin.

our words outlast the weight of ourselves,
  to breast the wave and still themselves there,
even the Spring with its careful hands
   dole out lobotomies in cherry trees; their fall
  is not our fault, the behest of their nature.

this is the way the light sees itself disparaged,
  from which darkness still seethes and grows
  there is nothing we ought to do but look up
as unsuspecting as the world in the rain
tricked by the passing of words not our own
  but someone else’s translation – we cannot be helped.

we shall pare the flesh from the bone
we shall strip the fruit of its fresh glaze
we shall gaze upon a tulip and behead its fragrance
we shall raise our clenched hands and eat beasts
with our bare hands,

        and as an unquiet stone turns in its station,
pours out of its mouth, a tilted shadow,
we stride past worlds, our mouths tender with words
as though we have not yet feasted our fill.

she goes             freeing herself
and stops            to break her fall
suddenly            to gather herself

and begin again    with such brazenness
was it        the moon
and not     the far-flung bird of song?
was it        the brigade of shadows
and not     the heady kisses of night?

     she keels over like a vast wave
stretching    her   arms   into   the sky
once   again,  permitting    herself   to be seen
   not  by  the moon,
not  by   the   hale  of such  night  that struggles   not  to
   tipple   over   her hair   that demands    a   different hue
  of  silence
   but    by  herself     in   the mirror
the   metamorphosis,
     true   to  the   claim   of   the   world
  except    she   is   not   to  flutter   away,
                             just     yet –

in that lightening moment I was stricken
   with a memory – quickening, swiftly, and then
deliberately: a bamboo in waiting yet akimbo,
    a sea unfazed yet stirring internally,
taking in the morning’s tremendous yawn
staring visibly, a thin line dividing soul and body,
    ephemeral and perpetual, vivid recall
and faint oblivion;

was it the wind that she borrowed with her
   presence or was it the breath that once stilled spring
like an invisible, yet felt river in my blood?
what impeccable maquillage was it that she donned,
      dawn or twilight?
something the silence waits with its mount on the boughs,
  the munificence of such plural modesty,
or everything the noise tell me which isn’t exactly
   but still is, a memory.

in   a    world  filled
                    with    pain
our      arid     inland    whelms  over
  the   swollen   sheen   of  the    borrowed   moon;

      faces     in    transit,
the       immense  rivulet     to   home     rogue without
      source
        people      undulating  like
the  weight of  a   subdued   beast
      regaining     consciousness,
                           these    shoals  rimmed  with  such  whiteness
    give     way.

                           unheeded        are   dislimned
slaughters    voices   muffled    to   fatal  nuances
             fast  days  in
the    rails     spirals      and  cascades of   both
   twined     rain and     tendril
         in   our   eyes   see   the gravid
weight   of   the   world    accompanied  by such    grave  silence
            arranging   a  rendezvous
                                          at   the  next   unmindful   station,
   trains       are       sad   rivers
   belonging                 to    no    one
                                              a  long   conversing   line
    of     kinder  tides   passing   quietly
               think    of   the    time   the   bones   are colder
than      alloys    returning   with  such
      intact   heat   or   melancholy,    was    it
   when    turning   away    was  no     troubling  task
        
                        machine    or    flesh
   forethought       or     afterthought
          outlast     and  outwrestle   the   circling   moon
   surly    from   above  and   swift  with
        flayed     light,   these   things   that    welcome
us   home    
                             piercing   the   solace
       dredging    the    traces    leaving   us   bare
with    intone       the     day’s commute  
                                     sings            tenderly –

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.