Paper Girl

paper girl was folded over

seven times is the limit they say

try it

it's scientific

you can never get the back doubled to eight

but still paper girl curls the corner of her pages

like wings of a white crane but filled with 

scribbles

she curls at the corner of a hall holding back

tears

there are no more blank spaces

red ink splatters

mark her back with angry letters

screaming alphabets that march towards her ears

crawl through grey hemispheres and reside there

her head bows with the weight

with the pressure

she loses her composure

paper girl unfolds

baring her soul, perforated

a cobweb of words tied with hatred

...and then it was over.

Sacrifice

When he punched me in the face

I offered the other cheek

because love is sacrifice, right?

When she pulled my hair

down the stairs and into the toilet

I resigned my cries for another day

because patience is a virtue, it's true!

I signed away rights to my own self at seven months gestation

born premature, my lungs were not developed to carry enough air for me to scream out

the umbilical card forever wrapped tight around my windpipe

Obedience is a ritual we carry on long after we're born

Fueled by hopes for a higher heaven

Dreams carried on generation to generation by the medium of television

Shows where women burn at the altar of sin and admiration

We share laughter after every lashings

time forgives the faded marks on my back

as did the tears and ointment my mom rubs

admonishing me for being so stubborn, at age seven

"What will the family of your future husband say?"

Must

Save

Face

Don't talk back

Must 

Save 

Face

Close your legs

Must 

Save 

Face

It's for your own good anyway

Like cattle are branded and trained to be given away.

Because when a woman and a man marries,

it binds two families

but mother, you look away from signs of my slow slaughter

am I no longer your daughter?

Aurat

Brothers and sisters,

You say nowadays purity is scarce,

because you judge purity by the length of my scarf,

to you purity is a shy virgin

a woman's value trapped within our hymen

Some countries prize me by the absence of a driver's license

as if by being mobile I would drive myself straight to hell without their guidance.

But no matter how much skin I cover,

you will still find fault with the cloth's colour

Too bright!

Too pink!

Too many flowers!

As if my veil is the ground to plant your gaze

and I should provide you that space without complaints.

Should I not be bothered

that these brothers from a different mother

deign to write book after book after book

discussing the sins "caused" by my looks

Shaming the blame women shoulder for every single society's disorder.

From folk tale "hadith" you repeat

"Eve was created from Adam's bent rib

so treat women gently for their will is weak"

Is this why prisons are filled with male convicts?

and yet none of my sisters are ever in FBI's top ten most wanted list?

(I wikipedia'd this)

I get it, men are perhaps too strong for their own benefit

But that would be blaming God, wouldn't it?

As if He had made His creations imperfect

Blasphemy!

And so strong that you would rather

blame the weakness of the masculine gender

for bullying, rape, Justin Bieber's behaviour

and say "boys will be boys!"

Our hymen forcibly taken,

you then propose marriage as an only solution

to the bad credit you let us inherit

your seeds sown grow into gossip

and the nine months make ample time

for you to catalogue ways to criticize our robes becoming too tight.

Three definitions

In the Quran

Only three mention

Aurat (1)

A gap vulnerable to an enemy's worst intentions

Aurat (2)

Embarassing nudity with audience participation

Aurat (3)

Contents of the room of a couple bound by marital sanction

And yet

As a girl I was taught to be gentle and not talk so loud

To not be seen, to not be heard

In classrooms teachers teach me to read, but not to utter a single word

Especially when that word was "why?"

And so I grew up burrying questions deep in my silence

Building a labyrinth of tangled passions

Leaving a pile of "why"'s behind.

When we talk about purity

Start talking about integrity

talk about kindness, talk about intelligence

Let's talk about bravery because

these clothes conceal more than just skin

this cloth is not for hiding.

Meiliani (the birthday girl)

May musk, her month
she mouths
this darkness she likes
embers lit her lips
sweet smelling light
cloves and cigarettes 
curled like the paper of 
her
Nyctophi
lia

She readies the reminder:
trouble trains of
twinful thoughts
think alike, sexual
a scratch and a bite
mindcest partners. 

Nights
unarmoured it frets

We're Asians, polite
with a smile yet
disregarding advice
Shoot on sight! 
Camera obscura in our minds

Askholes
two of a kind. 

Writing Warmups

The busy traffic blares a Tchaikovsky at my feet. That's Jakarta for you. 

I wish the red pool in my cupped hand was wine instead. The warm liquid trickled through my fingers unto the green vines that looked grey in the dark of the jutting balcony shade and dust. I wiped a wet left palm on the back of my jeans.

I noticed how hushed the crowd was on the roof of the Rainbow. The noon clientele of Plaza Semanggi (Plangi) were made up mostly of bored housewives with not that much money. They were dressed up, bright and tacky. If they were married to rich husbands, they wouldn't look that way. They wouldn't be here.

I have a rich husband, yet I too am here.

He took me to TIM last night, to a musical. I smiled at the heartwarming moments he aww'ed at while cringing inwardly. To say it was a crappy performance would actually be a praise. He gushed about it all the way home.

I was at the peak of my depression, which means I lied about the cringing. 

I was not lying when I told him I knew about Linda. I even had photographs I printed out of him and her together. Threw them calmly on our bed where they fell beside the play's booklet. Maybe I'm biased, but in that fleeting moment I noticed how much warmer her smile was when playing a character.

Or maybe she was acting when her arms were wrapped around my husband's waist, I don't know.

He called me a hypocrite.

Linda had smiled her warm smile in this room before. 

Maybe she was also acting when she had her thighs wrapped around my head. My husband did have a camera rolling by the bedside.

Linda had smiled her warm smile many times in this room. My tongue had rolled over that smile, drinking in her seawater sweat. She was the ocean, wild and wandering and effortlessly takes over those who tried to conquer her.

A guard in his grey uniform approached me. Don't stand too close to the edge, bu. We've had accidents happen before, bu.  

I smiled wanly at his words and nodded. Thinking he had done a good job, he ambled heavily away. I could hear his breathing even after the tenth step.

My husband and I tangled after the confrontation, twisting fitted sheets out from their rounded corners. We whispered and shouted truths to each other. He loves me. I love him. He loves her. I love her.

She loves him second and herself first.

It was not falling that I fear. At least I was a bauble in her effervescent world. 

He had pushed into me hard, grabbing a handful of my hair and making an arch with my back. I cried after our lovemaking in his arms, feeling unworthy of the shelter in his strength. My husband cooed from behind, sensing something was not right. He was a man of little word, and I never shared with him the vocabulary of my mental health. I withheld my sobs until I was sure he was not faking his snores. 

My tears streamed for three seconds. I guess when you're drowning in an ocean, sadness becomes insignificant.

The Tchaikovsky was not ending any time soon. I inched closer to the edge of the shore of rooftop cafes before another set of fingers wove itself into mine.

(Based on an exercise generated by WriteThis - 21/9/2014 8:05:15 PM)

A little Tegan and Sara obsessed

So I know it's been a long time since I last really wrote anything. (That's not true, I got books published and shit). I did! I did! I had one short story published in a somewhat mainstream publication, and had a few short stories in independent zines and an anthology of dirty tales.

But I realize that my familiar medium was potery, and in English. Thanks to family drama, gadgets breaking down, resurfacing trust and self-esteem issues, impending deadline, the need for money and pressured into getting a degree because I need something "to fall back on" but without the money to actually do that, and the motivation (I lost that motivation when UiTM refused to let me enroll in Mass Communication and instead threw me into the Tourism course, no dissing you tourism degree holders, but it's just not what I want), and TEGAN AND SARA!!! I kind of been writing stuff again. Nothing great, and it may be a tad "too inspired" (in a Lady Gaga kind of way).

I was first introduced to Tegan and Sara (oh god I want to go to Canada and just play with their hairs) via this mix cd I rented back in Yogya. Music CD, VCD, and DVD rentals are hot shit in Yogyakarta. Well, it's a town full of students and students are usually perpetually broke. So I just got a new PC and was determined to fill it with stuff, music included.

Back then, the term 'hipster' was yet to be invented, so don't judge me based on what I'm going to tell you next. I went to the rental place and straight away got myself a bunch of GameHouse games and random mp3 CDs. The more obscure, the better. Somehow I heard Walking With A Ghost (the only Tegan and Sara song on the CD) and fell immediately in love. Pop enough to be pleasant, but unknown enough (to me) to be fresh. But I never really explored their music until now. I mean the Internet was already invented back then, but wasn't as easily accessible as it is now.

Years gone by, and I found myself falling in love with Trance music. Well, and House ...sometimes. Rarely. Whatevs. Then I found out Tiesto had made a record with Tegan and Sara (which I LOVE). And as the netizens of YouTube would confess, you click on the different links by the right hand side and just enjoy the journey. Which is how I discovered other than being amazeballs recording artists, they are also stupendously awesome performing live, and have great sense of humour during interviews and in-concert banters. Not to mention kick ass personalities and sense of style.

That was a long ass intro for this poem I wrote today (as yet, untitled):

I don't like holding you back
If it's freedom that you want
but you're not even asking that
You just need me at your beck
and call
And that is all
I can't do
When there are oceans standing
and stern guards in white watching
Making it hard for me to pass GO
and collect my $200 from you
But I'm not even asking that
I just need you to let
me give my all
and sometimes it's not enough
it's tough
but I promise you
it's the best I can do.
* * *

Now, I'm going back to Tumblring them hot canadian midgets.

A Mind Fuck

"Watch enough porn, and it will finally fail to turn you on".

I say, great. Bring it on. Isn't that the whole point?

Porn is not desire. Porn is a mechanism. A dick rubbing against a clit is not lust, it is merely friction. Look into the expressions. A good porn actor/actress knows how to project desire through their faces.

A good actor knows how to project emotions through their faces. You need to begin with Betty Boop to understand the beauty of Meryl Streep.

The fact that your first blue film made you automatically reach for your cock was not because you were aroused by lust for the actors (but maybe you were, I am not a psychologist). It was the novelty of the taboo, wasn't it? If you met the actors and they offered to have a threesome with you, your dick might go limp in an instant (I'm just guessing).

So many group sex videos, so little realization how much bravery that takes. To undress, to be judged and scrutinized by the size of your chest, your feet, your face, your dick. So much trust, in what once was a niche.

Sex is a symbiosis. Master-slave relationships included. For one helps the other attain the height of their desire to help the other attain the height of the other's desire.

I fuck you because you make it enjoyable fucking you.

Be it man, woman, fleshlight or tree.

Trust your ears to the erotica of violin strings. They do not call it the devil's tongue for no reason.

Trust your touch to the ripples of skin folded over the small muscles of his eye.

Trust your sight to the crimson shadow beneath her earlobe. Kiss it.

Work your senses to it's death. Like a shoeless hermit traversing the earth. Each callous a barrier to the touch of soil underneath him. Yet he grows closer and fonder of his surroundings.

Watch more porn.

For now, let me be seduced by me. 

The Dream

I always have dreams of being chased by a group of people. And they are all the same thing, I run, they try to catch me, I run again, I hide, I see them chasing after me, I run again, and then I wake up with a headache. The people who chase me are always *those* people.


Let me explain.


When I say *those* people, I meant the mean people I left back in Uni. The ones who I thought were my friends, but grew this big vineyard and collectively pelted at me the seeds of their grapevines. I confess to not being an angel, but I wasn't left to defend myself, which wasn't fair. It felt like a gang rape, the difference being that I used to enjoy a decent, planned gang rape. And they told my parents, and my dad got rushed to the hospital from a heart stroke. Smooth move, you guys.


Now I don't have face to face Uni, nor do I have face to go back to my parents, whom previously before said event was my sanctuary from all the Uni people's evilness. So I escaped from all of this. Not a clever part on my behalf, but how could I be thinking rationally? Thus leaves me here in this predicament.


Last night I dreamt of being chased again. The twist here being that *those* people are now full-fledged doctors now and I was wandering the corridors of a hospital. I am paranoid in real-life, and this sensation gripped me, even in my dreams, when I noticed that all too familiar face, noticing me, and as she started the chase.


Of course I ran. I ran so hard, that if this was in real life, I'd have collapsed of a beat up lung. But in this dream, I screamed out, "I am not crazy! You are not going to catch me and put me in a mental house!"


Real crazy talk, eh? It makes me wonder whether I have reached my limits of sanity. Or maybe it's just that silly ol' November, playing an early trick on me. Happens quite easily this time of year.

Of whipping and being a dominatrix

Everything here might or might not happen... depending on how wild your imagination is...

As the usual rendesvous', they all started with the Internet Relay Chat Service. Accepting invites to various rooms, like playing a game of hide and seek. Peek-a-boo, yoohoo... here I am, talk to me. Feathered in absurdly fashioned nicknames, vying for attention... pick me, pick me... talk to me... Shamelessly flaunting things that you may not have... oh of course... My breasts are mountains, come play within these valleys... or... Of course I could tie you up... maybe... No, I'm free of STD's.

Then comes the one savior... the one who stands out from the rest... and catching your eye... then... Let's meet, where are you... Of course, any pictures?... The usual a/s/l questions... Don't you ever get tired of it? Of course you say, but there is the fun of it all... The one who breaks all moulds, the one who doesn't always start their questions with Hey baby, let's shag... not... I love vaginas... never... Who are you.... Never one of these lame people.

Then you find yourself in a car, on a motorcycle, or walking. Meeting strangers, comforting your fears with "a stranger's just a friend you haven't met". Out for sex, camouflaged by dinners, books or trips to the mall... Comfortable without the usual mask you wear for society, but with a mask of impurity. Basking in the glory of not being caught... Laughing away the day... or night... Anticipation of a new adventure soon to come... Between sheets and sins...

Finding yourself being tied up... or tying someone up. Between being whipped or the one whipping. Every slashing sound like a catalyst, rushing between your erythrocytes. Shivering with every little pain inflicted, getting more and more excited with every moan. Every words of pain soothes your own wounds inside, calms your own insecurities... You slowly accepting that you are someone... Bigger, smaller... depending on who wears the collar.

Finally, letting that rush of pleasure passing through your groins. Wanting it to happen again and again... Shamelessly being ashamed, taunting and taunted... Gaining your self worth by losing respect... Licking every drop of your humility. Wasn't that fun? Walking out of the cramped hotel space, bruised but alive. Knowing that what happened was the deepest kind of trust, the loveliest kind of affection ... and finding yourself in front of the blue screen yet again... another adventure unravelling.

Elevators

Ever had that rush of tinkering heartbeats, the warm blood slowly creeping up and filling up your facial capillaries, as a beautiful stranger steps into an elevator? Or when everybody gets out of the 2x2 enclosure and all that is left are the both of you? You quickly avert your eyes, and have your attention focused intently on counting the tiles on the floor.

Do you suddenly pray that the elevator goes on forever? You who have never been pious before, do you immediately wish that you frequent the praying mat, just so your prayers would get a special place in God's judgement, just this once? Do you imagine the doors jammed together, and as he sweats wth anxiety, you sweating too, and the scent of fear binds you together? Finding a reason to huddle closer, to lament in the tragedy that befell you.

To feel the stubble of his goatee brushing your forehead, as he comforts you despite his own worries. To feel the hardness of his chest muscles, taut with fear and a result of vigorous workouts, as you lie your head against it. To hear his heartbeat tap-tap-tapping rhytmically with yours. Crushing your breasts against his chest.

Would you imagine him wishing the same thing? Shaking your head, suddenly sad, no of course he won't. He is a marble god, carved by Michelangelo, and you are but the pedestal that he steps on. (Even the thought of being an adornment of his beautiful feet sends you into a feverish glee).

You lifted your head, stealing a milisecond glance towards this Adonis, a payback for stealing your heart. Exchanging his warm smile with your own nervous grin. Wait a minute... he smiled at you??? You start cursing yourself, and imagination runs amok again. Interpreting the smile in many wondrous possibilities. Imagining the upward curve meeting your own dry, chapped and pale lips, slow, seductive and sexy.

Shaking your head again. The more your head is filled with these thoughts, the more your heart is filled with sadness.

And then the elevator door opens. A bright ray of light fills in as the beautiful stranger steps out, right foot first. As the brighter streaks of sunshine washes over him, you noticed his face accessorized by acne, his rather awkwardly stooped posture, his super hairy hands, gnarly and full of calluses. You zoomed your sights on the back of his pants and noticed the bulgeless form, loosely encased in a pair of too high waisted pants, noticing that his ankles are showing from frayed ended hems. Where his behind has no artistic form whatsoever, a mound seems to have formed where you imagined hard rectus abdominis crisscrossing.

He turned around, and his smile still melts you. Your day just seemed better.

On What I Write

They ask me... why do I not write about men? What is it that I fear? With my kind of reputation, I cannot claim to not know men, could I? Not that they know me more than what builds my reputation. For they were the builders, the ones ensuring the facade hides my true self. Do I have to mention that they disgust me so? And so they despise me also. Not that I claim to be any angel, heavens no. That wall I built was only for their safety, don't they know? Why do they bloody their hands tearing it down? Why try peeking in when what you see repulses you so? Why bother digging if not all the way? Your hands are now dirty, why not wash it with my tears? And still you talk away. Why do I not write about men? Why should I leave you, you who make up the story mine? You gold nuggets ready for the digging, ripe apples ready for the plucking, nest of hens clucking, clucking, clucking... pecking at those who are different, insisting that your footsteps are the best when your feet are not even barely clean. Why should I write of a creature devoid of form? For I worship the country, every hills and valleys, every nook and cranny. Unlike you, you city lover, who praises tall towers, proudly standing but crumbles at the slightest quake. My mountains are majestic, why trade them for your so called civilisation? To your buildings, I do not admit defeat. Yet you claim to own my valleys too. I write of the sea, and the smell it reminds me. You see? I write of the life mothering every creature, you talk of the one with destructive nature. You can stay forever under your acacia tree, as the smell it gives repulses me. Though for what little shade it provides, I'd rather burn in the desert heat. Although you will see me running to cool my feet. Why do I not write about men? Why should I, when I am breathing, eating, seeing, talking them? They who see this keep on muttering, "And so she does not write about men, she has become one of them".