tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28047623194319828912024-03-19T01:56:04.335-07:00.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2804762319431982891.post-756103239679086302008-02-26T03:38:00.000-08:002008-02-26T03:54:40.220-08:00Seven StonesThe first stone is the weight of my envy<br />Unspeakable and hidden, like my crooked smile in old photos<br />Where I wanted to be the prettier child<br />It is hard to let go of things you know you will never have<br /><br />The second stone slides off my hand reluctantly,<br />Sloth tumbling down the slope of my fingers like a child getting off a swing<br />Selfish and pouting, the memory of<br />Late mornings in bed, the third cup of tea<br />Looking up memories to pass the time<br /><br />The third stone is the largest, spotted like<br />Greed at a sale when the unbeautiful pretend they can afford<br />Anything and you rush for that dress that you saw on the girl with your<br />Best friend’s boyfriend’s ex-classmate<br />And buy the dress in three different colours,<br />Including the one you know you will never wear and console yourself with<br />A matching handbag for the pain<br /><br />The fourth stone burns my palm<br />Lust can come quietly, as you watch a movie about someone else’s life and wonder<br />If it is a cliché to ask if that could happen to you<br />I throw it like a heartache, it clings to my fingers like a kiss<br />Asking for forgiveness before I let it fly<br /><br />The fifth stone sparkles to catch my neighbour’s eye<br />Pride has no place in prayer, but everyone still worships at the<br />Shrine of “Keeping Up With The Neighbours” and there is no more fact<br />Or fiction only the lines between being proud and being honest<br />And the division depends on if you think I am trying to be better than you<br /><br />The sixth stone is heavy like the<br />Gluttony that is a national treasure<br />How else do we shore up the economy?<br />All you can eat buffets and nothing to do but eat and then look in the mirror,<br />I tried to stop you from eating dinner for two by yourself but<br />Mia sees gluttony in the mirror since they are both empty, and never satisfied<br /><br />The seventh stone shatters on the pillar<br />Wrath, for all the times my heart held nothing but blood and fire<br />And bitter words I spoke to too many people<br />I hope you’ve forgiven me, maybe youth is anger because we resist the fact that<br />We have to wait ten years for power and by then it will be too late for us<br />Because we will not remember why we wanted it<br />This stone, at least, in its shattering will change<br /><br />My hands are empty, there are no more stones.<br /><br />My heart is water<br />In the pool of my body<br />I have nothing left to say that God does not already know<br />He who hears my prayers before my crooked lips shape the words,<br />Holds my heart, mute and blinded<br />By everyday sin and daily indignity<br />I know now that my soul is for Him, and that the rest of me will follow<br />Flesh to bone to cracked soil and air<br />And maybe there will be seven stones, after the dust of my feet has settled,<br />Holding the memory of my hands and my penitence.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com45tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2804762319431982891.post-76268678577514074932008-02-17T12:16:00.000-08:002008-02-17T12:24:28.308-08:00The Lions of BaghdadThe lions of Baghdad rise from the Round City<br />Padding softly on paws of sunlight and dust<br />Licking blood off the wounds of the women and children<br />Upon whom the world has declared war<br /><br />An ivory hook reaches from the darkness<br />And hooks around the neck of a fat man<br />Selling his daughter for cigarettes<br />Those who believe that struggle creates nobility<br />May wash their hands in the blood on the streets<br /><br />The lions prop up a roof of stone that has lasted<br />Through childbirth, cannons, and corruption<br />Lowering it gently, until finally the sleeping man underneath<br />Wakes up in the arms of his long-dead wife and smiles.<br /><br />A soft feline breath sends soldiers and children<br />Dreams of crisp air and the possibility of a life without fear<br />When the explosion is over,<br />Who can tell the difference between a soldier who will never see his child<br />And a child who could not remember his father?<br />They have both been cheated by amateur chess players<br />Who know only to sacrifice pawns for kings<br /><br />The lions are the last ones to have unbroken hearts<br />Though they have watched Baghdad bleed from a bellycut of bitterness<br />Since the palace became the centre of the world<br />And the mosque its satellite<br />Yet they will not leave this city of ashes<br />And its static chatter of dread<br />Until there are living hearts in the burning pulpits<br />And the children only smell of bread.<br /><br />--------------------------------------<br /><br />really not quite sure what to think of this one. in some ways very reminiscent of my rather simplistic older works, but i did like it at the time i wrote it. perhaps in a couple of weeks will just be a case of fairy gold. will see.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2804762319431982891.post-6162801401378498432008-02-07T13:37:00.000-08:002008-02-07T13:53:50.345-08:00"Joyas Voladoras, " by Brian Doyle<a href="http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=10038327"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5164358741702518786" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhR7yIpN2gTPRyMAho-84QJhZRjtFEKnUDFE1w3dj1YIIl1ZyeRz6M2-aa3nh-VvWt85vgyuOBBxpIO9HNLezZ4eYXOmrJRfPHEKd7UtIPTuwaZOXq9BPZ47niXOV09zUipN5KMoEEtUDY/s320/10038327-md.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div>Consider the hummingbird for a long moment. A hummingbird's heart beats ten times a second. A hummingbird's heart is the size of a pencil eraser. A hummingbird's heart is a lot of the hummingbird. Joyas voladoras, flying jewels, the first white explorers in the Americas called them, and the white men had never seen such creatures, for hummingbirds came into the world only in the Americas, nowhere else in the universe, more than three hundred species of them whirring and zooming and nectaring in hummer time zones nine times removed from ours, their hearts hammering faster than we could clearly hear if we pressed our elephantine ears to their infinitesimal chests.</div><div> </div><div></div><div>Each one visits a thousand flowers a day. They can dive at sixty miles an hour. They can fly backwards. They can fly more than five hundred miles without pausing to rest. But when they rest they come close to death: on frigid nights, or when they are starving, they retreat into torpor, their metabolic rate slowing to a fifteenth of their normal sleep rate, their hearts sludging nearly to a halt, barely beating, and if they are not soon warmed, if they do not soon find that which is sweet, their hearts grow cold, and they cease to be. Consider for a moment those hummingbirds who did not open their eyes again today, this very day, in the Americas: bearded helmetcrests and booted racket-tails, violet-tailed sylphs and violet-capped woodnymphs, crimson topazes and purple-crowned fairies, red-tailed comets and amethyst woodstars, rainbow-bearded thornbills and glittering-bellied emeralds, velvet-purple coronets and golden-bellied star-frontlets, fiery-tailed awlbills and Andean hillstars, spatuletails and pufflegs, each the most amazing thing you have never seen, each thunderous wild heart the size of an infant's fingernail, each mad heart silent, a brilliant music stilled.</div><div></div><div> </div><div>Hummingbirds, like all flying birds but more so, have incredible enormous immense ferocious metabolisms. To drive those metabolisms they have race-car hearts that eat oxygen at an eye-popping rate. Their hearts are built of thinner, leaner fibers than ours. Their arteries are stiffer and more taut. They have more mitochondria in their heart muscles -- anything to gulp more oxygen. Their hearts are stripped to the skin for the war against gravity and inertia, the mad search for food, the insane idea of flight. The price of their ambition is a life closer to death; they suffer heart attacks and aneurysms and ruptures more than any other living creature. It's expensive to fly. You burn out. You fry the machine. You melt the engine. Every creature on earth has approximately two billion heartbeats to spend in a lifetime. You can spend them slowly, like a tortoise, and live to be two hundred years old, or you can spend them fast, like a hummingbird, and live to be two years old.</div><div></div><div> </div><div>The biggest heart in the world is inside the blue whale. It weighs more than seven tons. It's as big as a room. It is a room, with four chambers. A child could walk around in it, head high, bending only to step through the valves. The valves are as big as the swinging doors in a saloon. This house of a heart drives a creature a hundred feet long. When this creature is born it is twenty feet long and weighs four tons. It is waaaaay bigger than your car. It drinks a hundred gallons of milk from its mama every day and gains two hundred pounds a day and when it is seven or eight years old it endures an unimaginable puberty and then it essentially disappears from human ken, for next to nothing is known of the mating habits, travel patterns, diet, social life, language, social structure, diseases, spirituality, wars, stories, despairs, and arts of the blue whale. There are perhaps ten thousand blue whales in the world, living in every ocean on earth, and of the largest mammal who ever lived we know nearly nothing. But we know this: the animals with the largest hearts in the world generally travel in pairs, and their penetrating moaning cries, their piercing yearning tongue, can be heard underwater for miles and miles.</div><div></div><div>Mammals and birds have hearts with four chambers. Reptiles and turtles have hearts with three chambers. Fish have hearts with two chambers. Insects and mollusks have hearts with one chamber. Worms have hearts with one chamber, although they may have as many as eleven single-chambered hearts. Unicellular bacteria have no hearts at all; but even they have fluid eternally in motion, washing from one side of the cell to the other, swirling and whirling. No living being is without interior liquid motion. We all churn inside.</div><div></div><div> </div><div>So much held in a heart in a lifetime. So much held in a heart in a day, an hour, a moment. We are utterly open with no one, in the end -- not mother and father, not wife or husband, not lover, not child, not friend. We open windows to each but we live alone in the house of the heart. Perhaps we must. Perhaps we could not bear to be so naked, for fear of a constantly harrowed heart. When young we think there will come one person who will savor and sustain us always; when we are older we know this is the dream of a child, that all hearts finally are bruised and scarred, scored and torn, repaired by time and will, patched by force of character, yet fragile and rickety forevermore, no matter how ferocious the defense and how many bricks you bring to the wall. You can brick up your heart as stout and tight and hard and cold and impregnable as you possibly can and down it comes in an instant, felled by a woman's second glance, a child's apple breath, the shatter of glass in the road, the words I have something to tell you, a cat with a broken spine dragging itself into the forest to die, the brush of your mother's papery ancient hand in a thicket of your hair, the memory of your father's voice early in the morning echoing from the kitchen where he is making pancakes for his children.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com227tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2804762319431982891.post-47285134589633650772007-10-23T04:13:00.000-07:002007-10-23T04:15:03.678-07:00green applesSince the hippie-formerly-known-as-Prince said “Okay, honey, let’s leave the land of the free, and play house in yellow submarines”, no one really remembers that they had a son. Skin as white as snow? Check. Hair as black as ebony? Check. Lips as red as roses? (Or blood, if you prefer.) Check. But see, nobody realised a wish could be hereditary. So the son gets away with everything. Which is his birthright, after all. Not everyone can sleep in the beds of dwarves (vertically challenged uncles), or sing to animals (‘The Lion King’, stage right, exit), and get away with it looking even better.<br /><br />I know I’ve forgotten his name, the way you’re supposed to, with old stories. Not stories like Odysseus’ Odyssey, where he becomes his story in all its epic length and flowery verse, but the stories that distil themselves. The one where people are known as the third wife, who sacrifices herself to save her daughter, or the eldest son, who defeats rampaging evil #3.<br /><br />The sun is out, like a Sunday night miracle. It’s farmer’s market day, in the heart of this old city. With the shopping centres and the mobile phone shops a two-minute walk away. The castle’s in the background, with the rabbits like warriors on its craggy granite rock foundation, charging up the hill for God and country.<br /><br />He’s standing there at an apple stall. Poison green, acid green. I wonder if he’s doing it for the sheer dramatic irony. Standing there, a knife in one hand, an apple in the other. Obviously the knife is small, sharp bladed, its hilt as black as his nails, painted like a heartbreak in July. He takes another apple. The sun paints half of it gold, leaving the other half purple. He holds it like a woman holds her prayers, close to her, where they will do no harm. He winks.<br /><br />JUGGLING? That’s just too much. Even old ma queen witch woman would have complained. The story has to make sense. When you’re standing there, the sun burning the movement of curls across your cheek, your eyes not quite staying the same colour from one moment to the next, there has to be a big show. Juggling is so Punch and Judy, I expected something from The Globe.<br /><br />He beckons me over. Cuts the apple he’s just caught. The knife pops the acid skin, into the flesh as white as his. It’s sibilant, the sound of the blade through the apple, like the snake tempting Eve. He takes the half that used to be gold, I take the purple. I watch him bite into his half before I do. He notices, and the roses in his face twitch.<br /><br />“The same as last week, luv?”<br /><br />“Yup.”<br /><br />“I’ve been thinking, maybe we should start calling these ‘Wicked Witches’, eh? Instead of Granny Smith. Pity the old girl, someone must have loved her so much they named these after her. Only sweetens up when someone cooks her goose in the oven. What d’you think, luv?”<br /><br />I smile, red hot iron.<br /><br />“Maybe she danced for joy.”Unknownnoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2804762319431982891.post-78886236961326610482007-07-31T05:36:00.000-07:002007-07-31T05:38:31.543-07:00The Decidedly Not Divine Miss PThe decidedly not divine Miss P was annoyed. She tapped her blood-red fingernails on the table, reading yet another article on identifying Singapore’s favourite undead. They’d gotten it all wrong! Again! Was it really her fault she liked floral fragrances? She went to great trouble to smell nice, and they thought it was all frangipani! Or jasmine! The living! They never noticed anything! <br /><br /><br />She looked around, ignoring the steam rising from her kopi-o. The Lido girl was here, dragging a teddy bear around the old-fashioned coffeeshop, asking the uncle for Milo. Miss P smiled at the girl, and shifted on the old wooden bench to make space for her. The girl had been really excited about some upcoming movie about a boy wizard, even dressing up her bear with a wizard’s hat. Miss P thought it was just as well the girl had a seat for every movie, she looked like might just rematerialise in anticipation. The uncle came over with Milo for the girl, and Miss P’s kaya toast. She called out to his head, which kept a watchful eye from the counter, thanking him. <br /><br /><br />The army boys were all at one large table, as usual, drinking Tiger Beer, and eating as fast as they could. Between the vulgarities and the army acronyms, it sounded like they’d had a good night’s work, giving an entire camp full of newly-minted NS boys nightmares of ORD-ing six months late. A particularly sensitive boy had woken up screaming. He was now being imitated ad nauseum, the boys laughing themselves, well, obviously not to death, but hard enough. One boy kept his spilling entrails on the chair next to him. Another had blooms of blood on his No.4s, military medals in crimson. Both swore instead of using punctuation. <br /><br /><br />She’d had a good night as well. Taking the last MRT train to be early, she’d decided to wander around her usual haunts. At a reservoir, she’d terrified a girl into hysterics, putting paid to her boyfriend’s idea of a wild night in a parked car. She’d thought to get a lift, since the car they were in was speeding in her direction, but decided to continue wandering. Seeing more parked cars, she had repeated herself, terrifying 3 more girls before taking the night bus back. <br /><br /><br />She looked around. There was the odd soldier in an old-fashioned uniform. They were usually quiet, asking only for drinks and to borrow a newspaper. The livid bayonet and gunshot wounds were horrific even by their standards. They deserved respect, these men, who had fought and died for a country not yet formed. The war dead rarely came here, preferring to live in their old bunkers. They practiced marching in order to have something to do, and kept to themselves. This had become a country almost foreign to them. Most of the places they knew no longer existed. Those of their companions still alive were mostly in hospitals and old age homes. They visited as often as they could, she knew, always asking forgiveness for not being the ones who had to survive. On the nights they marched, they always hoped that there would be someone to see them, a distant nephew, perhaps, or a granddaughter. But that was rare, and as time went by, fewer people remembered them. They had no graves, only memories, and those were fading. <br /><br /><br />Miss P smiled to herself. At least she wasn’t losing her popularity. Everyone knew her, or thought they did. She frowned again. Who exactly came up with the idea that she lived in a banana tree? To her, bananas were good for fibre and potassium, and not much else. Anyway, technically banana trees weren’t trees, but large herbs. She lived in a shophouse these days, storing her vast collection of white dresses in several rooms. Their world kept expanding, as buildings were torn down to make way for new ones. She’d been surprised to see the National Library appear, with its red brick walls and the fountain in the courtyard. It still smelled like old books, quiet and accepting. She’d seen the new library, and thought it was odd, cold efficient glass and metal, not particularly something you could have feelings about. Recently the National Stadium had begun to appear. It was like there was more than one Singapore, the past and the present ones, neither having much in common with the other. But then again, she was old, older than she looked, and her ideas of history and belonging had no place anymore in the land of the living. <br /><br /><br />“Mari kita rakyat singapura sama-sama menuju bahagia…” <br /><br /><br />The radio began blaring. Miss P looked at the clock, it was the end of tonight, and the beginning of tomorrow. She sang along. <br /><br /><br />“Majulah Singapura. Majulah Singapura.” <br /><br /><br /><br />- Nurul Jihadah Hussain 2007<br />-------------------------<br />Published in Life! section of the Straits Times on the 29th of July as part of their Ghost Stories Competition.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2804762319431982891.post-40091752930239453112007-07-22T08:46:00.000-07:002007-07-22T08:50:16.504-07:00i got a piece published in the straits times!!! omg i am so excited! haha its coming out next sunday! i hope people like it. anyway, i'll put it up here when it comes out. still want to work on the original, which involved politics and the kranji war memorial. but that would mean going to kranji war memorial, and no one wants to go with me, and its a bit too much in the middle of nowhere for me to go alone. anyway, for that piece, i think it would have required too much emotional honesty for me to want it to be published in the papers. not to mention that since it would have been about GHOSTS, and the people commemorated at the war memorial may still have family alive, it might not have been very sensitive. but i really want to do a piece on it. gr.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2804762319431982891.post-14613818854827768822007-06-23T00:13:00.000-07:002007-06-23T00:21:50.288-07:00Rabindrath Tagore- from the collection: GitanjaliDay after day, O lord of my life, shall I stand before thee face to face? With folded hands, O lord of all worlds, shall I stand before thee face to face?<br /><br />Under thy great sky in solitude and silence, with humble heart shall I stand before three face to face?<br /><br />In this laborious world of thine, tumultuous with toil and with struggle, among hurrying crowds shall I stand before thee face to face?<br /><br />And when my work shall be done in this world, O King of kings, alone and speechless shall I stand before thee face to face?Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2804762319431982891.post-42788044220914454352007-06-08T06:09:00.000-07:002007-06-08T06:12:50.812-07:00okay, explanation for the blog title. its from one of my favourite poems:<br /><br /><strong>reflection</strong> <br /><em>by grace chua</em><br /><br />1. ying3/shadow<br /><br />i'm<br />not fantastic, just reflected light.<br />i wish i had your second sight,<br />but all i am is seconds late. you race ahead,<br />i'm just delayed, bouncing off you<br />and stumbling into walls<br />in my haste. i'm such a waste<br />of time, forever<br />skulking in your shadow, now and then i fall<br />through windows, beaming, and all<br />i do is hurt myself. slowed<br />by my own medium, trying to catch<br />the uncertain sunshine of your smile.<br /><br />oh, this daylight no one can save.<br /><br />2. neon gods<br /><br />following the wrong god home<br />like hansel or gretel, crouched<br />in a cage of your own making,<br />a birdcage made of light that lingers<br />down your interlocking fingers<br />down the bridge of your nose, doing a flip<br />and careening down your spine.<br />preening, you<br />give me that look. you give me chills.<br />you're mine.<br />restless young angel<br />smashing lightbulbs to fight the darkness<br />with shards of broken glass.<br /><br />you used to be<br />a prodigy,<br />now you're just<br />a shot<br />in the dark.<br />i'm sorry, we all make<br />that sort of mistake,<br />it was just<br />a trick<br />of the light<br /><br />3. illumination<br /><br />SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES:<br />STEP RIGHT UP<br />STEP RIGHT UP<br />the oldest game, the greatest show<br />never ask me how i know<br />never ask how tricks are done<br />that would ruin all your fun<br />soda sluts and candymen<br />showtown girls and caravans<br />razzledazzle superstar<br />high up, on trapezia<br />smoke-and-mirror scatterlight<br />take me from the world tonight<br />mirages masking shades of grey<br />live fast, nothing gold can stay<br />are you going to the fair?<br />will you help to get me there?<br /><br />CAUTION:<br />don't ask strangers for directions<br />little girls, whose indiscretions<br />lead to nasty shocks, may cry.<br />no one tells the truth: they lie<br />in the gold of rainbows' ends.<br />here nobody makes amends.<br />defloweration and diffusion<br />carouselling in confusion<br />senses gape at bright illusion<br /><br />EXIT (,stu,mbling,ly)<br /><br />don't rub the magic lamp the wrong wayUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2804762319431982891.post-7941710246409113832007-06-07T21:05:00.000-07:002007-06-07T21:10:47.474-07:00published in 'but,' 05. supposed to be like, a performance piece in writing. and really, did not warrant the deathglare my beloved writing mentor gave me. i was 17! for crying out loud. am thinking of reworking it so that it would be more... performance friendly<br /><br />---------<br /><br /><em>Handwritten </em><br /><br />I’d trace the Cyrillic words for truth on your eyelids<br />Shade the way the shadows hold you<br />Dip my hands in ink, and there would be<br />Two curved trails of fingerprints, tracing where your wings would have been<br />My name in Arabic on the back of your neck, where you can’t see it <br />Just above yours, in any language you love. <br /><br />Down, down, down your spine<br />The figure-shapes of all the languages I can think of<br />Cambodian, Japanese, Bengali<br />For love and everything else too perfect that I would rather you not know I want<br />In old, old languages, where the ache of history has lingered on.<br /><br />I would trace your lifeline and mark the constellations around it<br />Your lifeline: the Big Dipper, your love line: Orion’s belt<br />These marks Cassiopeia, Andromeda, Draco<br />I’d cover your scars with promises; mark your bruises with lies.<br /><br />In the thinnest pen I would write everything I could never say to you<br />In my handwriting that you can’t be bothered to read<br />Inking the gaps between your hands and mine.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2804762319431982891.post-62851316671018414492007-06-07T21:00:00.000-07:002007-06-08T06:15:02.827-07:00okay, this poem just frustrates me. its not particularly brilliant, especially with the non-ending. but i like bits of it. so shall just put it up. the only thing i wrote for like, 18months. comments MUCH appreciated.<br /><br /><br />---------------<br /><br />This city with its stone streets is not mine<br />Fought over by the men like boys today<br />Sitting in front of me with blood on their knuckles and scars under their eyes<br />Learning languages spoken by their enemies<br />The streets are spoken for and the girls are<br />Corners, defining men and air<br /><br />The winds are political, they bend over the young<br />Caressing faces, shaping limbs, then they look up and smile<br />Marble, like the memory of a knife<br />And hit the old with gales, the useless with force, they destroy the unbending<br />The different, those who are outside, those on the news tonight<br /><br />The winds say walk with me, or fight<br /><br />There is glass on the streets, under shoes, there is glass in the air<br />The windows are shattered, there will be no hope tomorrow<br />Because tonight the bars stay open and prayer only speaks at dawn <br /><br />Blood is keeping the city warm<br />The blood of mistaken identities in the park, in the parking lot<br />The blood in the vomit of the children studying to be doctors<br />Pretending not to be scared by the dead becoming familiar<br />Blood in the memories of old deaths, the old man trading cigarettes for warmth has his name on the wall for the Great Wars, the dead wars<br />The wars that the grandchildren that would be theirs are still fighting<br /><br />They are restless in the old graveyards, they know it will be pointless<br /><br />There is blood in the languages, the conquered who are accused of conquering.<br />There is blood in the spice, of the jewel in the crown, of the heathen dead <br />Blood in the accents of the living <br />Those who have traded their languages willingly, <br />Sell a past to buy a future, sell a future to buy today.<br /><br />..... <br /><br />(see, no ending. argh.)Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2804762319431982891.post-80307721578864610142007-06-07T20:42:00.000-07:002007-06-07T21:08:43.978-07:00published in 'eye on the world' 04, i think. am the proudest of this poem. once in a while i take it out and read it and feel all happy. i know, so sad right.<br /><br />---------------<br /><br /><em>A city from sand </em><br /><br />They live like sultans, simply, in an istana of wood<br />By a stream that stopped paying tribute a generation ago<br />Mahsuri is still bleeding white, cursing her own people for seven generations<br />Hang Tuah sits by the window, balancing his keris on one bony finger<br />Still thinking if he should have loved the one who loved him best<br /><br />Puteri Gunung Ledang knows now what she will ask the Sultan for<br />It will not be the seven trays of mosquito hearts, or the seven jars of virgins’ tears<br />Or even the bowl of blood from his son, because she knows he has bled him dry already<br />She will ask him to teach their people to remember what they have lost<br />And who they might have become<br /><br />They who have kept but one promise, an old one by their ancestor<br />Demang Lebar Daun to Sang Nila Utama , liege-man to his king,<br />To serve those who rule them without treachery or dishonour.<br /><br />While those who have overthrown Sang Nila Utama<br />Through the coup d’etat of stories systematically shot in the head<br />Have filed him away,<br />Descendant of King Solomon and Alexander the Great,<br />Into children’s stories and cheap local paperbacks<br />As the slightly foolish young man who was so entranced by one lion<br />That he created a city from sand.<br /><br /><br /><br /> December 2004<br /><br />Mahsuri- Central character of a Malay myth who is wrongly lynched for adultery <br />Hang Tuah- Legendary Malay hero who killed his best friend, who had been running amok, on orders from the sultan<br />Keris- Traditional dagger<br />Puteri Gunung Ledang- Mythical fairy princess who lives on top of Mt. Ledang in Malaysia. Asks for impossible wedding gifts from suitors so as to discourage them <br />Demang Lebar Daun- Chief Minister to Sang Nila Utama<br />Sang Nila Utama- Founder of Singapore, also Palembang ruler from which many Malay Sultans claim descentUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0