5 posts tagged “poetry”

Starranise on Malaysian Poetic Chronicles

I don't think I know how to get my writing published. I've got short stories and poetry, which I never know what to do with. Not all of it is good. Most of my energy goes towards film but for me the two come so close, hand in hand almost. I've had my poetry published before. Sort of. Poetry.com bullshit, but eh. I've been published in the newspaper since I was a kid for ads, events ambassador, as a writer, poet and when I was 17, I even got letter of the day in the Malaysian New Straits Times. Yet with this one, I shy... because I don't properly consider myself a poet? Not by occupation. Not like my Tweedle who is more obsessive than I and even has her own poetry band while the rest of us pretend to be rock stars. I've never really read much poetry. I don't have the time to go out of my way to read it unless I'm reading it like any other book. Even then I just flip through. The last poet I was reading was Pablo Neruda at the beginning of this year.

I try to throw myself into too many things at a time. Before, I always thought that I'd be one of those people who would grow up not knowing what to do. Then I turned 16, decided I wanted to do film and now I'm getting cross-eyed with artistic medias and I'm wondering if it's feasible. Writing is my first trade and I've always wanted to try getting published but I forgot it when I took up film. Film festivals make me go cross-eyed as it is. Maybe in between waiting for festivals? Ish. I hate being so greedy.

Fuck this. I'm getting some beers into me.

I am a body made of scar tissue;
housing organs - that wish to burst into tears;
spontaneously combust,
each grow a mouth of its own and cry
and tear, scream, till the existential heavens rock like a raging wave to a stupendous cliff
I am pulled and strung up by veins and arteries to far-flung constellations,
from the tips of my fingers, these bones just weigh me down.

I am the strings of a woman scorned,
tied together by vernacular entities,
looped between your fingers like a childhood game of swapping strings
where they meet and twist and meet again into an irrrecognisable ball of tangled mesh.

Now I'm playing the wrong songs,
feeling the wrong way
Blowing clouds of cigarette smoke between days
for there's a fire in my lungs that go to my heart
and tells everything in me to put it out.
Yet the alarm is broken.
This ship is going down and I, with it. I am my own undertow.
This magnet persists on neurons and deathtrap untruths wrapped around my eyes,
while treacherous smiles still sing for lips (won't you stop)
I said: no more, stop growing scar tissue, I'm covered
in numbed patches of unnatural flesh,
residing on my self as souvenirs of the awful loss of nothing gained.

--------------------------------------------

Nah. I don't like my poetry anymore. It's too distinct.

0328 hours

I wish I could love you in a cave. I wish that I could love you when men were still young. We would be still, in our cave while the ugly ancestors of tigers, turtles; irrecognisable, extinct animals (that are now black and unessential to the universe)... amphibious...hungry... scales and claws erect omnivours pad the outsides of our home. Where darkness is our door and space is our impenetrable lock to keep a frenzy out. I'd rather starve ourselves than be their bone pudding for tonight. I have better uses for him.

1215 hours

I scream, "Oh no, what shall we do!" In the days before feminism, I could get away with being so frail in front of him. It's my excuse to jump into his blanket of earth-smelling arms, salted and soiled from his bed. Kiss those lips, his lips that reach like vines that climb like ivy up my stalks. Only this giant can take me down. He makes my corpuscles shiver. Move in delight. In one lucid kiss and embrace, this man is a satellite transmitter to the stars and back!

0618 hours

The monsters, they go on knocking outside. Asking to come in. Stomping their feet and flaring their crusted nostrils while inside we lay, locked then were torn. They broke down our doors but I still feel him inside.

The sight of shatter

My world is this perpetual calm and you're the bomb that makes me scatter.
For your apoca-lips, I'm willingly,
smiling dumbly to your beastial hits as poor
shelter.
It's okay to be unchivalrous,
only if it's you.

But today you make me shatter.
Looked me in the eyes without words;
sent down this shower like shards of broken glass for raindrops
and I bleed just to feel better.
Does this make you feel better that you're getting better at this?
That you need not even part your lips to slice through me, woo me or even misconstrue me.

This time could I remain in smithereens?
Pick up whatever it is of myself I have left
because this repainted glue makes me ever more fragile.
I'd rather be:
something crafted out of your soft hands when good arms fail embrace.
I'd rather not be:
just another strange fruit hanging from your full platter
under the pretense of being art
when all I am is decoration in your
house of cards.

©Nadira Ilana 2008