.

'What would this man? Now upward will he soar,
And little less than angel, would be more'
-Pope, Essay on Man

It is not proper for a man to be among
stars, and that is why I only dream of them,
luminous balls of plasma—for science
has told me what they are—enfolding me
in their embrace. I am exhausted.

I think light matters. It fills my empty spaces—
pastels, angles, pixel-dust—landscapes
unearthed and not created. I take 'from
the old masters like Goya, Gainsborough,
El Greco', and give all of myself to you.

Cosmonaut and time-traveller, 'I can step
back into previous states at any time',
watch the universe curdle into being on
a blank slate. I can illustrate the celestial
map in so many words. Will you listen?

I send out satellites in search of Gauguin,
Gaudi, God. They leave me with nothing
but mirrors and film: 'The perfect body and
the perfect head are rarely to be found on the
same negative', but I will keep attempting.

Perhaps this 'God is in the details', perhaps
the image of myself is all I can leave
behind. When this portrait is done, I too
will disappear in a flash of light, I will never
have existed. Among the stars, 'I am replete'.

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Written for Microcosmos, the Ceriph art-writing collab thing. My piece is based primarily on Jack Youngblood's 'The Exhausted Spaceman'. Google it and see!

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The sharp sting of incense.
Look, I say. A bag labelled
'white refined sugar from
Thailand, 50 kgs' and then
translated into Arabic below
and over that a porcelain
statue of a minor Chinese god
of war perched on a table.

There is an information board
with photographs of old men
and women posing next to a
Marilyn Monroe lookalike.

Outside, an endless stream of cars.
Nothing moves on the street but
students on field trips and tourists
and construction workers and
this endless stream of cars.

Look, you say, pointing. These
grey glass office blocks, these
pedestrians under umbrellas,
these trees and shops and
asphalt. All this used
to be the sea.

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

The air clots in the sun
and rests, trembling, on your lap.

Fruit falls from my hand in little heaps;
the mystery of a morning.

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Cyril Wong liked it! (2 min of fame)

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'There were two messengers',
two tongues, two paths
or ways of being. Dora: 
'I am fluid, ocean, second-
wave feminism, I transport like
a metaphor, I will bring our master
his Pusaka, McGuffin, Snake-oil, 
Whatever, translated so
everyone can understand'.
Sembodo: 'There are
rules. I keep them. These are
our orders. Try moving me;
I know where I stand. This
Treasure, Loveliness, Truth,
Beauty, is not for all eyes and
ears. Think of inheritance'.

2. Data Sawala

They 'had animosity',
naturally, any storyteller
could tell you that. Dora:
'Rising-action-climax-falling-action?
Phallic nonsense. You have
another thing coming if "Truth
is Beauty, Beauty Truth" does
not make you weep with
shame. I will not fight with
you, for "I am drunk on the
variousness of things" or
something. I have tasted the lips
of shamans and the wildness
of weed. I fly like Ariel over
the dome of this green-purple
sky. I come bearing Gifts'.

3. Padha Jayana

'Equally powerful' apart,
they weakened in mutual
Embrace. Sembodo: 'This is like
Zen but not Zen. Who you
are makes who I am; more 
Hegel if you can stomach the
name of an old dead man.
Because I trust the playwright
I see the future through a glass
darky–we are sacrifices, like
it or not. You misrepresent
the speech of others, and I quake
before I quote word-for-word.
Come, my arms are open! The
Treasure is safe. This is and
has always been so'.

4. Maga Bathanga

'Here are the corpses',
life-in-death and death-in-life;
what is left for us but Truth?
Holy, holy, holy Truth.
Bookshelf Truth, musty-with-
the-years Truth. When the
King returned to bury he
thought to grow a garden
over all this Truth. He thought
to write verses that could encompass 
the world. He took a Secret and 
formed an Alphabet. For why 
should death not smell of
the deep ripeness of fruit
or the sting of
fresh-cut grass?