By Bernice Chauly
From Onkalo

 

And so he says it again through headlines

screaming black, bold Serif on undulating white perimeters

Write – you will have the freedom to write –

he says as he spouts jibber-jabber from pink, watery lips

like swine-filled halos of doom, from the plume of corrupt plinths of marble

arches stretched across the abyss of power,

 

You, who have seized morality from cowards

engaged in chit-chat over the rights

To write – what is right?

stemming from pulsating vagus nerves,

wandering over loose craniums, viaduct throats,

binary clots, loose thoraxes, abdomens filled with bilious bull,

 

You who rile with constipated gall,

You who sing the loose song of false freedoms

You, who in toothless defence watch the night cower with homeless street

urchins on Bukit Bintang, hungry from spent mothers who spread their thin

thighs to the glazed-eyed workers high from inhaling toiled

humid days, sifting their morals and might from concrete

constructing more pricks to adorn the history of this city of mud,

 

Will you let us write of new pages by those who in yellow-infused

riotous colour, betrayed the hallowed streets of the city

in the hundreds, in the tens and tens of thousands

who fought back the tear-gassed alleys with brave tears and Maalox

and damp Good Morning towels, armed with children who shrieked

when the extra-strength gas laced their young eyes and nimble throats?

 

Of those who were faced with the end of black-eyed boots

swirling batons, swallowing their own blood

and the towering lies of a people’s revolution

pulsated by the wrath of pubescent policemen in nameless fatigues –

your shadow army, while we passed on mighty green, yellow balls

and sang bravely whilst clutching empty hand phones that gave not

their paid networks, the final strains of the Negaraku,

 

Will you let us write about the deaths in police custody

in the corridors and balconies of the MACC

which in their silences welcomed the deaths of those who did not deserve to die

of the grazed back and bruised torso of Kugan

of the twisted neck that Beng Hock did not use to bear

of the soiled sultry songs that she, with new breasts

sang while she squatted and was made to do lie on soiled concrete floors?

 

Or of the incandescent C4 that blew her up

and the unsinkable submarine that colludes you with an unspeakable crime

with the One of the wind-blown face and sticky hair of grime

witch-doctor magic that soiled her childhood with dark filth

and the loincloths of bloodied cocks

of the tiger child lulled by the wind of the monsoons that birthed her –

her legacy of guilt?

 

 

Will you let us write of the hunger that sucks us

in meaningless traffic voids and unworthy

side-kicked, bastardised mantras of feel-good phonetic tunes

in between pin-pricks of holy spaces,

in between cars that reek of carbon monoxide

the cacophony of Toyota’s, Hyundai’s and Proton’s, Myvi’s

screaming unholy visions

of cancer-ridden ploys ?

 

You, with emptied-out legions of xanax, cocaine and ecstasy

who wither into the cunning dreams of spirit guardians

and the ghosts of suburbia, who with endless

glee roam into your days and nights

penetrating ethereal slumbers with porn-filled ease

with the magnetic sweep of jazz, K-pop and gangsta-rap

thump-pa-thum-thumping into the blackest of black nights,

 

The city of mud and shadows will claim you

and night-toils reap you of ingrained

once noble philosophies of Islam and Al-Afghani

Hadrami traders who fought your wars and

made you sane and insane from the trollied bulwark

of petroleum patsies, nightshade bullies who set

the motions of torture in pastured green camps

where you made them write and sing unbridled anthems

of mean civilian wars with magnetic strains of Malaysia-Truly Asia,

 

You who lull uncertain trash into

our sullen skies, with more leaden lies

and rare-earth plunders, the haze

from forest fires of late night tangerine whores

behind doors willing to pay that little extra

for “Sir, I give you happy ending”,

 

And against the backdrop of a hundred thousand

rainbow-clad warriors at Stadium Merdeka

You know that we are free

We are free

We can be,

 

Do not make it Your right

to give us the right –

We will always have

the right to write,

 

Yes Sir

We will write a new text

We will write a new beginning

We will have a better ending

We will write a new country,

 

Free from fear

from vicious ding-dong lies and decrepit cowardly threats –

We deny this bongo-bongo land and its oil palm-republicanism

and We will seek flight in the multi-coloured tapestry

that IS this great country

from the ends of this coloured cloak

of the new and old regal Malays, Indians, Chinese

Iban, Penan, Kadazan-Dusun, Rungus, Temiar, Chewong tribes

and the sullies of Allah and

whose tongue it suits –

It suits us All and

We take offence,

 

You will not stop us

and we will rise to fulfil

the birthright that

Is this nation –

 

We will write this

in All our voices

 

And You

Will listen.