EXIT NEMO

ajalkah itu kusapa di figurentheater ?

ophelia bergaun kafan
gertrude sembab
dan h. menusuk pisau lipat
ke perut malam

HIDUPLAH !

sepotong tulang kering
tiga tengkorak
dan otot berupa tambang

jatuh dari panggung hitam

melayang di Yamuna
di samping keledai Tom Waits
dan sepotong plang :

FIRE EXIT
Keep Clear

cahaya terang-benderang
di antara tangan

penonton bertepuk kencang.

Kimura Kaela*

"I went to Fiji for 3 days

But I had the flu the whole time

I couldn't go out to sea for dinner

I've still got a runny nose now

And on the third day

Angelina Jolie came wearing this

Skin-tight black wedding dress

And quaffed 3 tall glasses of wine

—White

At the houseboat dinner that

I couldn't attend

Because of my runny nose

I don't know. People tell me

I slept for 3 days

So couldn't have seen Angelina

Jolie coming to see us

But now I've got this pretty, high, nasally

Voice like Kimura Kaela

All thanks to my 3-day dream of

Angelina."



*found this in my notebook, can't be sure if it's mine hence the "   "

i wasn't the one who shot down saint-ex, believe me!

i know what i want now. i want to walk the empty streets of a busy city. early evening, orange light. a greenish river moving upstream. i want to go into a comic books store near closing time. the store will be unattended. piles of acme novelty library vols. 45-75 as high as the sky. i will browse thru vol. 47 in the french traduction, about how jimmy corrigan lost his brain stem in a freak batobus accident and now he's the stupidest kid on earth. the stupidest kid on earth in a coma. i will leave the comic books store, 'tis called galacticos, and i will leave the door open. exposed to the recently falling snow. i will walk to the direction of this park i know, since i had been spending to much time there listening to the sun, and i will find a bench, wet with dew and snow, sit down and read a sang ram* in the dark. in the morning (the night i spent sipping wine, red, straight out of the bottle) i will watch the leaves on the nameless (to me) trees turn from yellow to green and i will watch with amazement and nonchalantly a bronze of condorcet grow wings on the spats. morning hermès, i'd greet him, would you like a mcdonald's coffee and a mcmuffin? no, he'd say. get me something from the hotel rimbaud at the rue descartes. and off i'll go, with that morning's copy of le figaro under my left armpit. i will get the petit déjeuner and totally forget about condorcet. then i will go to CBGB's and watch the velvet undergound in its original (trans)formation. nico would still be hot, though she never was. they will jam with neil hagerty and serge gainsbourg will pelt them with his white calf skin repetto zizi hommes. i will feel crap seeing so many talented people on and off stage and i will catch the lastest métro to la flèche d'or and watch an imitation white stripes dressed in blue polkadots. the watered-down beer will cost 10 euros and i will be a millionaire, having just received my heritage money from the flaubert estate and i'll spend the rest of the money on a grand apartment overlooking place victor hugo and i will play petanque with holiday_sendiri on the velvet carpet. we go hungry after 30 minutes and we'll walk down jalan jaksa and look for a cheap soto betawi. there's one but they've run out of the goat's eyes and there's no way we'll eat at an establishment like that. it's not even 5 a.m. not yet. so she says why don't we go to bladok and order an omelette with melting cheese inside instead? sure, that's only a 24-hour non-stop flight on emirates with a quick transit in dubai. let's go. do you wanna get an a/w marni dress at periplus to go? to go with yr dilapidated copy of de nijs/niewenhuys's faded portraits! the frogs were all over batavia early last century. sure, why not, i like losing my head in the clouds. aren't the girls pretty in this sleepy royal javanese town? i'd say majestic if they weren't all wearing sandals made of swallows. ah, you complain too much, life is what you make out of nothing. then i will make nothing out of life haha hoho heehee. let's just go rafting on the brown river and be a couple of smartasses and call it brownwater rafting. you do that. i do that? i do a lot of things but never things that make money, or dust out of reputations. okay then, let's just go burn bridges and watch slamet gundono play wayang with the flames. let's.

*the sequel to lorrie moore's anagrams, by stephen dixon of i. fame.

rangkum*

they represent the appropriation

the predictive interpretation of

the question we must

seem blissfully unaware of

this pluralist and multicultural

drama as we know

admonitions interest Artemidorus scarcely

we know from Photius

these were the stories

in the immemorial past

one might have expected



*semua teks dari g.w. bowersock, fiction as history: nero to julian, tak boleh lebih dari empat kata per baris

The world on a shoestring

Trembesi di kiri
Rel lori di kanan
Batu runcing di telapak kaki
Rumah di kejauhan

Pulang
atau teruskan perjalanan?

sendirian membaca dan berpikir apakah Su Tung-p'o makes too much sense

kenapa tak bisa seperti John Ashbery
menulis puisi sambil nonton TV
tali jemuran kusut
di langit Massachusetts
poster anjing Peking hilang
'we love her so much—Alastair, 8'

1 2 3 5 discount the lines
tak seberharga kuncup bunga
musim semi dan burung enggang
dalam pengasingan dan pelarian
yang penting adalah tambang
yang menalikan kudamu dengan kudaku

Suatu Malam Menuruni Tangga di Rusun Ante-Hell

halt! beatrice
gimme a hug
look at all those windows shut tight
no one wants to see the night
no one wants the night inside
beatrice

thursday night i'm making vice

turun dari cerobong asap
menyelinap lewat oven ukuran industrial
menyapa koki koki dengan topi miring tak peduli
pada coreng hitam di muka kami
terus berjalan ke belakang bar
menyapa lisa gadis penjaga gorengan
two scallops and a banana fritter please!
tangan di saku dagu ditegakkan
weezer pinkerton world tour 1997
sebelum aku bertemumu
sebelum hidupku jadi sekantong susu
basi! hanya baris panjang malaikat malaikat kecil
bergandeng tangan menyanyi across the sea!

The key to the lock is stuck on the back cover with an old sticky tape

seperti waktu kecil melihat catatan harian kakak sepupu
yang tinggal bersama kami, asmatik, sayang, belum masanya
fish-pose untuk mengembangkan bunga bunga di paru parunya,
membaca tentang andika si jago elektronika yang memeluk pun
tak bisa, erik si dungu yang mungkin setia, batara yang sama sekali
tidak seperti namanya, ya, seperti itu, semacam keringatan yang tertunda
tersendat di kuduk saja, semacam tangis yang hanya gerimis, bukan,
mungkin hanya neptunus menimba air sumur di bantalan awan
sebuah dunia yang bukan milikku, lembaran lembaran kertas
merah muda dengan tulisan tulisan rapi dari kiri ke kanan
kadang kadang ada ilustrasi amatiran: lokomotif kereta api
dengan asap yang membuat gumpalan gumpalan hati.

C'est pour toi!, golden child of the corn!

i guess in the corn fields of yr dreams

there are blackbirds

and scarecrows made of cast-off GAP overalls

do you think

if you quit trying to stay in just the one hut

you will hold the blackbirds

in the palm of your hands

and yr scarecrows will be retrofitted

in dior homme S/S 2009?

i'm gonna do this all day since yesterday i missed out,

what do you do when you can't think outside the box?

do you set up a b&b inside and serve yrself breakfasts

of cold bacon strips and crumbly hash browns

all day?

do you dig invisible tunnels

into the center of the earth

where box or no box

people melt

like arby's cheese

into something nondescript

something neither cheese nor not-cheese?

put up a periscope

into the nether world

where tristan fucks isolde off

gorges himself on pastry and chicks in a great banquet

at bayreuth

wagner M.I.A.

everything's M.I.A. these days

the possibility of you and me

growing a vegetable garden

in a nuclear universe

i want to grow carrot cakes!

i will eat them with you all day!

and throw them on yr face

and you mash them on mine

when we're bored

with the green

apocalyptic sun

i will read blake to you

and you will read him back to me

and by the end of the day

we will speak exclusively

in visionary tyger-ish verse

of life in the slow lane

the cars on our right

mere shadows

speeding by.

people take pictures of each other taking pictures of each other

no idea what i thought when i saw yr picture the first time

i thought of paris

jardin du luxembourg

pale frogs sunning themselves in the november cold

the pale cream earth of the good arrondisements

visiting yr sarcophagus next door at the tombes des grands hommes

100 years y.a.d.

get myself a treat of jeff de bruges chocolate crepes first before the inevitable

doom and tears

i thought of what's in yr head

and what's besides

what's at the tip of yr shoes

kicking the air

into submissions

maybe that's what you're into, submissions

after all, in the drama of life

aren't we all wannabe

dominatrices?

i thought of the standard factory-issue green bench

of painting it the red of yr labia

or maybe the red of yr mania

what do i know

what do i know

about paints and sinners?

i thought of the papparazzo

hiding behing a bush

yr complicity in the whole affair

yr dragging the sun, trees, la mer

into the vortex of yr (finish this sentence yrself)

i thought of many things

things that had happened to me

things that had not happened

things that might've happened

things that might not be

in this world

but the picture is just there

perfect

not saying a word