Gosling, Birds, & Towers.

A close companion of mine once said that Mar, if you were an animal you'd be a bird out of its cage without knowing where to fly. Not because you wouldn't want to, but because you wouldn't know where to start.

I'm not Ryan Gosling, my body is not photoshopped, these eyes are not romantically made of glitter the way they were imagined as, and surely if you were a bird i would not be ... Because unfortunately i am me.

And as you can see if i echoed to your delusions my yellow brick road is clearly paved for me and it wouldn't be as magical. For at the end of the road there won't be any lions, scarecrows, nor tinmans yearning for a heart.

There will just be me, back in Kansas, Toto. No witches nor emerald coated castles, but a ring in hand and a list of chores. Nestled in trees that have sprouted along with my expectations versus yours that have left me be.

Growing up my mother insisted on wearing red shoes as she wishes to stand out amongst her sisters.
Growing up my grandma was the eldest sister of 11 siblings who climbs trees for piece and quiet, on her own, despite the blisters on her lady like knee and her long line of misters. Growing up i've never believed in princes, but i do believe in villains. For i have been referred to as one by many for the things i want in me. For discarding people as i please, as i get into their heads, as i tear them apart.

Ursula, Yzma, Maleficent, oh i'd rather plot myself an escape plan and lurk in my own lair made of these poor unfortunate souls. For sure i want to be where the people are, but these people have confined me in cages made of routines consisting of numbers that bends into steel cages for me to follow and see.

It's been 70 years, and our roots as Indonesian have grown more intracate than Rapunzel's hair in which i can still see that most of the girls seen with long freshly crisped hair still has the mentality that sooner or later someone would come to their rescue, including this little babbling wart.

Little of us have thought of bazookas and explosives to get ourselves out of their towers, for those things are meant for boys. My high hopes have now grown into scales, and these words that may bore you have sparked itself to be my fire breath. But if only this were an actual escapee.

For if i was a dragon instead, if we were, they would not follow - since till now it is as obvious as a century accented bark that we are still and will never be equal like this.

So much for a happy independence day, princess.

On Castles & Petals

How many flower petals have I plucked to wilt by force - only to fall under your name?

The blood shed of poor soldiers, tears cried in sets of shoulders, every drop poured in the vermillion of emotions and left to dry as raven as the ink splotched on a writing desk of one’s declaration…

In which I’ve never heard, seen, felt, smelled, or tasted a piquant whisper from you

I am just a pop-up castle of the dewy-eyed, so easy to tear apart, drawn on dog-eared storybooks, and flipped through too often to please. While you are centuries worth of likelihoods, with creaking aged gates that shall shatter sparkles of dust the minute that it – for once – decides to roll its guards down

You might be made up of concealed murder holes for all i know, of fetid moats, & chained dungeons holding memories as its captives - all wrapped in concrete walls that seal it all away from the world to see, for my pupils to leave be

Yet your palpable towers hugs tight the warmth of pounding hearts that paints along slash of a smile, letting the bronze gleam radiate jollity in the comforting fragrance of a carbohydrate rich feast shared for all – all to yourself in shadows - no sadness felt in things unseen

I wallow in the puddles of my own creation, drenched to a point where maybe you'll soon let me in.

These efforts of mine have washed away to turn cyan

Spot me in meadows of eau de Nil - as i lay sighing'

All snug under soft-hued blossoms of the favorite colours we never knew you had

These andantino tempo can either be the idyllic patter of a trickle in nearing tributaries, a set of pumping hunk of meats meant to be, or mine alone - if so then keep away from these crossing fingers and expectations that might combust sanctuaries like yours into rubbles.

Loves me, loves me not, loves me, loves me not, loves me… too?

Was this all just an echo of your solid barriers?

Tired Tires

A war is a house key misplaced

It’s a light bulb somebody forgot to switch off

It’s a pile of dishes unwashed

It’s always been more common than a bullet aimed between scrunched eyebrows

And if we walk backwards with necks rotated at around 100 degrees

The ache stretched would conjure up accusations instead

You, you, and you - must’ve forgot!

For the ink and blood that have splattered could have smudged itself an oasis

And that hole of an oasis would’ve been a nice change compared to the hole in

The hearts of forgotten lovers that have died with not much to blame

Maybe it was never the death of Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo,

Maybe it started with a burnt Sudžuk or an overstuffed Filovane Paprike for breakfast,

From a nagging mother in the outskirts of Herzegovina, or even further in the ringing of a door bell as it creaks open in a small pizza business in Italy just waiting to bloom,

Never mind the alliances, the whos and whats that are in cahoots

Shall the dominos fall to capture instead a Euphaedra Janetta butterfly that may have laid an egg in Sierra Leone on the wrong Cotton Tree at the most inconvenient of times?

From what I’ve seen when I was 6,

It might have rolled back to shattering white ceramics and coffee stains on the pale beige wall

With so much to say, a lot to feel, yet dumbed down with too many shebang

With wrists that have swung, held by forced, and caressed in an apology overdue

With locked doors, cutters, and scattered pills left to pump

Heat surges that are too fast it deserves tickets for moving in the speed of light

It has been said that erupting volcanoes were never meant to be as one

And as the magma in most would brew to burst, yours was forced to hush

Denial was a vicious predator scavenging in still seas, its prey came in flocks that was left to cower

Eyes sting when underwater but the blur stops you from crying

The temperature drops down below and falls off a ladder, but nothing was ever solved

It gets darker 1001 M under the sea, more in mum and not as upbeat as Little Mermaid pictured it

With quick changes in your Celsius comes the breaking of glasses

Such pressure is only made best with the popping of champagnes, in which there was never

Shivering was a better option and bubbles there are made instead when you can’t tell a soul,

And it’s been said that you can’t ever, ever be angry… while saying the word “Bubbles”.

It has always been your lack of warmth and comfort

Uncharted waters doesn’t come with blankets

It doesn’t come with the luxury to combust

And it never came with caps locked sentences

Your tears might as well be the pearls they can choke on

After years of putting that forefinger on your upper lip

Fingers that were never used to intertwine, but instead

It wags at you, and points out flaws like the tails of Whippets

Life jogs past you, and many have passed on

Yet you’re still not used to the jolt, it’s like your first time going into a highway tunnel once again where everyone else knew that it was temporary and not worth a single wail – but you screamed anyway.

And in between rigid corals placed too deep, none may hear.

And whilst you flip the coin, watching it tumble like a trapeze act

It has always been a particle too many in me, sparking

For it started with twists and shouts, and with it we worked it all out

We string up words and knit them like sweaters for one another to wear

For one another to rip and fix as we punch walls, and then attack with hugs

And the minute i knew what a 'cancer' was growing up

I was explained that it’s the consequences of bottling it all up

Like molds and cobwebs in the confined house of a traumatised cat lady

The only death I’ve yet to seen up until now was my Grandpa’s when I was eight

Everyone bundled up and held each other’s hands, forming the seas with their tears as i stood confused...

If my family represents every single volcano in the Hawaiian Archipelago, there will be no such thing as “Alohas!” for the a, l, and o has been burnt and the ‘has’ within possessions are no longer there - all else is mixed up into ‘ash’

These tires are tired, and they have tried

For how can calm waters burst, and how can mountains move

Wars that ended in blame started with something to prove

With us, it has always been a knot in the strings of the phones we made out of cans or a branch that fell between our separate tree houses. Tree houses with uncombed roots that has trampled us to where we are now.

We promised to not retrace a single more, but if only wars were settled this easy.

A Certain Romance

I crawled back into the position of a fetus

With eyes glued shut as i remembered the days spent floating in wombs

Snivelling in hopes that all else would dissolve and wash away

In the actual patter of what's left of the dusk's tears

In the actual matter of what's left of all my fears

You back there persistently asked for the time,

As if you saw him came in and swoop our precious hours

Well, he needs to know that panic in me was the filter of a zombie movie, and all else was melting

All i knew was how time said that this was a search for greater beings and also hippies

All i knew was how all else was real, and if lucidity was our God, emotions are our deities

Would you please stop biting my head? I'm already as black and blue as the night herself

How many times do i have to tell you that you're not a puppy anymore?

You almost jumped from the balcony, I couldn't tell the difference between condiments & ichor

I pulled myself together but you were about to pull the fridge up to the second floor,

And for over too many onomatopoeias, you ran yourself against everything else and the door.

Who else should i balderdash for sanity? What more gobbledygook can my muzzle utter?

That the square in our mouth unleashed the Tartarus caged in you? That you are now merely the naked puppet of your actual deep slumber?

That you pranced on all loved ceramics, books, and dairy products whilst holding Nataraja in your hands?

That love was unlike other drugs? Despite it all, i lull you in words that will never ever come close to goodbye.

That love is quite like every other drug there is? making you wish for a restart towards your
checkpoint in every blink of an eye.

And by the standing of the ticking clock, time surged to slap you into coherence

The dominos fall along, as all the balderdash falter, yet all the rubbish wasn't in its place

Our love meant differently whilst under intoxication, but our chemistry remains

You were making grass angels within, while i was grasping a rain check waiting for the angels to actually come by

As deep within the chaos of my heart you found your serendipity in all your favourite ties.