Orang bujang

Orang bujang makannya ringkas
Orang bujang jalannya tangkas
Orang bujang liburnya pantas
Orang bujang marahnya lekas
Orang bujang murungnya keras
Orang bujang sampai bila membujang?

Merdeka selamanya

merdeka bukan hak selamanya
boleh hilang begitu sahaja
diberi raja yang pendek akal
disedekah penderhaka gila kuasa

merdeka kita merdeka bersekolah
tak perlu berperang tak perlu berbalah
bukan tin kosong bukan omong kosong
mencipta lawan, sia-sia bertarung

bebaskan dari perbezaan bangsa
bebaskan dari kesempitan bahasa
bebaskan dari membututi dogma
bebaskan dari politik sepenuhmasa

merdeka ini hayati bersama
merdeka letaknya di minda terbuka
laung di mulut, hayati di minda
merdeka merdeka merdekakah selamanya?


(as commissioned by my employee for a poster)

Kind words

Do you remember the kind of words we used to say to each other?
Do you remember the kind of words we used to say to each other in anger?
Do you remember the kind words we used to say to each other?
I do, but the former more than the latter.

Post-coital us

Now that we're just airing our sweats off
lying in proximity but no more intimate
I wonder whther u ever think of the postcoital us
When the rubbers been stripped off and silence enters
unwelcomed unwarranted but ultimately expected

it sure is awkward lying naked beside a relative stranger
who's been sharing the bed for the last five and a half years
will taking a knee fix this customary awkwardness i wonder?
Or chain a perfect woman to a perfectly free man


it would be nice if we still have our clothes on
those lurid garments streaked with Jewish names
without them now we look plain don't you think so?
without them we now look rather exposed dont you think so?


we have ascended the romantic frontier by climbing on top of each other
downhill downhill we now roll never reaching the top again foreverafter

Send us a sign

The dead upon mortality is bound no more to the mores of the living
they are no more helpful nor do they heed the tears of the living
our prayers reach not their eternal feasts and perennial parties
God's law concerns them no more in the end and they soon forget


the ungrateful dead are selfish in their abandoning of us
after moving on they cant be moved to send us a sign
how is it over there? is there a god and, does he really care?
do the wicked in hell get torched and their arrogance eternally scorched?


you will be loved friends, family and lovers on this earth only
upon mortality you will be put out of mind and out of our misery unless
you send us a sign that you are happy in the afterlife, if there is one
or we'd just as well turn atheists, godless hedonists