The Prime Minister Is Angry

The Prime Minister is angry. Again.

Like a record, scratched beyond redemption.
We hear it, again and again
‘Angry’. ‘Outraged’. ‘Disappointed’.
Nothing changes though,
it’s all the same, all the time
What he does when he’s angry,
maybe he forgets when he’s done being angry,
I don’t know. You just hear it.
Again and again

And if he is so furious, so incensed
Why does he still smile?
In all those damned posters
hung all around town,
the giant billboards that, perhaps
are there to remind him of who he is
He smiles in the media shots too,
kissing multi-racial babies in the time of election

He smiled at that party they threw
at his house, that party for the rich and famous
As he kindly celebrated our country’s birthday
on our behalf, sparing us, of course,
the trouble of having to clean up.
After.

That smile. Always that smile.
I wonder whether he was told that
That was THE smile,
the one that would launch a thousand ships
or at least two or three or four,
super economic corridors
I wonder how many attempts they made,
before they got it right, the photo they used

I wonder why he chose that one
Perhaps they said it made him
look strong. Firm. A leader.
‘No, Y.A.B., a GREAT leader!’
Maybe all the others they took were spoilt,
and no one wanted to tell the old man
Just like they forgot to tell the Emperor
that nakedness had nothing to do
with transparent leadership

Perhaps they should have used
a different picture, perhaps not
That is no leader, great or small, smiling down at me,
I do not see a Star. I am not inspired
by the smugness, the touch of vanity
and the smell of decay that seep out like a sepia stain
from the edges of that smile.

You’re angry, are you, Prime Minister?
Tell that to the Malik Husseins,
and the countless who have suffered in silence
As their collective future was sacrificed
in the name of avarice and arrogance at the altar
of political ambition. Choked into silence
by assassins who stuffed the Constitution
down their throats

Tell us you are angry, when you
string those responsible up, like the posters
you smile from. When you deliver to us
the promised land that you seduced us with
Tell us you are angry only when you accept
responsibility, are willing to account.
Only when you give us back Malaysia

You’re angry, are you Prime Minister?
Keep it, say it, to yourself as you
adore yourself in the mirror
each morning. We are not interested.

MIS