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

Forgive Me

Forgive me, God
I looked into the Quran today,
I really looked.

Found nothing to support racism, corruption
Or the breaching of sacred trust
I read verses, I read between them
And no matter how much I tried,
I could not find anything about it being alright
to lie, cheat, steal and
to hurt, really hurt, people.
Injustice, it seems,
is not mandatory
is not permissible

I looked in the Quran today,
I really looked
And I did not find Malaysia

But then, who am I
To dare read and presume understanding,
Who am I to have the audacity to believe.
Who am I to think, to appreciate
what God expects of me,
all by my sorry self
when I was obviously given only
half a mind, and half an intellect
Safely esconced with the ulama,
the other halves lie there,
waiting for eternity
My passport to Heaven

Forgive me, God
For reading
Forgive me, God
For believing enough
to want to believe
Forgive me, God
For thinking that the Quran
was for me

I looked into the Quran today,
I really looked because I thought
that was what You wanted of me

I am sorry

MIS

Oppression

We used to count our hopes
On each finger of every hand
See rainbows glint
On the sun kissed edges of
Our children’s laughter

Now, oppression
Immaculately conceived
Resonates in the silence
Of a sacrosanct introspection
Born in the space,
between heartbeats

Lie after lie
Has stabbed us with tongues of velvet
Kissed us
With the poison of insanity
As one by one
Fingers have withered, decomposed
Amputated by the eroding bitterness
Of hopes ravaged,
Laid waste
In the darkness of perversion

As one by one
Each lie
Sung to us
Seduced us
With their whispers
Of potent madness

MIS

Where Were You

Where were you
When the machete swung
And walls were painted Red
With the blood of innocence

Were you in hell
Speculating, trading
In the currency of life and soul
Negotiating your immortality
A place of honour in posterity

Or were you in heaven
Between the thighs of the whores
For whose whispers
Of transient love
You guaranteed lifetimes of pain

Where were you
When hope was cleaved, hacked
From mind and breast
When the rivers of blood
Swollen with the tears of a nation
Burst their embankments

As that machete swung

Smile

Defiant,
you walk
Devouring miles
with
tiny,
unshod
feet
King that you are,
Master of Streets

Nonchalant,
your eyes
Scream
With the muted rage
that reveals
The gambit
That is
Your smile

Desolation,
Incomprehension
As palpable
As the hammer thump
Of that heart
In its fragile cage
of rib and bone,
Are invisible
in their ordinariness
Less winning a habit
than that smile

That practised smile

Your cracked lips,
The treacle of saliva and fear
Are a golden thread
of hope
Spun from ignorance,
kidnapped opportunity
Woven into the fabric
of an existence
Worn, threadbare,
as precious
As the shirt that hangs
from your almost absent shoulders.

Towering Malay(sians)

Once, we walked
As giants
We tremble now
In misery
Tiny, irrelevant
Midgets

Lost in a sea of legs
Peering in the gloom
Of shadows
Cast by soles
The dizzying heights
No longer ours to command

We merge
Into shapeless obscurity
As we drift
On the tears
Of those we forget
Even as we remember

Mother

Why does she live on
In pain,
A captive
of her bastard children

Who see deliverance
in the glare of naked lightbulbs
Their souls freezing
in the frigid air

As inch
by bloody inch
They carve their visions
into her face

Why does she cry
Refusing, in agony,
torn beyond recognition
Why does she not die

And why do I cry
Even as they drink my tears
Encrusting their hearts
With the salt of my life

In The Shadows

God spoke to them that night
He sang amidst the butchering
Drunk with vengeance,
The muezzin's wail a battlecry
Brother killed brother
Son slew father

Still born
In the screaming silence,
They sought refuge
In the shade of their swords
As they turned on each other
In the shadows