I'll Make You Sorry You Were Born

Facebook is most notable for its moronic contribution in turning the whole Internet into lazy authors. Of course, there is a psychology (or biology?) theory stating that people want to do as little as possible to gain the most rewarding outcome. But a LIKE button is not helpful for literacy. Today, everyone can simply click LIKE to show affinity. No more commentaries. No need for words. Just LIKE. In ten years, all the Internet kids will forget how to formulate a meaningful sentence. They will only know how to click LIKE. Their brains dormant for so many years.

I, too, can be laconic. The next time someone leaves a misinterpretation or an inane remark on my blog (some are just too illiterate to grasp the context), I will respond with an ironic LOL. That's to replace such wordiness as: The volume of your discernment is so insignificant that I must stoop as low as a hipster by using some disgraceful generic horror like this hollow abbreviation. Or: You are as irrelevant as a baby rhinoceros in a discotheque.

Please compliment my inane use of time in creating an online demotivating poster to declare my anti-Facebook movement.

Saturday, June 30, 2012, 2:31 – 4:04 AM

I'll make you sorry you were born is from Madison Avenue's song "Don't Call Me Baby".

Dissecting an X-Rated Poet

I want to be a pornstar so I can have a distasteful interracial orgy with Lake, Steven, and Cedric. Caucasian males from three separate nationalities molesting a submissive older Asian woman: Your dirtiest fantasy comes true! (Except that those boys have very small penises — I swear.)

Becoming a Pulitzer-winning poet may require a long-winding PhD in creative writing from some snotty American university, so I've decided to be a prurient webcam whore, instead. It's much easier. I can simply adorn myself with sanguine makeup and then fake multiple orgasms on tape. And since I'm cheap, I will let everyone purchase me as his sex slave by paying with milk tea. I LOVE milk tea.

As any other of my Vainbook posts, this is a mere excuse to publish my oh-so-pretty overly-saturated self-loving photo.

PLEASE download my photo as your masturbation material.

Now, some insightful quotients into my histrionic psyche:

Vanity: 150%.

I intentionally wear makeup and take at least seventy webcam shots in one night. This is why I have no time to revise my poetry drafts lately. I am obsessed with my china-doll appearance. I know you are, too.

Guilt: subzero.

It's probably the impact of living with a psychotic family that imposes no rules. My id surpasses my superego. I have no guilt at all. Including when I'm wrong. I will just make it sound as if I were always right. I know enough manipulation to make the other person feel guilty and free myself from any blame.

Self-esteem: 500%.

I can trip and fall in front of thirty students and still feel confident the second after. Shameless. Proud. Unbeatably smug. Nothing daunts me.

Sloth: 100%.

Again, I shall blame my loser family. Everyone is so idle that I feel somewhat diligent by writing daily and keeping a menial (yet high paying) freelance job.

Belligerence: 300%.

I had to defend myself from my psychopathically brutal brother who battered me several times. This makes me a men-hater, and physically-plus-verbally violent whenever I sense an attack.

Dramatics: 250%.

Part of the occupational hazard as an amateur poet. Educate yourself. A poet's best friend is hyperbole. How else would we intensify our diction? It's also essential to entertain eight-year-old twin boys, or a class of bored students who hate writing.

Misanthropy: 1000%.

I began to disengage myself from any person when I married picture books in 1984. Stories and imagination are the only essence of the human race I can bear. I admit no attachment to anyone. Not even my delicate mother.

Sarcasm: infinite.

It's my first language even before Indonesian. I label it "defense mechanism against dumbness". People are so dumb that no one is funny any longer. What is wrong with them! I insult all from my family, my acquaintances (since a misanthrope only keeps IMAGINARY friends), my students, my colleagues, my foes, Internet people. The whole world. No one evades my vitriol. Not even the talented Ms Plath, whom I recently noticed wrote for the sake of beautified triviality. There is something to hate in everyone. Only I shall remain impeccable.

My ego would love to continue talking about herself, but this has reached more than five hundred words. I worry that your microscopic brain will explode reading too many words in one post. Internet people are the dumbest.

Friday, June 29, 2012, 10:32 PM –

Saturday, June 30, 2012, 1:24 AM

999 Perversions

Lust kissed me with such perversity
that I began to cry. He violated me,
and then proposed to marry. I crave
not for Lust, or for anyone. All I
desire is to be Death's bride. To sink
into a state of peaceful rest where
no impurity may haunt my reverie.

I am tired of being an anomaly,
belonging to neither south nor
north, forever trapped in between.
After time, only subconsciousness
saves. Asleep: morning, noon, and
night. Escape: to a zone where
exists no light. With fire-breathing
dragons fashioning emerald-coated
scales and magic the size of a stare.
Awake: I do not fit any scene.

Lust leaves little, less than lechery,
and Life? Life longs for Loneliness
that loathes like Love.



Saturday, June 23, 2012, 12:45 AM –
Thursday, June 28, 2012, 2:55 AM

Confession of a Poet-Wannabe

Some people are just plain dumb.

I am so sick of going on and on and on re-explaining to uneducated eyes that my writing means nothing at all. It's not serious. My blog is a lie. Whimsical idleness. A game to pass time.

Since I am too jaded to teach, too esoteric to find a job that doesn't concern poetry, and too proud to beg, I write. It's a method of medication to occupy my shiftless brain. There's nothing more I'd rather do.

Also, I don't like people. They're nothing but faces and names. Everyone is a stranger to me. No intrigue. No intensity. No magic. No imagination. I witness how people also dislike me. The hate is mutual. Rather than merging with a bunch of humans, I much prefer locking myself up in my lonesome room, reading and writing. It gives me more pleasure. Words are my refuge. My sole consolation.

Of course I endeavor to polish my wording as believable as it permits. It's just what writers do. And as I am more fascinated by poetic diction, I force myself to compose lines in such a poignant manner that it will affect people's emotions. If my articles shock or disgust or move you, or make an impact in you in any form, don't be naive. That is the whole fucking point of writing — to toy with readers' sentiments as much as I want. I strive to prioritize my self-interest. And my interest lies mainly in trickery.

Writers express our ideas to influence people. We charm others through words. What else will we do? If you wish never to be manipulated, there's an easy way to escape: GET OFF MY DAMN BLOG.

Besides, I don't have to explain myself to anyone.

Wednesday, June 27, 2012, 4:07 – 7:00 AM
Plotting

Suicide 101

The content of Amel Anniza's brain:

50% Suicide.

20% Insults.

20% Kittens.

9% Oh-my-God, I am as adorable as a doll! No wonder everyone falls in love with me!

1% Whether I should really take that literature-research MA next year and hate myself for explicating literary works instead of writing them.

10% You obviously cannot count.

Yes, my thoughts are replete with suicide. I spend most of my days contemplating it since 1999. Do I want to die soon? Yes. Will it be done by suicide? HELL FUCKING NO.

Poets (and anyone writing poetry, I assume) are closely linked to suicide. I read an article about a psychological disorder named Sylvia Plath's syndrome. To my understanding, this webpage argued that writing poetry is much more confusing than prose, thus poets struggle with the stress of linking ideas. Somehow, this leads to so much stress and depression that may trigger suicide.

I disagree. Poetry writing is not the catalyst of suicide, at least not in my experience. My depression started in 1999, when I had been writing prose in my journals, not poems. In fact, it has nothing to do with writing anything. I had been writing for years before I became suicidal. The depression only came after I failed to complete my psychology major in college. I felt worthless and aimless. Ever since, the feeling never ceases to infiltrate my brain. Life brings no meaning. And when I feel suicidal, I write this urge in poetry.

Depression may occur from any incident, not just academic frustration. It will be different for each individual's case. I don't think it always ends in something as fatal as suicide. One research that I support is from a documentary TV show on Discovery channel that I watched in 2001. Some scientists believed that suicidal tendency is a DNA anomaly. It's predetermined. A suicidal person will always be like this throughout her life, unless her DNA is altered.

There is nothing anyone can do about it. It's an innate drive. Attitude modification will never help. Trust me. I have been living with the virus for twelve years now.

Writers and poets commit suicide. Hence, the term "suicidal poets". I gather that people with emotional and psychological problems tend to escape into writing, both fiction and poetry. It liberates our tension. We feel free. We can detach ourselves from reality when we write. No one can reach us in our secret world of plots and verses. When some of these authors attempt suicide, it is not because of writing. It's simply that the suicide virus, the depression, becomes so vicious that the person chooses to end the suffering.

As for me, death and suicide are nothing but a recurring motif in my writing voice. It's the most potent force too compelling to ignore. It makes my diction darker and stronger. I write because I want to die. But I will never die by suicide.

Wednesday, June 27, 2012, 2:14 – 3:34 AM

In a Perfect World

You and I, darling.

You-you-you.

We would sit under an old, old tree,

wasting away without worries.

I would tell you stories,

and you would sing to me

a song I had never heard before.

And the day went on and on and on

without words, without wonders,

without anything but trust.

We would simply be.

Right there, under the tree.

I would not have to act so strong.

You would not have to pretend contentment.

We would not need to run,

each to the other end of the world.

You would not blur my scent

behind such falsities as "busy".

None would have to twist reality

for the fear of chemistry.

We would simply be:

you and I

in a world so perfect

as our old, old tree.

Tuesday, June 26, 2012, 4:38 – 5:05 PM

Heartbroken

When people ask me what I have been doing with my life, I will answer with "feeling heartbroken". 

It sounds more poetic than saying I am suicidally depressed and have been thinking of a million ways to die. People are too frightened of death. Only therapists understand depression. I can never coin the word suicide and depression in one sentence.

So, you see, some years ago, I knew this lad from a world that is not ours. After many moons, he began to radiate the impression of another lad I knew from a long-forgotten ancient dream — my true love. He is not him. I know. But still, talking with him cured so many scars I could not cure alone. It was like mind tricks. All I ever wanted was talking with him.

He used to be so kind to me. In the first year when he forgot to reply my mail, he was sorry and responded to it not long after. Now he's just plain evil. No more communication. I have no right to ask anything to him any longer. There will be no answer. He must infer that I have no feelings, no heart, no hurt. He's not even sorry.

Kindness wears off — and that includes the kindness from the only person I thought would be different from the rest.

And then, the house I have been living in for a lifetime, my only true friend, was sold. There is no home for me to feel safe. With nowhere else to go, I have been pressing my hands onto my eyelids to prevent more tears from running down. I have been crying like a leaking tap for months. Nothing consoles me. 

That's what I have been doing with my life.

Tuesday, June 26, 2012, 8:04 – 8:35 AM

His Blond Locks

Blondie,

I need to address someone with enough effusive emotions so I don't wither and die. You did it. How many times? Did it ever make the desire vanish or would it simply nourish the vocation? I am too afraid to die. Young people are so much braver than I.

I am eating this oversweet Indonesian cotton-candy that we eat with soft pink crackers. I sealed it tight in a plastic bag so I could see it and reminisce the year of 1986 when I would buy this snack every afternoon spent in my grandmother's house. You and your culinary adventure would love the cheaply romantic taste of it. The pinkness would blossom on your Caucasian fairy cheeks.

You're so pretty.

I love how I was the only one you talked to on your instant messenger. I love how you came to me with fervent idealism evolving into philosophical pessimism. I love how you loved that I was looking for you one somber night.

People are so cruel to me, even when I tried to be kind to them. I should trespass to Canada so we would be real friends. You would feel a sum of gladness for having the company of a female you found appealing. I would finally have a friend who is suicidal enough to know what it feels to want to die. If I were in your apartment, you would hold my hand when it calls. It calls like rain.

Unlike them who choose to live, you will understand what this is all about. I know you will. Perhaps I should form some homoerotic attachment to you so that everyone would envy our secrecy. We would make a great couple: the poet and the artist. One near-suicidal; the other already is.

Somehow, in your feminine attempts, you became manlier than those men I know. You possess such fragile strength. Or perhaps, with our tendency to retract and live as a recluse, we would never ever speak to each other any longer.

Oh, fairy, you are as pretty as cotton candy.

Tuesday, June 26, 2012, 12:29 – 1:24 AM

Nectar to the Flies

These Caucasian males lust for my weird-colored china-doll pictures. Never my personality. Not my poetry. And most certainly not my psychotic frenzy. Little do they know that my wrath is most seductive of all.

In the search to justify my untamable vanity, I have been trying to make myself appear older than my actual age of thirty-one. I will be thirty-two in October. I need to feel old, at least of my age. And more pressingly, I wish to produce photos where I look at least thirty-five and not some infantilized Asian girl of twenty-one. I want to age faster to thirty-five or forty. Looking younger is a damn curse.

It is distressing how my blog and old dating-site images led to inappropriate responses from teenage boys aged sixteen to nineteen. Yes, TEENAGERS. Thinking that a much older woman would be highly experienced in sex (when I have never even touched any man in all my pathetic life!). Believing that informing me the size of their erection would make me want to engage in a conversation with them. And a girl asking me to participate in a cybersex roleplay where I was to be the older woman living next to her house.

What is wrong with the world today? WHAT?

Should my photos seem attractive to any Internet male or female, please blame the strange lighting in my badly-lit room and my webcam malfunction. If you ask me, I am not compelling at all. I may try to put on makeup that resembles the face of a doll, but this is juvenile escapism. Not beauty.

Most of all, can't people simply want to converse with me regardless of how I look on my images? What about my feelings, my hatred, my opinions? No one cares.

This webcam shot was taken after midnight, when I intentionally skipped shower for thirty-six hours to try to seem older. I assumed with limp greasy hair and unwashed face I would somewhat display unhygienic ugliness. Does it work? Or do you still wish to shove me onto a wall and ferociously kiss my virgin lips?

Monday, June 25, 2012, 9:24 – 9:54 PM

If Life Were Hunger Games

You would be dead. All of you.

There shall only be one victor: I.

The sole contender of grief; the advocate of hate.

My ill will alone is enough to murder this planet.

Barehanded I storm.

I care not if you are

the woman who carried me in her womb,

the man who tasted like the one,

the person I used to term best friend.

I vanquish all, including

Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Dorothy Parker, and Darren Hayes.

What would yours be —

cyanide, strangulation, or an ax to your head?

People are nothing but names.

They do what they do, no matter what, no matter when.

If you are a woman, I am twice as wicked.

If you are a man, I shall be twice manlier.

No one can feel as much as I do. No one.

Everyone owns such a boring personality.

I hate everyone. No exception.

No one matters to me.

Alone I am, and alone I will be.

Whether you speak or seek silence,

whether you live or die,

I still dislike you.

There is always a reason to hate a person.

Please, hate me, too.

Sunday, June 24, 2012, 8:16 – 8:37 PM

Needs

I needed to confess to you.

One needs —

to assert her humanity

to conform with society

for needs require another,

a secondary actor. But

needing is never a good thing,

thus I stop. Why needing

when you need not of me?

Why bleeding —

when we can never be?

Twice, I stop. Needing you

not. You belong in

a league of prevarication;

your lecture machinations.

As your need confounds

the next, you scurry

without needs for chicanery.

Why so? For your skull

contradicts the ache.

You may break,

just as you break

and you break and

       you break me. I?

I lend people something

to worry. You are the puppet

and this is my show.

Saturday, June 23, 2012, 4:52 AM –

Sunday, June 24, 2012, 7:27 PM

Sense sans Nonsense

Soulmate,

I am done waiting and wailing.
Waiving is what's wise for me
to do when your presence
is a prolonged,
everlasting absence,
too tardy for my conscience.
How am I to induce patience?
Your senseless sensuousness
becomes an offense,
more like terminal nonsense:
the anthem of doom.
You nameless scoundrel,
the daintiest mutt of all mongrels.
I am so sick of rabid rejection;
each pair of eyes I passed
entombing entrenchment.
Like a craven raven I dig
my own sepulcher, beak bleak
as a bottomless brute. Truth.
You bastard. You
are the sole reason for rhyme,
for a quest amidst time.
Broken in battles, my heart
shall lead to you in its last,
after I mark each date on
the calendar as miscarriage.
Will you catch me,
catch me when I fall?

Saturday, June 23, 2012, 4:52 AM – 
Sunday, June 24, 2012, 4:03 AM

Consolation

What will you do with your life?
I write for I am meant to write;
nothing else shall mend my heart.
What will become of your age?
I die as I am not meant for this life
       and dying is
the only consolation for my crying.
But is there ever a day when
I am not deluged in depression?
There is and there isn't, that
I am Death's most loyal customer:
apathy my breakfast; suicide
my sauce. By the pause of night's
torment, the dawn succumbs
to succulence, beheading me.
Because this — the mare
mistaking my mirth for mercy,
this is what's corroding comfort.
Dreaming awake, I fall in love
with sleep, but it eats away
the lubricity of my limbs like
insomnia's favorite plaything.

Saturday, June 23, 2012, 12:45 –10:50 AM

Death Song

6:50 AM — People are
so absorbed in what they're doing,
so serious. I? I just just just
want to die. Soon. Sooner than seven.
It is six and I cannot coax sleep. I
just just just want to die. I want to die
without knowing. To die without anyone
knowing. To die without thinking.
Without anyone to think of me.
The world is a lonesome place
with billions of faces but none
is able to retrace. I don't want to
roll like a cogwheel in a watch.
I don't want to any more. Lie lie lie
lying here, lying as if I heard no sound.
Lying like truth, for truth is a lie.
Like temptation, that is slowly mocking me
in the face of gravity. I don't want to
think of what I am thinking. I want to
dissolve with the winds gorging
from central absurdity, like pain,
like after-rain. Like justice, when
                            I just want to die.

All Dicey Three

Grandfather,

In your charactonymic blessing

I am: Charity, Goddess, and Holy.

         All three.

Your Indonesian benevolence

lined them a prayer, first and last

legacy afore your untimely disease.

Thus, I am to dispense charity,

to protract good deeds.

The grace of a goddess is to be

my demeanor. And holy as

the women of the olden times,

I must elucidate moral profundity.

                                  But:

Godless my heart can never be holy.

I am a constant sinner.

Life harangues. Charity is a burden

I never install. Superhuman majesty

shall never be my call. Crassness will.

I faced you for ten little years

when I was not informed of blessings

or expectations. Sitting on the far back

of your car, driven by someone else,

rationalizing your death

in my unwitting tears. How does

twenty-one episodes of afterlife feel,

like absolution? Growing old, I am green.

I cannot meet your sanction. All I am

is but a clam: formless filth flinching

in a hardened shell. Opening and closing

for not knowing why. The only award

I achieve is distraction: falling asleep

without wanting to die.

Friday, June 22, 2012, 10:01 AM –

Saturday, June 23, 2012, 1:43 AM

Poet-Shop Owner

Good sir,

I sold all my nursery rhymes
for crumbs of crippled bread
round the corner of your property
Now I am left with rags as a robe and
nothing else to forget but this poetry
Life in emptiness buys me all the riches
But please, I must linger
Grant me a while
I cannot help but to exchange
some flavorless gossip
for a fragment of your uncanny beauty:
whiskey in your left hand, lemon and lime,
Dylan Thomas in your right. Such a crime!
I wish I had enough wit to exhibit —
not this apocryphal show of
bucket and biscuit
My rhyme battered; rhythm bitter
Perhaps I would do better tomorrow
Perhaps I would never go and
recite you a farrago of my pensive scars
while all the poets on your shop's display
murmuring odes to the moon and stars



Friday, June 22, 2012, 3:42 – 4:23 AM

Poet-shop owner is secretly stolen from my favorite Okcupid user's profile.

Misery Loves Me

Love me, Misery,

for I am your only company

I gush with the wind from afar

Sip me as you would the chill

Taste me as you would the thrill

Love me, Misery,

as Death denies my destiny

I scream; I scrawl; I scramble

Every time I enroll for its toll,

a sacred blame goes absolvable

Love me, Misery,

and contain me in your remedy

I wish to wear your skin in lament

To live a life of liberal lividity

is a disease I cannot comprehend

Love me, Misery,

so you, too, acquaint alienation

My love is untrue; my heart is blue

Coddle me in unending deception:

                     My pain is you

Thursday, August 18, 2011, 8:20 PM –

Friday, June 22, 2012, 1:49 AM

Misery loves me is from Good Charlotte's song "Misery".

A Faster Way to Die

  This is it.  
  The end where I see no more ambitions to pursue.  
  Nothing brings me intensity any longer.  
  I wish to die.  
  Perhaps what I am doing every day shall make me die faster:  

1. Invisibly cutting all ties with anyone.
2. Not having any social interaction.
3. Not searching for a love interest or friends.
4. Not speaking to anyone unless it is an emergency.
5. Ignoring people (as if they wished to converse with me!).
6. Being forever ignored by everyone.
7. Not maintaining any Internet profile so no one can reach me (I have no obligation to answer to anyone on my blog).
8. Not feeling anything but the most basic biological urges.
9. Avoiding physical exercise.
10. Eating all the unhealthy food.
11. Contemplating on why I am eternally unlucky.
12. Not seeking happiness.
13. Not having a stimulating job.
14. Not smiling, not laughing.
15. Not wanting or needing or loving anything.
16. Not being wanted, needed, or loved.
17. Sleeping too much (ten hours) or too little (four hours) in a day.
18. Not initiating any unnecessary chat if I meet anyone.
19. Not exhibiting any emotion.
20. Limiting life to sleep, eat, drink, and shower.
21. Befriending Loneliness.
22. Composing suicidal poems or stories.
23. Hating everything and everyone.
24. Depressing everyone and myself with all seriousness.
25. Not trying but letting things evolve on their own course.
26. Ensuring the cutter in my drawer has a fresh shiny blade.
27. Pining for Death in everything I do.



Thursday, June 21, 2012, 9:50 – 10:08 PM

Angel of Death by Arno Schaetzle

Death by Portfolio

Wednesday,

You assassin, quit hacking me!

Ten hours clasping contortion

should be a ransom of revenge

too risky to feed your gluttony.

Your bone-breaking monotony

lulling every nerve, every norm.

Must you rarefy my art, still?

But what about coherence

     — and what about quill?

Wiser I was in January when

days drew me in sable anthology,

when noontide was somewhat

night-loving — I know!

                All the anger,

the aggregated ferocity,

doused a plethora of fixation.

I became solutions. And people:

the target of mad creation.

Send me back in time.

Reverse this inadequacy.

With growing months I prod

neither refinement nor ribaldry.

Nothing but dumb diligence.

A scorpion deprived of her sting.

Wednesday, June 20, 2012, 10:39 PM –
Thursday, June 21, 2012, 5:44 AM

Tick-Tock Two

As I was sitting, waiting
there from naught to nowhere,
the hands of Time traipsed
in a dance of trance,
tilting twelve to two.
Of course I was simply
loitering, looking for you and
all your pyromaniac impossibility.
Then came the age humans ascended
into gods and goddesses —
massively manufacturing miracles
in the form of universities and
shopping malls. Busy and busier,
they competed with machines,
proving who could be the best,
and ultimately most efficient.
They bonded with slickness,
as metal liquefied in unison,
forming identical mold, time and again.
With disinterest I watched everyone,
not wishing to be an accomplice of this.
I knew I was never meant to intend,
always outside:
a broken link, the undeserving sin.
Senses numbed, juicing the sound
I had been hearing in all
my recyclable lives:
              your effortless paralysis.



Thursday, June 21, 2012, 12:42 – 1:34 AM

Blissful Punch

Sweet semiprecious love,
          the sweetest of them all,

Today I pick indecision
as my vitamin:
It tastes like midnight
Half-lit exigency
coiling down my spine
as the only prospect left
in my memory searches
for your individuality —
something like hope
Although we are never
a part of grandness,
we cling to our private Hell,
that relaxing madness,
irreplaceable togetherness
In your queer youthful quality,
you father me. You hold me
in unmitigated confidence
because I am your own
Without smile, without laughter,
we catch each other so well
Was it the root of fantasy
that misguided our fate?
Secretly, I name you Kindness
Your fractured ambience
the branches of my inequality,
balancing then breathing
Love me as if I were your
calcified reality; love me
for nobody else will



Tuesday, June 19, 2012, 12:36 AM –
Wednesday, June 20, 2012, 10:25 PM

Mapping Mediocrity

If I were my own Creative Writing instructor, I would award my latest Indonesian poem "Pujangga Buta Warna" an 85% score. But, its translation "Color-Blind Poet" would only earn a 69% score.

The entire family will move to a new place by the end of this month, and I thought it would be affectionate if I could complete one last Indonesian poem in this house. While writing it, I cursed and cursed for enduring the difficulty of finding that literary diction. It's unbelievably difficult, especially cause we only have one trusted authority for Indonesian dictionaries — proves enough that in a poor third-world country, language is not a priority.

Then, as I completed the Indonesian version, I felt how it turned out lovely. Highly romantic and rather quaint. Just as I pictured it should be. It's still about that lad I met in my dreams, my true love. I wanted it to be full of yearning and it achieved that mood.

Translating the poem is a much more daunting task. Thoughts became volatile since I failed to capture its original tone. I laughed like a lunatic, for the stress and the disgust. Laughing at myself because my interpretation quality was so mediocre. It seems that transferring a scheme of emotion is almost impossible to do from literary Indonesian to English. Or maybe I'm just incompetent.

Now I'm too sleepy to collect six months of my writing portfolio. Need to tackle another bothersome chore. Buying printer ink, binder, plastic cases, arranging and printing 185 poems... Hah, so much to do for today. I'll sleep for a few hours till afternoon comes.

And still so many poetry drafts to resolve! Why must I write this much? This neurotic disease.

Tuesday, June 19, 2012, 8:49 – 9:14 AM

Meadow

Color-Blind Poet

Gaping teeth of sorrow's root drilling the soul
draining anguish: I yearn
I clout the moon —
her shine like mockery to the graveness of my misery!
And fell she to the center of a pond in the backyard
drowned in layers of yesterday's ruin
That day, when we met in the realm of my dream
did you not sense the blindness of love's pigment?
A cup of gray then a handful of black
muting world's cheer as all poured onto air
Your nameless facade but woe wedding unrest
Anxious emotions weaving fascicles of joy
like wonders without end —
is this what they dub a glimpse of fate?
Utterance of heart's core humming vibrating spells,
freezing into the bones, beseeching
you and me, undoing mapped misfortune
Unintended gaze implored for a sign
Miles of century, millions of destiny, leading
to a raid of faith voicing, "Forever."
Awaken I in recitals of amorous whisper
prolonging your frail silhouette
in the death of my volition's pulse



Tuesday, June 19, 2012, 2:36 – 6:04 AM

A loose, mediocre translation of my Indonesian poem 

"Pujangga Buta Warna".

Pujangga Buta Warna

Beringgit-inggit akar nestapa merasuk kalbu
memecah pilu: Aku rindu
Kutampar rembulan —
nyalanya laksana cacian bagi kelamnya gundahku!
Dan jatuh ia ke tengah kolam di taman belakang
larut dalam baluran puing-puing kemarin
Hari itu, ketika kita bertemu di alam mimpiku
bukankah kau merasakan butanya warna cinta?
Secangkir kelabu lalu segenggam hitam
pudar rona dunia saat segala mengalir sirna
Wujudmu tanpa nama hanya sedih campur gulana
Resah rasa menganyam bulir bahagia
bagai sihir tak berakhir —
apa ini yang mereka sebut kelumit takdir?
Ujaran di hulu batin berlagu getaran mantra,
menggigil menusuk tulang, memanggil
kau dan aku, membalik suratan sengsara
Sejurus tatap meratap minta pertanda
Berdepa abad, berjuta kodrat, berujung
kilatan harap berucap, "Selamanya."
Terbangun aku berderai bisikan sayang
mengabadikan rapuh bayangmu
dalam pupusnya degup anganku



Rabu, 12 Oktober 2011, 3.48 sore –
Selasa, 19 Juni 2012, 2.32 pagi
Read its English translation in "Color-Blind Poet".

Dumb Asian Girls

Oh, look. My best impersonation of those dumb Asian girls that you can find ubiquitously on the Internet (but mine in weird colors). Now I just need curled orange hair, fake lashes, enlarging colored contact lenses, and some babyish dress. And don't forget to flash my cleavage.

It seems that on every site I visit in the past months, particularly non-serious or entertainment sites, these idiotic Asian girls' poses are present. I am uncertain on when it became so apparent, perhaps with the emergence of Sailor Moon in America? When I started using the net in 2000, I didn't find anything like that. Or maybe it was with the trend of Facebook in Asia since 2007? Or those Korean girl idols?

The impact of these irritating infantilized image is very negative. Around 95% of the Internet males who interacted with me assumed my being Asian relates to the sickeningly misleading stereotype of sexual submissiveness. I know this one is also a byproduct of those Japanese pornographic cartoons and videos where females are depicted as weak and disoriented. They are nothing but helpless sex toys to satisfy males' fetishism. Gross.

My question is — why does the whole darn nation allow such a culture to flourish? I read an Internet article stating that Japanese girls as young as sixth graders sold their used underwear to perverted old men. Seriously? Isn't that a form of pedophile?

In any dating site, pen-pal site, or social site, males would generally treat me with disrespect only because I'm Asian — or whatever it was they deemed suitable for the disparaging remarks. I'm glad I removed all my online profiles I could trace. No more of these vexations.

But that doesn't mean the trend of seeming brainless for Asian girls on the Internet suddenly stops. I understand that girls have fixations on dolls and cuteness — this is quite inherent in us. We like to appear adorable because we have pathological narcissism (so I read). Regardless, that is not a justification to let males objectify us as mere tools. It is degrading to be seen as a human without any purpose but a sexual outlet — you will be no different from an animal. Or a plant.

Females have functional brains, you know. Use this thinking ability to achieve meaningful pursuits. Empower yourself to be better than males. Write a legacy of 1,800 poems like Emily Dickinson. Find a new scientific breakthrough like Marie Curie. Win a Nobel peace prize like Aung San Suu Kyi. The possibilities are endless if you apply your creativity.

I have no opposition against girls' trying to present themselves in juvenile innocence resembling a living cartoon character. It's your life. Do what you will. However, I am also entitled to a personal opinion. When I say those girls look dumb, it's only because I am offended by the prevalent stereotyping. There is nothing flattering in being categorized as something immoral.

Not all Asian females want to be labeled cute or pretty or sexy or hot or adorable or attractive or any other physical attributes the world has unimaginatively mentioned. I prefer suicidal, antisocial, and confusing. Or my favorite: manipulative.

Monday, June 18, 2012, 12:50 – 2:46 AM

The Laziest in the World

I am as lazy as:

1. Teaching myself a second language since I was six years old, studying its literary register, and managing to teach it to hundreds of students.

2. Writing two to three A4 pages in my journal, in a second language, since 1995.

3. Teaching myself crochet from a simple handcraft book to knit Barbie doll clothes and my own.

4. Re-reading all my childhood novels, around one hundred of them, one novel for each day I was not in school.

5. Writing forty emails per week for the forty Internet pen-pals I had in the year 2000. Each mail contained five hundred to one thousand words, carefully customized for each person.

6. Housing and caring for twenty-three stray cats (at the same time) I found around my parents' house.

7. Perfecting three design projects each week, for two bloody semesters (but only with a 3.2 GPA).

8. Studying three college majors to find one that suits my aptitude best, just so I could gain cathartic emotional rewards.

9. Completing twenty-nine credits in one semester, earning a 4.0 GPA, while also:

     a. Freelancing as a translator to fund my make-up and fashion obsession.

     b. Assisting Speaking classes for the university's English Club.

     c. Being a member of the Campus Press.

     d. Devising educational activities for the freshmen's orientation program.

     e. Joining the classes I did not take in between the free time I had in campus (cause I was more studious than the whole school).

     f. All that, while walking in eleven centimeters of heels.

10. Never asking money from anyone since July 2003.

These gorgeous boots.

11. Holding three jobs in five different schools, going from West Jakarta to South Jakarta to Central Jakarta to the farthest part of South Jakarta, in buses and taxis, and yes, still in high heels.

12. Teaching from 8 AM till 9 PM, six classes a day, arriving home at 9:30 PM.

13. Teaching on Saturdays, morning to afternoon.

14. Handling 120 students for the whole semester.

15. Checking ninety college-level essays every week for the whole semester.

16. Substituting to teach 180 high school students on Monday, 150 middle school students on Tuesday, ninety more on Wednesday, and 120 on Friday.

17. Enslaving myself to teach too much for five consecutive years so I could save enough money to finance my graduate school plan, though I discouraged myself to do this literature research for reasons I will explain later.

18. Maintaining a personal blog since March 2010.

19. Reading and studying ten poems a day.

20. Writing three poems a day.

21. Plus two blog posts when I'm furious.

No, I never consider myself "busy". When my former students ask me to assess their essays, I do it all in a timely manner. When anyone asks to talk to me, I listen attentively for hours. Someone who is really busy won't have time to write blog posts. Or go to Facebook and Okcupid for hours in a day.

Yes, I still think I'm lazy since nothing I have done is admirable.

But I'm not the one filling in forms to get free unemployment money from the government so I can stay at home watching Internet pornography all day and have a leisure trip to Paris.

Sunday, June 17, 2012, 10:18 – 11:26 PM

I've Been Waiting All My Life Just to Look into Your Eyes

Why can't any man be as romantic as this? Composing a love song for the woman he loves, with words so beautiful and amorous. Simply for the point of showing her how much she means to him.

I thought love would be unprejudiced and spontaneous. But I was wrong. Apparently, today's men necessitate everything to fit their taste because they don't understand what it means to fall in love with all their heart.

Their eyes are so clouded by plastic Barbie doll figures that they glorify physical beauty more than anything. If I am not slim enough, I am not good enough. Being fat entails that I am lazy, unhealthy, unattractive, and unlovable. It doesn't matter if I love the man more than I love myself. I need to be thin to be qualified.

Not just slender, I also need to be lewd. Men have stooped as low as adopting animal behaviors that they require to copulate with a woman before marriage. (I doubt that they even want to marry.) They must test how great the sex is without any ridiculous commitment such as wedlock. Since I refuse to perform any sexual favor without matrimony, I am not desirable enough.

And that is not all. The demand continues. I must be eternally herbivorous, because eating animals equals robbing them off their rights to live. On this day and age, herbivorous men dehumanize other humans when we slaughter animals for food. Because you know what? Animals have feelings, too. Meat eaters are nothing but heartless, unfeeling murderers. Logically, murderers are not worthy of love.

I have no need for tangled intricacy. When I love someone, I love him for all that he is. His flaws become perfection. For all my life, I have only been waiting to look into his eyes. As simple as that. But that is not enough for them. Life is never fair. Some are forever cursed. Too ill-fated to have what we want. 

I thought being good would get me somewhere. But I was wrong. In the twenty-first century, being good is not good enough for love.

Sunday, June 17, 2012, 7:51 – 8:32 PM

I've been waiting all my life just to look into your eyes is from Bad English's song "The Time Alone with You".

The Discarded

Somewhere between
longing and livid lingering, light travels
like a school of fish into my morning.
Bright yellowness, powerful with pride,
pretention, vivacity, flooding
the jaded space of this cumbersome cell.
A corroborated recluse, I close
all the orifices, scrolling
and scrolling the lofty curtains,
slapping down the ceiling fan,
until the chamber is whole, and I
may consume this gaudy ensemble.
Beatitude piercing my eyes,
running through my veins.
My throat choked by its scarcity.

Look, here is the truth.
Listen. We, the discarded,
live under your window.
When you spot us, or one of us,
you will know. Your senses
will tell you, spelling unwanted,
urging an impromptu flight.
You cannot reach us;
it is of no use. Unlike all of you,
with your tarried ambition,
your business hours, we stray.
Locomoting from dejection to
DNA dysfunction. We feel nothing at all.
Not a thing. We are not here to hurt you.
When we prematurely die,
by choice, it is to reminisce:
Our nightmares are prettier than life.



Sunday, June 17, 2012, 6:59 – 7:39 AM

Some Damn Respect

What of it? Why are you here?

This ain't your place

       — wipe your own tears

The thing you have been waiting for,

that chipped heart, wailing, bruising

for you and only you — it decided

to rent a studio of self-absorbed art

Never looking back, not once,

not here, not even when a slash

of the apocalypse sets the clock

for a twenty-four-hour detonation

Retrospective sundial shadowing

your sobriety as premeditated vice

— oh, please, how frequent

did you rehearse that rendition?

All year long? When harmony

only flourishes between bars,

translation takes form of idiocy

because you are too afraid of me

I am sick of your delinquency

Your flaccid personality

and your laxity! How ignorant

must a man be to utter

one simple sentence

                 — all year long?

Tuesday, June 12, 2012, 12:14 AM –
Sunday, June 17, 2012, 3:06 AM

Removed

Mother, father, sister, and me.
This is how we should have been:
without the black sheep of the family.
Our late flimsy afternoon,
undecided between sunset or sepia,
where everyone sluggishly tends
to his or her own purpose.
A woman neighbor outside,
unknown, her palpable accent
asking for a permission
to pluck our soursop leaves.
All the calmness and the reconciliation.
The town sashays with us —
unguarded in its metathetic allowance.
Oh, dozy distrait deference.
Such filmlike panorama.
A landscape of fatalistic musings.
Each one drowning in delight.
Not one unscrupulous threat in sight.
Always, I have been envisioning
fulfillment like this soporific paradise.
Rightness in all its wrinkles. Placidity,
once the Draconian evilness removed.



Friday, June 15, 2012, 5:12 PM –
Sunday, June 17, 2012, 12:04 AM

Amalia

Is this not the day

                you call me Amalia

and sigh how you miss me,

miss me so? Sighing is a sign

of unsureness for you can never

be definite on how you reckon me

Watch me disappear, pixel by

pixel, because I know how to

play an avoidant, too. I bottled

so much hate I cannot medicate

— refrigerated for you, dearest

The time you bade me to sleep

as if you wanted me, you needed

me, you loved me more than this

without your supposed inhibition,

without self-righteous justification

that classifies me last on the list

My heart is made from bulletproof

epoxy: You cannot kill it, even

if you try (and how many times

did you try wishing it would die?)

Call me in catatonic tenderness,

each syllable a kiss anticipated

That face I never once touch

Your eyes, your eyes, your eyes

Thursday, June 14, 2012, 1:03 PM –

Saturday, June 16, 2012, 9:54 PM

Sweet Mouths

They pledged allegiance

with mouths so sweet, promising,

"I will always be there for you."

Trustingly, I stored every word

in my long-term memory, imagining

no one would ever lie to me.

But these mouths have authorized

a term to price words so cheap

that a promise is an antiquated story.

Friendship weighs less than a pebble.

I am never what they want, nor

what they need. One of the discarded

— just a stranger on the street.

Unfathomable how people can be

wanted and sought. What secret

do they keep but I don't? Transient

sympathy, artificial as a comedy.

Sugar in their coffee: a falsified heart.

Bitterness committing forgery.

I don't want to be heard.

I don't want to be read.

I want to be wanted

                   without these words.

Saturday, June 16, 2012, 2:27 – 2:54 PM

Lollipop Kittens

"Mommy, help me! Mel-mel is going to lick me like a lollipop!"

Since the twins now possess a male angora cat and another female Persian cat, they have agreed to transfer the ownership of their five nine-month-old cats and three newborn kittens to me. Yeay! BABY KITTENS!! They lessen my depression as much as fifty percent, just by sleeping in a cardboard box under my bed.

Born June 4, 2012.

So, when I am a tiny bit bored of typing endless poems (1,700 more to complete in five years), I molest the kittens by taking webcam pictures with them. Tricky, but just look at how cute they are! How kissable. I shall hoard one hundred of them to exhibit my chronic kitten obsession to the whole planet.

With five cats and three kittens under my care, I should be busier (taking vain photos with them and of them, of course). But this isn't the craziest. In the year 2000, when I took a two-year break from college, I managed to host twenty-three stray cats at the same time. One hundred kittens sound like a feasible plan to me.

Midnight Craze

Hot jazzy dimness

slouching in slushy dizzy itchiness.

Curses! What drab weather

is this month, without rain, without

a chance to eat dear dreary damaging sickness?

Grouchy that I am for the present year,

for planting sleep only to let it escape.

It mauls me. When I close my eyes,

the worm hatches. Its tingling florid brown

pathological profanity — cancerous as greed

— depositing neon contagion crude enough

to deform me. Into my cornea, it clenches.

Reluctant to resign. I am afraid of it.

Everywhere I turn, the leech glistens,

sucking as a sponge: thicker and wider till

it gulps the weight of an eyeball.

My hypochondriac flashback.

Everything darkens into inescapable fear,

like swallowing your guiltless lies.

Thursday, June 14, 2012, 3:25 AM –

Friday, June 15, 2012, 11:11 PM