Little Freedoms

Here's to the people wearing rainbows,

And when haters ask, "You homo?
Because homos go to hell"
You say "Of course they do,
But can't you tell,
The rainbow's God's creation,
And not any group's sole possession"
While you're hiding your pride,
Out of fear,
They'll find out who you are inside.

And to my heathens,
Who read too many dinosaur books,
While raised with mosques and churches,
That exile Darwin as a dirty crook,
Nodding your head at every sermon,
Teaching Creation from their Scriptures
While in your heart are fossil sediments,
Real-life experiments,
Also death-inviting sentiments,
If these priests had X-Ray visions
They'll scan your soul with malediction.
,
Or to the warriors wearing clothing,
They don't really want,
Because they're too scared of their fathers, mothers
Or other judgmental grunts,
When they avert their gaze from you,
If they know what's good
And you, take off, or put on,
Whatever you think you should,
But in the morning after your secret patriarchy fights.
You hide back in the shadows, saving your self,
For safer nights.

The warmest love to friends,
Just trying to survive,
Bowing down to oppression,
While keeping more honest dreams alive,
Your racist grandpa who loves you but is a supremacist,
Give him a smile, whispering that you will persist,
In spreading truth, while donning a million masks,
But always hating yourself,
Always worrying,
Along the way you'll lose your grasp on the task.

Here's to those precious seconds we forget that most of them hate us,
You are not alone, and they're all just sulking bitter they ain't us,
Leading double lives, or sometimes three, with stacks of alter-egos,
The world's too big, you feel you're too small to try and be heroes.

If hide and seek's the game, and you don't really think you can change'em
Let's pay respect and raise a glass for our moments of little freedoms.

Tak Cukup Memori

My uncle said,
"Today is a historical day",
He meant it cynically,
Dissing the fact that we were all getting together for a photo,
Frantically & giddily,
Commemorating a pretty mundane occasion,
Just excuses to have food,
To meet friends,
That sort of persuasion,
No one's birthday,
No one's wedding celebration.

And in my mind,
Were the sounds of rapid flipping pages,
In books from when I remembered albums,
With pictures on them,
Throughout the ages,
(Well not really ages,
My life doesn't span across that many stages,
But those blurry polaroid of my grandpa as a teacher,
Were I guess moments worthy of a picture).

At least, next to a selfie, with a fancy flower as a filter,
My grandpa could say "Masa tu atuk baru jadi cikgu. 1942"
Right?

Well, I beg to differ.

I read somewhere that memories are not real,
In the sense that they are not documents in your head,
You can reclaim from a bureau,
They are acts of passion with creation,
And that every time you think back to that day your first crush,
Held your hand,
It is laced with emotion,
So that when you're in love you remember the soft creases,
Of his palm in between your fingers
But when you're angry,
You start to realize how awkward he was in pulling your wrist,
As if every time there was danger.

Because he couldn't trust you,
And now you can't trust your mind,
At least, I can't trust mine,
So I feel these films if kept safe,
Means nothing gets left behind,
Physical or digital in kind,
And whose to decide what's the value of your stories?
From your self-absorbed OOTDs,
To chilling scenes of the first WMDs,
They could be pulp, the shortest tales without any plot,
Or they could be sagas, that should not be forgot.

All of these images,
Are possibly the only thing that are not mere visages,
They're proof of our continuous strand of humanity,
Every expression captured in eternity,
From the bile of genocide
To that time you smiled one Saturday night,
They're all our legacies,
Etched out from souls with only fleeting memories.

Maybe that's why Alzheimer is scary,
Cause what are we but the things we remembered?
Nothing presumably, with our past dismembered,
But if we have these photographs,
Maybe they can play out our individuality,
In our children's fancier phonographs,
Or whatever we can afford,
We should keep uploading it all to be stored,
and MAYBE TO FEED OUR GOOGLE OVERLORD,
STORING IDENTITY AND RESPECTING PRIVACY,
I SEE YOU LIKE BACK TO THE FUTURE 3,
HERE'S AN AD ON HOVERBOARDS.

*installs Snapchat*
"No more of that"
*Snapchat introduces Memories*
"Damn auto-update capabilities"

But I digress,

Kalau lain kali aku rasa stress,
Sebab pak cik aku sinis,
Gelakkan generasi yang berphotoshoot,
Macam sekor-sekor perasan artis,
I will just tell him, YES,
"Hari ni memang hari bersejarah,
Kalau pak cik nak saya whatsapp gambar,
Boleh saje, takde masalah"