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"

Aqimussola

The mosque was my sanctuary,
My refuge when the smog of life got too heavy,
When Dunya turned gritty, and stopped its pretty,
The domes from which there were plain ones,
And ones worthy of envy,
Became my homes,
(For there were many.)

The quiet settling of dust from the books in little shelves,
The soft shuffling of slippers at the stairs before people washed themselves,
Sacred, preparing to meet their Maker,
Cast away the daily grind that just feels faker,
With all those days that flit by without meaning,
The peace in prayer became redeeming.

But then you age,
And these eyes that used to close for meditation,
Just can't seem to shut anymore for fear of manipulation,
You read and you see that the world needs to change,
That we should be wary of the strange,
Or maybe we shouldn't,
I don't know,
But maybe the learned ones can guide us from a certain range.

But the wise ones with their beards remained lying nurses,
When the cancer spreads in your shell,
And they tell you to always remember Heaven
And always remember Hell,
"It will all be okay"
You don't need to know the news about pollution today ,
Or corruption, all dismay,
Let's leave these innocent souls in our zikrs when we pray, (Amin)
And remind ourselves to hate our big abstract Doomsday. (Nauzubillah)

Oh and all our enemies!

The Zionists, the dissenters,
The Shiites, the Westerners,
Sometimes Qadyanis, sometimes Ayah Pin,
Occasionally those video games that make you go insane.

The mosque was my sanctuary,
But now in my calm, I get angry,
I can't have my khusyuk or thoma'ninah,
When the khatibs don't talk about WHY there are bombings in Madinah,
Or when there were other problems at hand,
They wanted to talk about fruits, and the health benefits of rambutan,
Or when greed seeped into our states and our federal systems,
We chose to talk about vape in our respiratory systems.

Do they take us for buffoons?
Do they think if they stay long enough in this cocoon,
They will become these God-loving butterflies,
With their own promised kingdom on the moon?
I mean, I know our symbol is the crescent,
But let's stay on Earth for the present,

Look man,
Maybe we don't need a Luqman,
Speaking in riddles about moral philosophy,
And respecting your elders,
Embracing humility,
Luqman is good,
But not without context,
Devoid of real world problems, with nuances and pretext.

The preachers from other pulpits laugh at our sanitized sermons,

Our khutbahs come with slides,
Because there's a format for our propaganda persons,
And even if no one important is laughing,
At this scripted - redacted- babbling,
Your congregation is asleep!
Doesn't that at least make you ask "What's happening?"

But you keep blaming our faiths,
Our lack of istiqamah and conviction,
Never slapping yourself in the face,
And the state of your positions,
When you're fed by a body that doesn't want you to disagree,
It gets harder to speak relevance, it gets harder to be free.

I get it.

And the mosque is still my sanctuary,
When I want to forget the world,
But when the world is loud and scary,
And is begging not to be forgot,
Let's pray we all check our ignorance,
Before we answer ourselves to God.

Aqimussola.

Tinder

This is a story of fire,
And how a boy discovered it,
He was walking through the woods witnessing life and people in their dreams, making up their lines as they go,
And then boom the simmering heat from the limelight, prime night,
Fire was born,
From lightning striking the boy's heart forlorn.

The Fire was wild, beautiful and free,
But it was about to die, from some past tragedy,
The Fire caught whiff of the boy's attention,
And the boy edged closer without any mention.

And then it was warmth for several nights,
The boy stoked the flames, whilst hiding his fright,
The Fire warned, "YOU DON'T WANNA BE BURNED"
"I CAN'T GIVE YOU WHAT YOU WANT,
YOU'VE GOT SO MUCH MORE TO LEARN"

And then the boy said "Oh hey I can handle some heat,
I just think you glow like a lone lamplight in the street."

And thus the Fire had many suitors,
Empty tin warriors, and sultry flower men,
Jesters and virgins, the whole lot of them,
Crowd around the Fire,
And make the Fire more hot.

"I don't want that, you see
To be someone's property,
To no one I belong,
I will not sing that song"

"It's okay.
Nobody really owns Fire"

"But what if you get hurt or go insane?"
"Sanity's overrated, and what even is my brain?

But to the Boy, the Fire was the cosiest glow,
Like by the lake, sitting, staring up at the sky for a fireworks show
Waiting with comfort, and Firelit cigarettes.

The flames lit chandeliers,
Silhouetting waves and waves of choir,
The Boy made the Fire a mixtape,
And the mixtape was fire.

But then came the day when the Fire wanted more,
Then the Boy became nervous,
And it started to pour,
All was wet with rain to shores,
But everyone was drenched,
And the Fire was no more.

Now the Fire is ablaze in someone else's hearth,
And the Boy only has a match,
Unlit in the darkest path,
But it was still (a) lighter,
For the shadows ahead,
A lightbulb that beams,
For all the thoughts in his head.


The Boy does not hate Fire for being what she is,
He loves that he ever got to see, her burning in his midst,
Tonight is the day we remember pyromania,
Instead of  burning scented candles, big burdens into ashes and saying SEE YA
And this match is for lighting candles to be made memorabilia
To this boy's most recent hyperthermia,
I choose no other friend for this hell,
Or call me a liar,
My dearest soulmate,my favourite Fire.

Happy birthday, babe. I love you.

Suhail

Suhail Samsudin is the light of my life
In the weirdest brotherly way,
We're comrades,
From our faith in communist shades,
And our friendship through more demanding days.

He's a mother, to my unkempt self,
To my often dishevelled brain,
He keeps me sane,
When I feel like a runaway train,
He fixes me up back to normal again.

He is my sense of humour,
And the source of my misplaced confidence,
When I drop puns and I act ridiculous,
I always take comfort in,
"That if he was around,
Suhail would like this "

He's neat and tidy, and ever so whiny,
If you mess with his bedsheets,
Or dirty up his room,
He'll put on a smile,
That spells out your doom.

You underestimate how wonderful you are at times,
So I'm gonna outline it in the form of unstructured rhyme...

You're kind, adorable
And pretty hot too,
Hilarious as fuck,
A potential polyglot (soon).

You're witty and smart,
And musical at heart,
Resilient as fuck,
And when needed, works hard.

And in a life where I keep on making bad choices,
I never regret having you as one of my inner voices,
That baritone silliness that consoles me almost daily,
While slipping in a joke you heard from Bill Bailey.

Anyway, I'm just glad the first time I walked into your dorm,
And rudely lied on your bed,
You didn't ask me to leave,
And talked about Warhammer instead.

I love you, man. Happy 23.

Men Apart Apartments

Yesterday morning (4/6/2016), Suhail Samsudin - roommate for 3 years, close compadre for 4 or more - woke me up to say goodbye. He was about to drive back home. After four years of law school, he was finally graduating. I was groggy as fuck, and I just said the normal farewells, without feeling much really; just overtly drowsy and slightly frustrated that I might have been rudely awoken from a dream. Besides, I was gonna see him in a couple of weeks anyway, what's there to be tearful about?

A couple of hours later, I woke up for good. Instinctively, I walked to Suhail's compartment like I do almost every morning.

That's when it hit me the hardest.

It didn't hit me at all when I was in ibadah camp. Although I was barely there and spent the rest of the time being sick. Nor did it hit me mildly when I was saying goodbye after the photo sessions. Nor was any emotional significance felt when I put down my pen after what was hopefully the very last paper I did for my degree.

It didn't hit me more than mildly when a friend messaged me that we were drifting apart. Nor did it hit me when people were being saps all over Whatsapp (What-saps?) and saying their "I miss you's" and posting their little anecdotes of the things they would miss about IIU.

It hit me the hardest when I found myself in an empty compartment that was supposed to be my friend's room and I thought:
"This isn't Suhail's room."

The bedsheets were gone, there was no Suhail hunched over his laptop watching NBA highlights, guitar lessons, or doing last minute assignments. There was no ukulele or guitar in sight. Only an unrequited good morning from a Zim who murmured "Mornii...", 'because he realized slightly too late that he was talking to no one.

So many other dead or dying routines came flashing by in my mind. Skipping Friday prayers while hiding in the dorm, occasional dinners at Kubur, morning pre-shower cigarettes to a foggy dawn, unnecessarily profound night conversations, constantly worrying but rarely going to class anyway, Econs lunch, debate training, debate classes, tutorials for which we were drastically unprepared, rides to KL Fest and so many more mundane things really.

So mundane, yet so familiar. So I held on to them subconsciously like worn out furniture.

Except now, I'm entering the apartment and I'm all shocked that somebody moved out my couch set, favourite posters, and second hand TV. Even though I was given the eviction notice months ago.

"Somebody stole my furniture. Help. 999"

I took out my box of Sampoerna.

It was empty too.

Then tears.

I Just Wanna Talk To You

I just wanna talk to you,
Under the bright light of the sun,
I just wanna be with you,
In front of train tracks in the dawn,
I just wanna talk to you ooh ooh

And all the other boys,
They want you intimate,
The passion of hardboiled egg,
And cheap cigarettes.

And they sure would fuck you good,
I think, I might, I guess I should,
But I just can't,
So I just talk to you.

I wouldn't say it was love that we had in set,
Though in your eyes were words I wish I calmly said,
I know I shouldn't just be nice,
You want the sex, you want the vice,
Can't contribute,
So I just talk to you.

I just wanna talk to you,
With ice cream on our movie runs,
I just wanna be with you,
Until the raining stops and we're done,
I just wanna talk to you ooh ooh.

When we're burning books,
In languages we knew,
And I'm catching looks,
Of all the things you do,
Yeah you've got them in lusty chains,
But you've got me locked inside your brain,
I can't have love,
So I just talk to you.

I'm not one for romance in the dark,
Not for one fucking out the sparks,
I'm just bringing you to see the stars.

And if we go to Ikea and play House with the living rooms,
I wouldn't once believe,
Our future's convalescing doom .

I just wanna talk to you,
With all the silly jokes and the puns,
I just wanna be with you,
And steal the world awhile just for fun.
I just wanna talk to you ooh ooh.

All my friends say I've got so much more to find,
So why lose my mind over what's left behind,
They don't know you've got me good,
So I think I'll stick around,
And talk to you.

Jom

Sudah ketara,
Aku tidak mahu dipermainkan,
Aku tidak mahu binasa.

Tetapi engkau telah mengaburi pandanganku, pemandanganku,
Hanya engkau dibawah lampu fluoresen,
Atas pentas dilatarbelakangkan langsir hitam.

Kau tahu kau cantik,
Tapi aku mahu kau tahu yang aku tak kisah.

Sebab kau tahu kau cantik kau tak terkejut bila diajak keluar,
Sebab kau tahu kau cantik kau tak hairan kenapa kau dikerumun.

Diselebungi laki-laki yang ingin menyelimutkan kau,
Dengan kasih mereka.

"Hi, nama saya si fulan,
Saya mahu berkenalan,
Just thought it'd be fun,
Kita keluar hari Sabtu ni, boleh kan?"

"Jom"

Aku rasa part ni yang aku tersilap langkah sedikit.
Bosan dengan perbualan yang remeh dan tidak bermakna dan tidak berkait,
Aku dan engkau mula jujur tanpa ragu,
Bak saling bertukar cadangan senarai lagu.

Di sini aku hampir jatuh cinta.

Sebab aku dapat tahu yang engkau sebuah paradoks.
Gabungan ciri-ciri yang berlawanan.
Yang tidak sepatutnya boleh dijumpa dalam satu jasad.
Biasanyalah.

Tetapi engkau wujud,
Seperti partikel fizik kuantum.

Hadirnya kau,
Sebagai memoriam bagi segala yang bahaya,
Tetapi nampak cun,
Seperti api mercun,
Seperti suasana dari batu pantai yang cerun,
Seperti rokok Sampoerna yang engkau balun.

Jadi kenapa aku masih mengharap,
Bahawa beberapa rangkap,
Dapat menangkap,
Ukiran wajahmu dengan lengkap.

Engkau alunkan lagu alternatif untukku,
Tetapi artis kegemaranmu,
Kau mengaku dengan positif,
Taylor Swift.

Engkau mencarut dengan suara lantang, seperti rempit Bukit Bintang,
Serentak ber-'pun' memanjang

Mahupun ufuk minda kau luas, bertutur dalam bahasa ketiga,
Menulis prosa, telus dan jujur seakan dirakam atas pita.

Jikalau akhirnya perasaan ini hanya ilusi,
Sekurang-kurangnya tercatit dalam bentuk puisi,
Yang ku bahagia bahwa kau ku terjumpa cari.