My only prayer right now, God - Please keep mom alive. Let her body, spirit and mind survive this. For mine cannot, if I lose her.

I have been purposely 'overdosing' myself in the past few nights.

I don't care what the consequences are at this point, I just want to sleep at night without crying and killing myself a little inside.

Oh Lord, you've taken away four people that I love in the last two years without me having the chance to say goodbye.

Don't take my mother away from me too. Let her survive this calamity safe and sound.

Even if it means taking my life in return I would gladly welcome it. Just keep her alive.

Why this blog is not for me anymore

Simple:

I am not my former self.

The reflections in these blogs no longer portray the girl that I have shed, the woman I have become, and the person I long to be.

I have survived grief, death, loneliness, moments doubting my own sanity, and also a close attempt at suicide. (Alhamdulillah I'm still alive)

Stylistically, my writings have changed too, for I am no longer the same ingenue poetess that I was growing up.  In my younger adolescent years, I was much more influenced by 'Classic' White-middle-class-heterocentric poets of English and French Romanticism. (not that I don't read them anymore, and I am not in anyway criticizing their writing styles)

In the last couple of years, in my attempt at navigating through spaces which I am barred from due to my race and gender, I am increasingly drawn to narratives by People of Colour who bleed ink to resist the Eurocentric - White Supremacist status quo. I find myself reading more and more of Suheir Hammad, Saul Williams, Warsan Shire, Nizar Qabbani, Mahmoud Darwish and Sonia Sanchez. Audre Lorde's poems and journals have pretty much become my bible these days.

I am more violent, visceral and I am not afraid to flaunt my passions now.

And I don't shy away from sexuality or eroticism anymore, another side of me that I have always ignored - I embrace it.  I am a Woman of Colour, I am Brown and proud, I have learned how to slowly hone the dirt hurled upon my skin into gold armour.  I have never shied away from talking about sex, and discussing the power of female sexuality is central to my stylistic maturation, and also my personal growth as a cisgendered hetereosexual Woman of Colour, who identifies as Muslim.

There is no 'dichotomy' here. Muslim women are not sexless, nor should we ever be hypersexualized. We have bodies and desires, we have our own ways of connecting with our Creator. We don't need 'guidance' from hypocritical misogynists in our own community. We are capable of finding spiritual meaning in our lives should we choose to do so.   To foreigners, back off your pretentious neocolonial White saviour mentality of giving 'voice' to us. Do not effing steal our agency.

Two years ago I wouldn't know half of these terms I've used above.

So yeah, Blogger is not the right platform for me anymore to discuss the multifaceted intersectionality between politics, oppression, gender, spirituality and art.

Light and love, yours truly.

every writer's nightmare

I just lost an entire document of my writing drafts and fragments in Evernote. I don’t know what happened they just all disappeared and there is nothing I can do even with the undo button.

I’m really upset. And I just wrote the longest prose poetry I’ve written in a while. I can’t even cry right now because I’m just too frustrated.

I was about to sleep. No peace for me tonight :(

who paved the road

i once knew a man
who only danced on pavements

we learned how to tango
in this country
even when we could not
stay upright
because our feet
are a patchwork

our heels are a heartbreak
its cracks a phantom continent
a relic home
for us
barefoot dancers
forced to twirl on asphalt
with drills and cranes

I am always surprised to find myself still alive and breathing when I wake up in the morning.

:X

Slight relapse

I'm sorry

It was getting too unbearable today

So I made a visual reminder

a premature eulogy for defunct wordsmiths

last night I dreamt of dead authors

they had no souvenirs for me
save for the smell of cheap tobacco
and the echo of yesteryears from
a splintered gramophone
doomed to be tomorrow's
headlines in bold
because of writers like me
who tried searching for deceased words
from six feet under
instead of carving new letter blocks
out of concrete tombstones
to give birth to something more
than just a recycled obituary

the woman who became a gospel

when i was
a kid
nobody told me
that my body
was mine
it took
bruises
on my thighs
from
unwelcomed hands
and
empty discarded bottles
of
anxiety medications
and
a metamorphosis
into poetry
to learn
that my anatomy
is a
scripture
that
I alone
can worship

Trickster Passion's Noose

You were so naive, love
to think that you could escape
Well you should learn by now
Passion takes no prisoners
there is no room for parole
no jailbreak no alibi no trial no acquittal
In this game of chance where
hearts are bartered for lust and
romance is just a series
of fabricated moans instead of
love letters and midnight strolls, you are
twice the fool to think that your
flight will go unnoticed
You should have known
your vanishing act is just a
rehearsal for an execution when
She signed alea iacta est
on your death warrant

did you hear about the depressive belle de jour?

she tried searching for medications in the cupboard

until she realized they never existed

like the apparitions she sees in the stained mirror on her four walls

all mirages, all hallucinations

like the boogeyman she used to fear as a little girl


well guess what she's all grown up now and

there's a bigger skeleton in her closet

i'll tell you a secret: that's where she keeps her demons

when her fist-sized heart ran out of space for broken bones

to make room for anhedonia and a ménage à trois

with Grief and Apathy


months later she still wakes up with her limbs

almost sticking out of her skin

haphazardly lying on a pile of sweat-stained linens

after a prolonged foreplay with her lovers and the only 

petite mort she achieves is insomnia


but the smell of a third paramour she hasn't met

now clings to her body

she wears his scent like an intoxicating perfume

unaware of its effects on herself because this

new opium has something to offer that 

others don't: the sweet promise of closure


she still doesn't know that his name is Death

inibukanpuisi #1 - ratapan sang kelana

tidak

tiada irama dan alunan suara sang bayu

yang akan menanti

kepulanganmu

wahai anak rantau



hanya kematian


dan


tangisan seorang hamba

yang bakal menghiasi

bumi gersang

To be honest, if god turns out to be a man I would be sorely disappointed

(yes yes this is my feeble mind's inability to grasp the concept of gender neutrality. judge away.)

unwritten

i traced the faint blue veins
branching out beneath the
films of your pallid wrists,
a lifeline indistinguishable from
my own happiness,
wondering if you somehow
trapped my smile, my laughter
the heaves of my chests
as i exhale life that is so wildly
entangled with yours
within those veins,
in the same way i bottle your
sadness in tightly sealed canisters
and toss them into the ocean
while my lips utter a silent but
fervent litany of prayers for
the currents to chase your
demons away from the shore

instead
i found the answer
in your lifeless eyes
when i could no longer
see myself reflected in them
a denouement
i should have seen
when the scars on your wrists
foreshadowed a premature end
for a love story that
never had a prologue
to begin with

Renungan dalam kegelapan

Langit dapat dilukis, sudut kambut diserayakan.

Mengapa perlu persetankan mereka yang berlainan bangsa atau agama, sedangkan buta terhadap aib sendiri? Sama-sama renungkan dan muhasabah diri. Cukup sudah telinga ini mendengar kata-kata dusta.

Usaha dan teruskan berjuang memperbaiki diri dahulu untuk-Nya sebelum membina masyarakat dan negara.

Kerana hanya Dia Maha Mengetahui dan Maha Adil.

(Maaflah, diri ini jarang sekali naik memberang dalam bahasa ibunda. Tetapi sebagai anak bangsa yang kini berada di perantauan, dan sedang menyaksikan kejahilan sesetengah pihak di tanah air tercinta yang masih enggan insaf, penulis sememangnya tidak mampu berdiam diri.) 

sepi

sepi. sepi sekali.

ku sangka ku kenali

dan telah puas meratapi

wajah yang terukir

dari rimbun-rimbun lara

namun kini

ku sedar bahawa

suraya yang ku sangkakan

teman dalam kesepian

hanyalah pembayang

buat khilaf yang

belum termaktub dalam

kitab-kitab duka






(helll naww have i just written something in malay which is not under kategori 'surat untuk jpa'?) *malumalumalumalu tatabahasa cacamarba*

deus est in caelo

Ave, Regina Caelorum

Ave, Domina Angelorum

Salve, radix, salve, porta

Ex quo mundo lux est orta

gaia

Her apotheosis foretold his imminent death. He didn’t believe her.

“The words of a woman,” he spat.

What man wants his life sewn between callused fingers, a mark upon her skin which he himself left?

She met his eyes directly for the first time. There was anger there, yes. But the serrated corners of his lids betrayed his growing fear.

The master, now a slave.

Her voice reverberated in his diminishing consciousness.

“You will vanish. This time, not just in my dreams.”

She closed her eyes. Willed him to disappear with every particle of her being. For emancipation, long denied. The cage will not unlock itself.

There was no sound. She opened her eyes.

He was gone. Not even an ounce of his manhood remained on the pavement. No corpse to bury. No residues.

Only victory. For her.

She smiled, now a goddess.

survival

Some days I am struggling with every particle of my will to stay alive, and no one even knows.

передышка

вот это моя новая обсессия

"Ведь сегодня-завтра будет вчера, а еще вчера-сегодня было завтра"

 крутая песня

Dolgoruky

Posting this just because this is my 2nd final class for this Dostoevsky grad course.

the feels. it's just too much. i want to read more depressive stuff T_T

On the second part of Подросток (The Adolescent, alternatively translated as A Raw Youth). Arkady Dolgoruky is kinda annoyingly cute. He's the kind of son that I would like to adopt and spray water guns at all day.

Also posting this because this course is likely my last one with Holland teaching - this is my fifth course with her now. I've taken every possible course that she teaches in the department. What an incredible teacher - possibly the best one I've ever had.

But still - 3 more response papers to submit, a prospectus, and a final thesis paper.

My cheesiest corniest essay topic yet - "Dualism in Dostoevsky's Demonology". Expect more suicides, existential crises and a higher body count.  And of course, seizures and tuberculosis.

Not forgetting self-proclaimed fake Jesus(es).

Oh hell.

bodies

well what the flying fuck.

3 posts in a row. with the F-bombs.

why must creative impulses surface at the most untimely moment when I am literally shitting essay papers out of my ass? *sighs*

So I've decided to get back into poetry. No, not those mellow sighs in verse bullshit that are spurred on by ennui when I have nothing better to do with my time.

But really really getting back into it. This verbal war that I trade with those who try to oppress my individuality, telling me that I should pay fines wherever I choose to park my body.

I realized these past few days that I have shit tons of anger within me. It's about time I channel it into this strange language where exiles, non-conformists, and the outcasts dream and wage wars in.

Working on a series of verses titled 'Bodies', inshaAllah. 'Original sin' (see previous post) is the first. Another one is on the way, if my clinically depressed addled brain permits it. Hopefully I'll be more productive throughout this summer.

In the meantime, I'm giving your patriarchal-fascist-imperialist claptrap another multiple middle fingers.

Zero fucks given to misconstrued verses telling me that I belong in hell because of what I have between my legs.

Hooyeah.

introspection

rants of a dying feminist who seeks refuge in her pen, struggling against the tide, so that she won't get diluted under the crushing wave of that imperialist ink.

and also, trying to be happy.

yes. i want to be happy.

i don't know where to seek for help anymore.  :(

well, fuck.

original sin

drawing his finger

at the length of my skirt

it won’t hurt, he says

but they don’t know

as they pass by

that I cradle his sin

between these ravished thighs

with my crimson lips

I unwittingly entice

his darkest vice

but they don’t see

when they pass by

that I pay the price

in these vacant eyes

the curve of my bosom

unknowingly tantalize

his noble guise

but they don’t listen

as they pass by

that I’ve lost my Eden

in these muffled cries

*sighs* I should get back to writing my essays...and yes, the whole Steubenville case just pushed me over the edge this week. 

I need to be that angry poetess again

demise

Let me get this straight.

I am tired. So goddamn tired.

I am tired of putting on a mask. I've been doing that for almost 22 years now. And I am done.

I am tired of struggling and sacrificing myself on an altar, in family, in ambitions, in uncertainty, in sweat, in blood, in tears, in love and in death.

All for a future as uncertain as my mortality.

And what do I get in return?  

More loss. And more and more loss - culminating into a perpetual impasse.

I am done. Done. Done. Done. 

I am done feeling like a wishbone between my ambitions and the ones that I love more than my next breath.

I am done feeling like I am being punished by Fate in return for my aspirations.

Done pretending that everything is all right. Done pretending that I am strong, independent, and solitary.

Yes I am all of those things, but I am also a woman.

And a woman is always in exile in a man's world.

Oh God, the Most Beneficent, this is a cry for help.  For I am already defeated.

I want to be better. I want to get better. I want to feel again. To truly smile again.

To truly see Beauty in all its glory, and in myself.

I am done shedding sorrowful tears without even realizing the torrents that poured forth from my lids have reached the ground.

I am done feeling that everytime I open my eyes the first impulse is just to close them again.  I wish it was laziness and love of sleep.

I just want to forget. Forget and forget and disappear into my dreams and slumber.

And I wonder if someday, perhaps, I might disappear forever, never to wake up again. 

I am done feeling like every bone is broken in my body each time I hear the alarm clock blaring at sunrise.

I am broken.  

But I don't want you to see me broken. 

You don't see me.  You have never seen me. You have never looked close enough into these cold, emotionless eyes, full of tragedy.

No, you don't see me at all. 

Here's a eulogy to my inner demise

i trample the first fallen snow

Я по первому снегу бреду.
В сердце ландыши вспыхнувших сил.
Вечер синею свечкой звезду
Над дорогой моей засветил.

Я не знаю — то свет или мрак?
В чаще ветер поет иль петух?
Может, вместо зимы на полях,
Это лебеди сели на луг.

Хороша ты, о белая гладь!
Греет кровь мою легкий мороз.
Так и хочется к телу прижать
Обнаженные груди берез.

О лесная, дремучая муть!
О веселье оснеженных нив!
Так и хочется руки сомкнуть
Над древесными бедрами ив.

С. Есенин, 1917

It's the fate of geniuses, I think, to die so young, as if nature regretted squandering
an unreasonable amount of wisdom upon a single mind.

Ah, the perfect season of the year for a cuppa Russianness.  Кто не любит зиму?

Finally experienced my first snowfall of the year today. So light, almost invisible.

The heavens cracked open a little
shedding miniscule, pristine tears 
as the sun releases its last breath from the horizon.

And there I stood
By the dim light of the lamposts
At the curve of the road
Wondering,
If this was a latent surge of prudence
Instead of my youth trickling by
With every languid fall
Of those infinitesimal tears.

Это всё

Between Esarhaddon's and Cyril's beard

No, I have not developed a sudden fetish for hirsutes. (oh well, maybe I have)

My disdain towards ROSI is no secret - you would think that a university consistently listed in the top 20s in the world would have a better course registration system and a more aesthetically palatable website.

http://www.utoronto.ca/

Even my dentist, the Lord's executioner in disguise, has better colours in his website.

I digress - but why is it that the courses that you want to take are always full, or cannot ever fit into your schedule? Or the ones that you are taking just conveniently happens to be on the most eventful evening of the week, and stretches for 3 hours long?  *groanssss*

If I'm sacrificing my favourite weekday evening for a 3-hour lecture, I expect some Babylonian erotic poetry by a drunken sod after a wild orgy in Ishtar's name.  Or read excerpts from the Hymn to Ninkasi. In the original.

Professor, please don't disappoint me

Or hit the jackpot and have an in-class discussion on the world's first yo mama joke in those multitude of clay tablets locked in a basement somewhere in an old curator's house that no one ever pays attention to anymore.

Or, I could just take that Mediaval Russian lit course on Fridays and endlessly pore over Old Church Slavonic manuscripts, thereby finishing off my Russian major (aside from the Advanced Russian that I would have to take next year).

Ah, decisions, decisions. 

I cannot believe that September will mark the commencement of my final year in undergrad, and my third full year in the True North. 

Egads, me stomach be flutterin'.

On another note, I dropped Middle Egyptian *gasp!* Yes, I need to take my mind off logograms and concentrate on Cyrillic alphabets for the moment (I am miserably falling behind!).  I am sincerely putting my hopes up - I need to skip the prereqs and just go straight into fourth year historical or religious texts next year. More importantly, I need to be egggsssellent and pass and and and...crap why am I so annoyingly ambitious?  Oh of course - I am penniless and too dumb for Grad School.

I can't even begin to describe my jealousy towards my former classmates who will read my most favourite ancient tale ever in the original next week.  It's a beautiful story of adventure, guilt, absolution, and homecoming that one should read at least once in their lifetime.  Personally for me it is also one of the best prose work from the golden age of Middle Kingdom literature in Ancient Egypt. Ahhh Sinuhe mri.i tiw.

Here's a link - with Lichtheim's translation no less.

http://www.touregypt.net/storyofsinuhe.htm

I have yet to get my hands on a copy
of Mika Waltari's adaptation of this timeless tale.
Soon.

Till next time, when I finally grow my epic Assyrian beard.

До свидания

shattered glass

You can never fully reconsturct a broken glass. Once shattered, you can stick the pieces together, but the cracks will never disappear, like scars on old wounds.

How will you find the light at the end of the tunnel, when all you see is darkness?

How can you find happiness and solace in hearth and home, when every homecoming is met with funerals?

Oh Lord please alleviate this sorrow from my heart. I am done grieving alone and being angry.

Please make my family truly smile again.