a geography

birds of the air know
the man with a house everywhere
has no home anywhere.

belfast revisited

today is a special day. i mark it as one different from any other. it's a birthday of a friend. a day of ied kabir festivity. and also the day to start a new journey: "there and back again".

yes, my bag is packed. the shoes are cleaned. documents are set. i am ready to leave the town before sunrise this morning. to belfast northern ireland. with great friends.

frank delaney's novel, which i lost somewhere in london in november, has done its motivating work on me. i bought the book in bandung second hand shop months ago. but before i finished reading it, i think i left it somewhere in merdeka guest house when opening my bag. ah, really a loss to me. i wrote some notes on it. marked the nicest parts as well. and missed it. it's about ireland.

but well, maybe the book is being read by someone else now. who knows. maybe the reason i lost the book is to make me write my own, hohoo..!

apart from belfast the trip shall take me somewhere else too. i will need a lot of good wish for this journey. i don't plan the details. i pray and let myself go and see why i arrive there.

fragments

i entered this month of june like a man running hard into a heavy rain with no umbrella or proper shade to get sheltered under. and interestingly to me the rain is also different from any other kind of rain. unlike the ones you see and get you wet in autumn or spring afternoons. this kind of rain may typically come when you walk alone in a bright daylight and suddenly see someone you know from your past.

so the rain pours on you and showers you with fragments of images and noises from somewhere stocked in your brain cells. like a rain that suddenly fall when you come to a wedding of a friend. and old friendly faces, your mates whose names are recorded secretely or not in your diary books would then appear. sharing their stories and smiles. laughing at those same old hilarious stupidities again until your eyes get wet again. the silly things that used to make you very shy to admit are now becoming more tolerable as you begin to realise that everyone makes mistakes in their lives. and learns lessons from them too.

and so that rain, the shower of fragments, fell upon my head a couple of times in the past weeks. i dont remember when it started. but i recall rather clearly that last sunday was a stormy day. "reading lights" book shop in my hometown witnessed me in such a situation of trying to get escape. back to ireland with frank delaney. this time ireland as a novel.

and you and i

the air now is moist. you can smell the earth just by breathing slowly. this damp after-rain atmosphere feels comfortably relaxing. it fills my mind with images from ganeca road, that in my hometown. through ganeca road, on fridays, i used to walk carrying old books i borrowed from a library whose collections were inherited from the already closed british council. if i walked after the rain was gone, i took a longer path to enjoy the scenery of two football fields, green with grasses, and with horses and carts, and fellow bypassers on their way around the campus located nearby.

that's how i planned the activity for my weekends. literary works mostly by british and irish authors piled up in my room for a week or two. if i was lucky i finished reading them. but if not, there was no imperative at all, nor even any form of deadline to do so.

the air now is moist. and it is friday already. i am not in my hometown. but it doesn't matter that much. as long as i have old books yellow by age to digest and some bunch of friends to play futsal with. and especially as long as cikini street is waiting for me. of course with your presence and a cup of hot chocolate this will be so perfect.

may the silence break

because you do not speak
i know the shock
of water encountering a rock.

supremacy of silence is what i dislike.
only gods and graves deserve a right to that
or one who knows what this is all about.

perhaps you do.
if so, please let something breaks through
the walls of silence surrounding you.

out here among words
your silence is the magnet i am drawn towards.
men’s mouths, animals’ eyes and the throats of birds

fear this impenetrable thing.
so do i, all day long
and when the night drops like a confirmation

of what you are,
controller of every star,
possessor

of what the daylight struggled to reveal.
this possession kills
whatever it wills.

nothing i say matters tonight.
nor should it.
this silence is right

because it knows it is.
i shiver in the cocksure ice
and long for the warmth of bewildered eyes.

may the silence break
and melt into words that speak
of pain and heartache

and the hurt that is hard to bear
in the world out here
where love continues to fight with fear

and the war on silence will end in defeat
for every heart permitted to beat
in the air that hearts make sweet.