Gawdeepah by Sheena Baharudin

Faved!: Gabriel Okara's Once Upon a Time

2015-07-12T14:48:00.000+08:00

Once upon a time, son,
they used to laugh with their hearts
and laugh with their eyes:
but now they only laugh with their teeth,
while their ice-block-cold eyes
search behind my shadow.

There was a time indeed
they used to shake hands with their hearts:
but that’s gone, son.
Now they shake hands without hearts
while their left hands search
my empty pockets.

‘Feel at home!’ ‘Come again':
they say, and when I come
again and feel
at home, once, twice,
there will be no thrice-
for then I find doors shut on me.

So I have learned many things, son.
I have learned to wear many faces
like dresses – homeface,
officeface, streetface, hostface,
cocktailface, with all their conforming smiles
like a fixed portrait smile.

And I have learned too
to laugh with only my teeth
and shake hands without my heart.
I have also learned to say,’Goodbye’,
when I mean ‘Good-riddance':
to say ‘Glad to meet you’,
without being glad; and to say ‘It’s been
nice talking to you’, after being bored.

But believe me, son.
I want to be what I used to be
when I was like you. I want
to unlearn all these muting things.
Most of all, I want to relearn
how to laugh, for my laugh in the mirror
shows only my teeth like a snake’s bare fangs!

So show me, son,
how to laugh; show me how
I used to laugh and smile
once upon a time when I was like you.

Faved!: Mark Bibbins' Worst Things First

2013-10-04T12:30:00.000+08:00

A bag of thank-you notes fell

on me and that was enough

art for one day. Culturally speaking,

it was more like a year

in the floral trenches, kicked off

with a single boneless kiss.

Poor sad demon in his poor dead tree--

or is it he who pities me, cockshy

quasihero with a latex lasso,

taking forever to measure

the dimensions of his confinement.

Certain other demons have smeared a flock

of sparrows on a blanket, the full filthy

price of a sky under which they smoked

their names. My prize is a set

of teeth, striptease at the nude beach,

audio files of decomposing stars

telling me, if they're telling me

anything, that theory's just another word

for nothing left to like.

Jom!: Poet's Passport - Supernatural

2013-10-03T12:30:00.000+08:00

Hello beautiful people!

Friday night tends to be the night for the Poet's Passport poetry peeps to organise their readings. I am going to make it a point to be there this time. Things always seem to pop up on a Friday but this time, it should be all good. Excited! Here are the details:

What happens when you have a supernatural encounter? WHO YOU GONNA CALL?

POET'S PASSPORT October Session
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
POET'S PASSPORT is a youth/student-led poetry gig. Featuring poets and writers mainly from the nearby communities, it is an intense and intimate experience that should be experienced by literatti and non-literatti alike. Originally founded by African students studying in Cyberjaya, Malaysia, POET'S PASSPORT has thrived beyond its humble beginnings in apartment living rooms into an international community, having chapters at Malaysia, Botswana and Kenya. These chapters are driven by alumni who came into their own on the POET'S PASSPORT's stage. POET'S PASSPORT has no other intention apart from providing a space and opportunity for poets and poetry-lovers to come together and experience poetry up close like never before, eventually getting their own "poet's passport" to spread peace, love and poetry.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/poetspassport/
http://www.youtube.com/user/poetspassport
https://twitter.com/PoetsPassport

*************************************************

Date: October 4th, 2013 (Friday)
Time: 9:00pm - 12:00 midnight
Venue: Minut Init Galeria.

*************************************************

Sounds pretty fun right?

I will be bringing along copies of Rhymes for Mending Hearts as well. You never know who might want some healing, right? :)

Faved!: Mónica de la Torre's No mode of excitement is absolutely colorless

2013-10-02T12:30:00.000+08:00

Describe what color is not.

It's missing a thingness.

To the point of becoming, color camouflages supporting structures.

A vague interior finds in an exterior specific correlation.

Even if shapeless, it materializes in splotches, bursts, or blobs.

How mood-like.

Like, I love that green.

Like, Benjamin Moore's color designers or 20-inch Indian human hair
extensions.

Color resists paraphrase without metaphor.

Ruddiness says ripe, a want to be had.

Emerald 17-5641 is Pantone's 2013 Color of the Year.

Your forecast here: _______________________________

Color is readymade sensation, emotion, feeling.

And/or.

A vague exterior finds in an interior specific correlation.

Or it can be articulated as narrative.

As in red, white, and blue.

And Untitled (USA Today.)

An endless supply of candy wrapped in red, silver, and blue

cellophane.

Tongue-cutting.

Flavors: Cherry, pineapple, and Concord grape (the best tasting).

To the point of becoming, color structures camouflage, supporting it.

"It's its own culture. White is one of my favorites. In the East it is

associated with death."

"How do we know how it's read?"

Red nails once stood for status.

Now it's Be a Dahlia Won't You? The Thrill of Brazil, Yucatan If U

Want, I'm Not Really a Waitress.

Or the mimicking of natural nails.

How simulacra.

Buy France Flags from just $1.60 each, all sizes in stock.

Advice from the celebrity/fitness guru has-been: make sure you get

all colors in your food.

Your yellows, your purples, your reds, your greens.

Disregard if you're a locavore.

When it comes down to it, some seasons come close to monotonous.

Think potatoes. And snow.

Raved!: Indigo Love of Reading Fund - A Video

2013-10-01T12:30:00.000+08:00

An oldie but a goodie. This is a promotional video from Canada to promote early literary. Love the super charged up romance in the words:

How tired I am of this unbearable distance between us.

How I long for the toll of the recess bell.

Have you forgotten me? Grown mindless of me?

Tell me I am not writing into an abyss.

Or that is what will become of my heart.

Faved!: Andrea Gibson's Jellyfish

2013-09-30T12:30:00.000+08:00

Because it is a Monday. Because it is the last day of September. Because, just because. Let me share with you one of the few poems that broke my heart and mended it at the same time. One of my all time favourite poems and poets. Enjoy.

She said “you are an astronaut clipped from the mothership

You are a jellyfish with no lips”

I said listen, shortstuff:

I skip my moon rock across your puddle dive.

I’ll kiss your punches with my nose.

I bet you smell like butterfly

but I bet you dream cocoon

and I bet you never say the word ‘fuck’

but we all know you do

My heart is a runway

I’ve been staring at this sky since my love took off

Will you be my friend?

Will you poem me a porchswing?

Will you punch me in the touch, just once?

I need to reset my bones

swingset my ribcage

so the next time somebody pushes me away

I’ll swing right back to that chisel with my marble spine

Go ahead, build me

Go ahead, throw me at the storm like a fisherman’s prayer

Do you ever think about God’s ears?

Wonder if the levy broke a promise?

Wonder if the wrecking ball was trying to run its fingers

soft across the bricks

but its head was just too heavy?

Before you become my friend

picnic with my rubble

roadtrip with everyone I left in the dust

do the laundry from the last time I was loaded

how she found my trigger and we woke

with the sheets pulled above our heads

praying the mortician could make us pretty

None of us are pretty

but our ugly has an alibi

and our gorgeous has a baby sister

a sand collection or three harmonicas we keep blowing off

for that flute we carve from our wrists

Put your lips here

Tell me there is music in my blood

then tell me there is more in my light

Hang me chandelier from the last night

I believed this life had to hurt so much

I am done kneeling in the church of steepled smokestacks

Done stargazing traincrash

Give me windsprint

Tell me my fingerprints are the shape of ripples on a frozen lake

Tell me my coal mind will never collapse on my heart

I’ll tell you these poems

they’re my birthmarks

and I came this close to having them removed once

even kept that voice-box cutter hidden in my shoe the day that flight took off

but the runway

it’s made of marble

made of gush

made of windmill

made of salt

and there is a sea of hopechest in every word I speak

praying to be open by the night

with its belly full of anchors

full of yield

Pull the shield

from my wingspan

Teach me how the candlewax says thank you to the flame

Tell me how your mother says your name like an orchard going bloom, Angela

A doctor once told me I feel too much

I said so does god

That’s why you can see the grand canyon from the moon

we are a telescope a riverbed

we are empty lockets melting into gold

we are hearts breaking bread

Fold me in the napkin poem

Pull the tinsel from my hair from all the past I cannot let go

My gills are adjusting to the air

The story husk peeled from my bones

My bones know the song of our tears

dripping from the faucet

ticking like a metronome

I know there is better music

Even in this cabin full of fever

tonight I’m catching nothing but the lightning bug

My body is a mason jar

transparent as a jellyfish

I wish for a heart you can see straight through

for a voice that glows in the dark

and a few really good friends to skip moon rocks to.

Faved!: Jean Toomer's Storm Ending

2013-09-29T12:30:00.000+08:00

Thunder blossoms gorgeously above our heads,

Great, hollow, bell-like flowers,

Rumbling in the wind,

Stretching clappers to strike our ears . . .

Full-lipped flowers

Bitten by the sun

Bleeding rain

Dripping rain like golden honey--

And the sweet earth flying from the thunder.

Faved!: Major Jackson's On Disappearing

2013-09-28T12:30:00.000+08:00

I have not disappeared.

The boulevard is full of my steps. The sky is

full of my thinking. An archbishop

prays for my soul, even though

we only met once, and even then, he was

busy waving at a congregation.

The ticking clocks in Vermont sway

back and forth as though sweeping

up my eyes and my tattoos and my metaphors,

and what comes up are the great paragraphs

of dust, which also carry motes

of my existence. I have not disappeared.

My wife quivers inside a kiss.

My pulse was given to her many times,

in many countries. The chunks of bread we dip

in olive oil is communion with our ancestors,

who also have not disappeared. Their delicate songs

I wear on my eyelids. Their smiles have

given me freedom which is a crater

I keep falling in. When I bite into the two halves

of an orange whose cross-section resembles my lungs,

a delta of juices burst down my chin, and like magic,

makes me appear to those who think I've

disappeared. It's too bad war makes people

disappear like chess pieces, and that prisons

turn prisoners into movie endings. When I fade

into the mountains on a forest trail,

I still have not disappeared, even though its green facade

turns my arms and legs into branches of oak.

It is then I belong to a southerly wind,

which by now you have mistaken as me nodding back

and forth like a Hasid in prayer or a mother who has just

lost her son to gunfire in Detroit. I have not disappeared.

In my children, I see my bulging face

pressing further into the mysteries.

In a library in Tucson, on a plane above

Buenos Aires, on a field where nearby burns

a controlled fire, I am held by a professor,

a General, and a photographer.

One burns a finely wrapped cigar, then sniffs

the scented pages of my books, scouring

for the bitter smell of control.

I hold him in my mind like a chalice.

I have not disappeared. I swish the amber

hue of lager on my tongue and ponder the drilling

rigs in the Gulf of Alaska and all the oil-painted plovers.

When we talk about limits, we disappear.

In Jasper, TX you can disappear on a strip of gravel.

I am a shrug of a life in sacred language.

Right now: termites toil over a grave.

My mind is a ravine of yesterdays.

At a glance from across the room, I wear

September on my face,

which is eternal, and does not disappear

even if you close your eyes once and for all

simultaneously like two coffins.

Faved!: Natalie Diaz's These Hands, If Not God's

2013-09-27T12:30:00.000+08:00

Haven't they moved like rivers--

like Glory, like light--

over the seven days of your body?

And wasn't that good?

Them at your hips--

isn't this what God felt when he pressed together

the first Beloved: Everything.

Fever. Vapor. Atman. Pulsus. Finally,

a sin worth hurting for. Finally, a sweet, a

You are mine.

It is hard not to have faith in this:

from the blue-brown clay of night

these two potters crushed and smoothed you

into being--grind, then curve--built your form up--

atlas of bone, fields of muscle,

one breast a fig tree, the other a nightingale,

both Morning and Evening.

O, the beautiful making they do--

of trigger and carve, suffering and stars--

Aren't they, too, the dark carpenters

of your small church? Have they not burned

on the altar of your belly, eaten the bread

of your thighs, broke you to wine, to ichor,

to nectareous feast?

Haven't they riveted your wrists, haven't they

had you at your knees?

And when these hands touched your throat,

showed you how to take the apple and the rib,

how to slip a thumb into your mouth and taste it all,

didn't you sing out their ninety-nine names--

Zahir, Aleph, Hands-time-seven,

Sphinx, Leonids, locomotura,

Rubidium, August, and September--

And when you cried out, O, Prometheans,

didn't they bring fire?

These hands, if not gods, then why

when you have come to me, and I have returned you

to that from which you came--bright mud, mineral-salt--

why then do you whisper O, my Hecatonchire. My Centimani.

My hundred-handed one?

High School (A Love Poem)

2013-09-26T21:08:00.000+08:00

Class of 1999. Spot me.

If only I was taught proper

back in high school

I wouldn't be struggling so much

trying to write this love poem

for you.

My Cikgu

could have shown me how Physics is based

on the premise that everything is made

out of matter and that matter is made

out of mass, just like how you do matter to me

above all the rest and that the best

definition of inertia could only be found

in the reason why I can't stop thinking about you

so despite the friction met in my state of motion

I am still falling for you

atthespeedoflight.

I wish

I was taught in Chemistry

that the human body contains

enough carbon to make 9,000 pencils

because then that makes me a vessel of words

and now that I am a spoken word poet

I want you to be my muse, you are

better than 'shroom, LSD, weed or cocaine

you are the stimulus that floods my brains

with dopamine. Quoting the words

of the hip-hoppers: "Baby, you are dope to me"

so let's not even talk about

physical chemistry

Instead,

let us flip the neglected pages of Biology

Did you know that the octopus

possesses not one heart, but three?

To make it worse, it is solitary.

No wonder its blood is blue. Its whole existence

sings the blues. See that is why I refuse

to live a life without you. For I have only one heart

not three, with blood vessels so broad

I could never stop you from swimming

into my deepest thoughts

and just like the blue whales in the sea, my heart

is absolutely massive and indisputably capable

of so many miracles.

This should
have been in Religious studies. See how
our hearts lose a beat every time
we sneeze or how mine skips a beat, forgets to breathe,
every time we kiss and yet, here I am still standing

walking (not on water) but on this earth

where you are the world and I am the traveller.
So eager to get to know you better. With you

I want to have my first and my last supper

quoting once again the words

of the hip-hoppers “Baby, you are sick.”

That's why Mathematics

could have been about more than just sine, cosine and tangent

or how kilometres contributes to physical distance

it should be about how you + me = fun

and that we - you = none

that you are my version of the Euler’s formula,

the most beautiful equation, yes that's what you are.

You once told me

"I am the light to your prism."

Well you are the algorithm to all of my problems

you have solved me.

Guess that's why I believe Pendidikan Jasmani

should not be about who is the fittest or

who is the best in sports but how my tongue ought

to be the strongest muscle in my body, see me flex it

as I carry the weight of the hardest words to say:

Like: “Goodbye” or

“I'm gay” or

“Stay.”

If only
Cikgu had taught me in Geography

that the Eskimos have hundreds of words for snow

yet not a single one for hello

maybe then I would have known why that is so

I mean, just look at it:

See how a word

is capable of turning your life

into a hell hole

but hell, still

I said hello

to you

Even when I knew

you bring forth with you the infinite possibilities

of a heartbreak, my tragic flaw

you could be that single core shaking mistake

and still I choose to partake

in this struggle to write this love poem for you

even when Poetry was not once

taught in my classroom

"Why?" You may ask

I say, "Life is just like high school.

It sucks and it is messed up

but you are like recess,

full stop.

The only thing I look forward

to having, counting

each and every second

before the bell rings

so that proper education

can finally

begin."

Jom!: Senorita's Hello Poetry Vol. 1

2013-09-04T14:30:00.000+08:00

Click Poster to Access FB Event Page

Hello beautiful people!

I am looking forward to this one. A different crowd, a different scene. What is not to like? I have been following Senorita Zine for awhile and they were kind enough to invite me to perform for their first poetry event aptly called HELLO POETRY. Here are the details:

Senorita presents

"Hello Poetry" is a poetry recital event by today's up and coming female poets which centers around a common theme: "feminism and literature"

Supporting label:

• Frinjan• Zine Satu Malam

*************************************************
Date: September 7th, 2013 (Saturday)
Time: 12:00pm - 6:00pm
Venue: Rumah Titi, Kuala Lumpor.
FREE ADMISSION - everyone is welcome, boys or girls, mysterious or obvious.
Feel free to invite your friends! The more, the merrier!
*************************************************

Performing acts:

• Sheena Baharudin• Azalia Suhaimi• Afi Noor• Dib Jual Kata• Aishah Nur Hakim• Athina Marzuki• Qiez AR• Adi Robai• Chempaka's• Kaka Perawan• Egy Azira, Aen Lee, Zehan (Tanpa Nama)

Special Appearance (acoustic):

• Aifaa Rizwan• Shh...Diam!

Exhibitor:

• Neb Dagga• Xeem Noor• Sarah Ameera• Orkid Abdullah• Artviolences

Sounds pretty fun right? I will be bringing along with me copies of Rhymes for Mending Hearts as well. You never know who might want some healing, right? I should write a new piece to be read at this event. Will call it Eksperimen. Yeah, I should. See you there!

Faved!: Robinson Jeffers' Song of Quietness

2013-09-03T11:30:00.000+08:00

Drink deep, drink deep of quietness,

And on the margins of the sea

Remember not thine old distress

Nor all the miseries to be.

Calmer than mists, and cold

As they, that fold on fold

Up the dim valley are rolled,

Learn thou to be.

The Past--it was a feverish dream,

A drunken slumber full of tears.

The Future--O what wild wings gleam,

Wheeled in the van of desperate years!

Thou lovedst the evening: dawn

Glimmers; the night is gone:--

What dangers lure thee on,

What dreams more fierce?

But meanwhile, now the east is gray,

The hour is pale, the cocks yet dumb,

Be glad before the birth of day,

Take thy brief rest ere morning come:

Here in the beautiful woods

All night the sea-mist floods,--

Thy last of solitudes,

Thy yearlong home.

Faved!: Seamus Heaney's Digging

2013-09-02T15:30:00.000+08:00

Rest in Peace Seamus Heaney: August 30th 2013

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound

When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:

My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds

Bends low, comes up twenty years away

Stooping in rhythm through potato drills

Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft

Against the inside knee was levered firmly.

He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep

To scatter new potatoes that we picked,

Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.

Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day

Than any other man on Toner’s bog.

Once I carried him milk in a bottle

Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up

To drink it, then fell to right away

Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods

Over his shoulder, going down and down

For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap

Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge

Through living roots awaken in my head.

But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests.

I’ll dig with it.

Caught on Cam: Merdeka Readings @ Seksan

2013-09-02T12:30:00.000+08:00

It was a lovely Sunday afternoon, that's for sure!

Jom!: August Readings@Seksan

2013-08-30T15:56:00.000+08:00

Click on Poster to Access the FB Link

Hello beautiful people!

Here's an option if you are:

thinking of celebrating Merdeka a little bit different from before
planning to celebrate a literary Merdeka
wanting to hang out and check out one of the many poetry gigs in Kuala Lumpur
searching for copies of Rhymes for Mending Hearts ;)
feeling like a hug from yours truly.

I will be performing old and new poems at Seksan. This will be my 4th time performing there and Readings and I go way back. It was the scene of my first Slam, my first Causeway Slam, my first proper reading event, my first performance as part of the Poetry Underground collective and now, my first proper reading as a published poet. Don't mind the use of proper. I am just being improperly cheeky.

Can't wait to see you!

Faved!: Marvin Bell's Mars Being Red

2013-08-26T11:37:00.001+08:00

Being red is the color of a white sun where it lingers

on an arm. Color of time lost in sparks, of space lost

inside dance. Red of walks by the railroad in the flush

of youth, while our steps released the squeaks

of shoots reaching for the light. Scarlet of sin, crimson

of fresh blood, ruby and garnet of the jewel bed,

early sunshine, vestiges of the late sun as it turns

green and disappears. Be calm. Do not give in

to the rabid red throat of age. In a red world, imprint

the valentine and blush of romance for the dark.

It has come. You will not be this quick-to-redden

forever. You will be green again, again and again.

Jom!: Numinous Edisi Raya / Raya Edition

2013-08-23T22:38:00.000+08:00

Click to check out the FB event page

Hello beautiful people!

You are all invited to Numinous' 8th installment of all things passionate. This time, we're soaking ourselves in the Raya spirit so everything goes i.e. love, forgiveness, a newfound love for Raya tunes, blinged up baju Raya and there's even bunga api to spark up after the event ends! Yes, I am all for it. I am thinking of donning my baju kurung raya some more!

For this Numinous, ten acts will be featured and I am super excited about this lot!

Illya Sumanto: My spoken word sista will be bringing her luminosity to stage.
Ida Johan: This newbie is brilliant with her words. Just wait and see.
Mooza Mohd: This word-goddess disappeared for awhile and returned with a BANG.
Zain Lodhia: Chicago-based musician who happened to be in KL at the perfect time to be Numified.
Zhi Wei: Introduced by a mutual friend, prepared to be blown away by this soulful crooner.
Jerome Kugan: I cannot wait to share this super talented man's urban cool electro-music set.
The Fridays: They are too cool for school. This band is hot.
Alvin Raj: Rep #1 from RTB's #TeamHipHop, he's an all round talent with a passion for music.
Ezra Soon: Rep #2 from RTB's #TeamHipHop, this beat-boxer will bring the house down.
Dafrosty: Rep #3 from RTB's #TeamHipHop, this rapper is smooth and brings a mean flow of words.

The founders of Raising the Bar, Jin Heezy and Al Caponey, will be there to support their #TeamHipHop as well. They might just take a stage, if you're lucky :D

So what are you waiting for? Jom! Join us tomorrow night, 8 pm, at Merdekarya!

Love & Light!

Jom!: Raising The Bar & Numinous Present Poetry Jam

2013-08-17T16:40:00.000+08:00

Click Image to Access Details on FB

Hello beautiful people!

It started pretty simple. Jin Heezy, the man behind Raising the Bar, asked me before Raya if Numinous wants to collaborate together on a spoken word-centric event. Knowing myself a little bit too well, I couldn't say no to anything that'll promote our local spoken word poetry. It's already a well known relationship anyway i.e. poetry and hip hop.

So yes, that's all it took. Raising the Bar has been very kind to handle all the technical needs, promotion and publicity. I have confirmed 5 established spoken word poets who will be representing spoken word on the night of the event. Raising the Bar has also brought forward heavyweights hip hoppers onto the stage. Check it out:

As you can see, from the names performing tomorrow night, It's gonna be EPIC. A number of sites has already given a good word about the event:

LIPSTICK.COM : Click & Go
THE BEE : Click & Go
TIMEOUT KL : Click & Go
HYPE : Click & Go

So, whatchu waiting for? Join us at The Bee, Publika from 9 pm onwards!

Jom!: Poet's Passport's SOUL FOOD - Eat Your Heart Out!

2013-08-16T14:27:00.001+08:00

Hello beautiful people!!

Free your calendar tonight! 8pm onwards! On a date? Bring him/her to the gig! Poet's Passport is finally in KL! Here is the lowdown on the spoken word gig:

Finally folks - POET'S PASSPORT is in KL.

Good things come in pairs - not just commemorating Poet's Passport's first session in KL, we'll also be *sort of* soft-launching MINUT INIT's new swanky renovated gallery/studio!

Please spread the word around & bring your friends along!

The theme this time is SOUL FOOD with the headline "Eat Your Heart Out!", so come on over with stories of spiritual nourishment and soul searching.

You can either sign up here or sign up during the event!

Looking forward to seeing you all!

Facebook link: https://www.facebook.com/events/132677903608494/

Caught on Cam: A Smorgasbord of Spoken Word Poetry

2013-08-14T18:57:00.002+08:00

It takes a lot of discipline to update one's blog religiously. Clearly, I do not have this discipline. Still, it'll be a shame not to document all the pretty HUGE things that have happened in the past, let me see, 3 months?

Rhymes for Mending Hearts (click here to buy!)

Senyum lebar was the only thing to do that day

It took me 10 years and a bucketful of guts to agree to this. I am glad I did. Rhymes for Mending Hearts feels like a good start to a work in progress (points to self). It's almost cathartic, in a way. All that burden that led to the poems being written. Now I could just move on. Not that it was easy though. I wanted it to be perfect but guess that didn't happen when I myself, am far from it. I am a buffet of imperfections. Maybe that's why I write.

So my book was launched along with the books written by two talented writers i.e. Mimi Morticia and Nadhira Brundage. Their books are in Malay and selling like hot cakes. Do check them out.

L-R: Mimi, Me and Nadhira, with our posters behind us

Was all prepared to perform for the audience during the launch but unfortunately, due to some miscommunication between publisher and emcee, that didn't happen. Good thing I managed to read Before the Funeral during the interview. Someone told me they loved the reading. There you go, the magic of spoken word.

We tried to bring life to the ferris wheel on my book's cover

The Cooler Lumpur Fest

It's always a grand experience to have an event celebrating the arts and The Cooler Lumpur fest managed to do that with panache. The presence of spoken word poetry made it a whole lot special. I have never had so much word being spoken on stage! It was awesome. The first event was WORD, which was a spoken word open mic. Hosted by my brotha in verse Jamal Raslan, the gig saw a long line up of poets sharing their words with the crowd. 4 hours of poetry. On a Friday night. You know what that is? Rock & Roll, baby. Rock & Roll.

That's Jamal, probably Instagramming or Tweeting for all we know ;)

Australian spoken word artist Omar Musa closed the night

The very next day, I found myself yet again in Publika and this time, it was to support my spoken word sistahs. I have always wanted to catch their multimedia collaborative show SERONOK! 2.0 and was pretty excited to catch the 2.0 version of it. It was a powerful show and the ladies proved that collaborative pieces are the way to go. All that energy, imagine: Elaine Foster, Illya Sumanto, Abby Latif and Okka on one stage. Phwoar.

Go girls!

Straight after SERONOK! 2.0, a bunch of us poets headed to Interpr8 Gallery to perform as it was the launch of an art exhibition. Thanks Sharmin for the opportunity to stretch out our poetic arms to those might have no clue what spoken word poetry is. Fellow poets Melizarani, Okka, the Singaporean trio of Victoria Lim, Deborah Emmanuel and Nabilah Husna and I did our thang and I'd like to think blew their socks off and away. Teehee.

Sistas from the other side of the Causeway

How gorgeous can this woman be?!

On Sunday, it was my turn to host and I brought my baby Numinous to the Cooler Lumpur fest. Unlike the previous gigs, this one was especially curated in the name of spoken word. The idea was simple: put the best poets on one stage, in one event. It's like a sampler of the local scene plus sprinkling of an international flavour. We had Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, Indonesia and the Philippines represented by 12 poets in all. I am pretty proud of myself. That was an illuminating evening.

The venue i.e. Paradiso was packed to the brim with people!

She Walks Like a Free Country

This one was special. 7 poets from Malaysia and Singapore performing together in a show that talks about the female experience, feminism, the nation, history, sexuality, family etc etc. It was my first time performing in Singapore and it was an eye opening experience. Singapore is not that far away from us and yet there is a feel of maturity in their scene. Maybe maturity is a sense that there is a structure and a vision of how spoken word should be practiced in the country. The Malaysian scene, is well, still sex, drugs & everything poetic. It's raw. Put these two together and it was awesome. I had a great time working together with Elaine Foster, Melizarani, Victoria Lim, Nabilah Husna, Raksha and Jennifer Champion. Each poet has her own flavour. I've listened to some pieces that made me make sounds I didn't know I could make before. Oh yeah....

Ps: Melizarani won second place at the Singapore National Poetry Slam, which happened on the same weekend! Proud of her!

The Venue

Rehearsals

The Army of Poets! Booya!

Ahh the love! These cool peeps came all the way from KL to check out the show. I am blessed!

And.... that is about it for now. If you're itching to catch spoken word poetry, you are in luck! This weekend has a healthy dose of spoken word poetry happening in KL. Will keep you posted. Till then, love and light!

Faved!: Traci Brimhall's The Last Known Sighting of the Mapinguari

2013-08-07T12:49:00.000+08:00

Before she died, my mother told me
I'd make the monster that would kill me,
so I knew this was someone else's death
creeping into my field, butchering my cow.
I recognized its lone eye and two mouths.
Perhaps it mistook the lowing for the call
of its own kind. I didn't mind the heifer--
she'd been sick for weeks, her death a mercy--
but her calf circled, refusing to leave even
as the creature pulled out its mother's tongue,
fed one of its mouths and moaned from the other.
The intestines glowed dully in the moonlight.
The calf bawled. The disappointed mapinguari
sat, thousands of worms rising out of the split
heart it held, testing the strange night air.
I've outlived all the miracles that came for me.
My mother was wrong and not wrong,
like the calf who approached the monster
and licked the blood from its fingers.

Faved!: Meghan O'Rourke's Demeter in Paris

2013-08-06T12:30:00.000+08:00

You can only miss someone when they are present to you.

The Isle of the Dead is both dark and light.

Henry Miller told Anaïs Nin that the only real death is being dead

while alive.

The absent will only be absent when they are forgotten.

Until then, absence is a lie, an oxymoron.

Therefore it is entirely unclear what absence means, or consists of.

Sometimes I want to be famous once more, and then I think about

the paparazzi.

I value my solitude. But I fear I am dead while alive.

Forgetting is a kind of blessing: It would [ ].

To avoid living, worry about all you've forgotten.

Then worry about what you will forget.

I have lived long enough to want to do it over.

When I miss my daughter, it's as a kind of idea. Then she comes to

me unexpectedly:

in her corduroy red parka, hair sticking out,

smiling at the geese, eating her shoelaces,

pointing, crying, More!

When I saw the movie, in the dark center of winter, I thought:

The son wasn't trying to say goodbye to his dying father. He was

trying to say forever.

Alone so much, I think about the people whose stories I learn in

books.

Often I think of the grandmother of one of Picasso's lovers. Her

granddaughter

did not understand why she went so often to the graves of her

children and husband.

Just wait, her grandmother said. You will see.

No, what she said is there comes a time when, past your moment,

you live for external things: the sky, a piece of grass, a smell.

A painting, I would say. A painting where the colors are everything.

Faved!: Gerald Stern's Day of Grief

2013-08-05T12:41:00.000+08:00

I was forcing a wasp to the top of a window
where there was some sky and there were tiger lilies
outside just to love him or maybe only
simply a kiss for he was hurrying home
to fight a broom and I was trying to open
a door with one hand while the other was swinging
tomatoes, and you could even smell the corn
for corn travels by wind and there was the first
hint of cold and dark though it was nothing
compared to what would come, and someone should mark
the day, I think it was August 20th, and
that should be the day of grief for grief
begins then and the corn man starts to shiver
and crows too and dogs who hate the wind
though grief would come later and it was a relief
to know I wasn't alone, but be as it may,
since it was cold and dark I found myself singing
the brilliant love songs of my other religion.

Faved!: Philip Levine's Our Valley

2013-08-04T15:30:00.000+08:00

We don't see the ocean, not ever, but in July and August
when the worst heat seems to rise from the hard clay
of this valley, you could be walking through a fig orchard
when suddenly the wind cools and for a moment
you get a whiff of salt, and in that moment you can almost
believe something is waiting beyond the Pacheco Pass,
something massive, irrational, and so powerful even
the mountains that rise east of here have no word for it.

You probably think I'm nuts saying the mountains
have no word for ocean, but if you live here
you begin to believe they know everything.
They maintain that huge silence we think of as divine,
a silence that grows in autumn when snow falls
slowly between the pines and the wind dies
to less than a whisper and you can barely catch
your breath because you're thrilled and terrified.

You have to remember this isn't your land.
It belongs to no one, like the sea you once lived beside
and thought was yours. Remember the small boats
that bobbed out as the waves rode in, and the men
who carved a living from it only to find themselves
carved down to nothing. Now you say this is home,
so go ahead, worship the mountains as they dissolve in dust,
wait on the wind, catch a scent of salt, call it our life.

Faved!: Walt Whitman's On the Beach at Night Alone

2013-08-03T11:30:00.000+08:00

On the beach at night alone,
As the old mother sways her to and fro, singing her husky song,
As I watch the bright stars shining, I think a thought of the clef of the universes, and of the future.

A vast similitude interlocks all,
All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets
All distances of place however wide,
All distances of time, all inanimate forms,
All souls, all living bodies, though they be ever so different, or in different worlds,
All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes, the fishes, the brutes,
All nations, colors, barbarisms, civilizations, languages,
All identities that have existed, or may exist, on this globe, or any globe,
All lives and deaths, all of the past, present, future,
This vast similitude spans them, and always has spann'd,
And shall forever span them and compactly hold and enclose them.