agridocea - Tumblr blog

[agridocea]

The Smiths - The Queen is Dead (1986)

by Arthur Viera

[agridocea]

I used to dream about parallel universes since I was fourteen.

On how in another life, there’s another version of us, hanging around down the city hall or having a picnic date with those loud musics we hated.

In another life, under some ancient magic, my soul wouldn’t have to wait any longer for your smile to slide through my door each and every morning on the weekends. and they’re real,

to find comfort solely in your gaze are real.

Though, who am i kidding?

Recall the days when we used to dream on watching the night sky curling up to one another, as we sit on the back of your car — spitting jokes you still now fool around in.

Yet all we did was fight,

like they would bent our words, fooling around in the forest with thorns and knives.

And all we did was fight, on everytime I mistaken you for only trying to win my sight.

I recall the way the universe seemed to marvel the lights in your eyes, God, oh to discover the alleyways of my whole nother universe crumpled in the way your heart beats.

But here we are now again,

and tonight your voice is playing in my head, and no matter how many times I screamed on wanting it to stop,

I know I’d rather die the second it does.

We come alive at night, at places that we won’t talk. but in the space of a few months,

how did we get so cold?

And again, I look above and then there’s the red city street lights, cars running with their bunking drivers, or even birds breaking silence through its swift — there are our dreams made in heaven. Although here we really are, on a bridge of now and then.

I try and i try,

‘forget me’ you said,

‘forget me’ you screamed.

So close to heaven you were raised, up and down so beautifully — for your eyes and dreams wanderlust stays.

And yet much of a fool i was,

to keep on expecting so much from you.

But, until now, we do carry the weight wearily, don’t we?

Then I guess somewhere, there is a version of me that gets to see you awake in mornings, and maybe thats more than enough.

[agridocea]

Muse of Their Egos

I have built my soul a gracious winsome castle since he was gone.

Who am i to kid? My soul and my aching heart, a forsaken corpse they forgot to bury.

To run away from the mistakes you’ve drawn with your Mother’s tounge, what a luxury.

I, crying in Hamamatsu, or wherever I am?

I cried to be so much more than I am.

So much more than I am.

I didn’t believe in them, I never did, nor the words they spit out as they wanted to crown me much with my pride, I’ll take it to the grave.

Again, and again;

tears went down my pale skin as i remembered how he held my mind up as he traced my soul all the way to my feet.

Like his laughter, it is tender, and fierce, and ravishing — then it was only a second until I was filled by the universe by just looking at him.

But then up to a flashing second, I recalled the day you were gone — the day they found me drowning again. Riot gear at the ready, I know, and I know how they tried to make me something I’m not.

Claw to me, run to me, I am grieved with my pride and joy of my name — when will you ever let me break out of my grave?

[agridocea]

A little unfolding regarding a story that has swiped my life to it’s biggest downfalls,

and now, luckily, upstreams as well.

This is a story about hatred, abhorrence, love, and even so, abuse.

It has been more than a year. And I, I am not there. I never was.

Like sunlight on ripened apples, uplifting the rush on its life-end.

But I have come to learn, that that is life. And then, I started to realize that once someone is broken in ways, they will be scarred with shattering pieces they can’t ever fix.

I remembered nights when we were stuck in the car, and I would just stare out the window blocking you out. Unlike the movies, it’s funny how in this so called reality, people could be made to hold shut a loud gunshot. Other nights, I remembered how shutting my eyes would quiet my hopes and dreams. Smothered with your hugs so tight, I still would rather be gasping to death.

And that is why, I am not there. I never was.

My wings were worn down, my tounge was caged upon my skirt, my weightened past were shouldered by the weak in my knees, for I have scarred in a way you could not see.

Of nights gripped in your arms, I’d wonder upon how my life could be three years from now. And other nights, in your darkened parking lot, I’d wonder if I’ll ever make it that far.

A threshing sledge and heroine in pure disguise.

Shut in my basement where it’s dark and safe, as I watch you drugging up beers at 5am — and of I, wishing a slip through my old body, so that I will not have to turn my mirrors around anymore. Of sequences of reasons to be guessed, was it the way your hits and rocks felt like an old kiss of someone else I used to know so long?

Anywho, what shall I find when I return, right? I guess I’m afraid of change — pulling me back every morning to my mattress by each of my attempts to bring myself back to reality. See how I fall and stumble? My archer and my soul, they remember everything. I see everything — though was all I ever was, was just a child given this sin?

I remembered crashing my car to yours as a bid to my farewell, as neither you or the world will see a sight of me no more. Who was I trying to kid —

how shall one get through the days when every night would feel like war?

And again, the world knows, that to you, it was heaven.

[agridocea]

Here’s a letter, to someone who’s able to grasp my thoughts on all the kindness upon this world.

Here’s a letter now, to someone who has led me to the exact breath, the lectern I am now. For better or worse,

‘Be not burdened with times of sorrow,

they say there is reason and time will soon heal.

You must see how this shall be you, journey yourself to nights with plans. Vision yourself in every big houses you see in the city, vision yourself in deers and lions roaring, for you shall know sorrow as another thing you could easily pass by the next second you wake up.’

Like a shadow of a friend,

your memory lives on.

In all of us who cherished you, I recall how my heart stopped more along the lines picturing the second a golden heart stopped beating.

Crushed and sore, or was it the feeling of doing no more?

In home where it’s lonely today, a pause in what’s to be like you told me— ‘claim for high, for then you’ll find an everlasting peace.’

I was 12, the beginning of my decade.

I remember how I complained if you were to drive early mornings after the blunt nights, how you uttered that my voice was too loud singing records in the car on the way to school or the way you fell asleep before finishing the story of mouses and deers ever again. Your friends would come, spill me with satires you had and that story of the old bike you broke whilst singing in the suburbs for coins.

And still, still I hung my hopes towards you— who are all the heaven I have ever gazed at. Still I hung towards you, as you placed your hand on my left shoulder as you told me to never lose sight for humility, as you told me the one and only thing that is keeping me to wake up in mornings until this second. As you told me the one and only thing that keeps me breathing until this second.

As you told me the one and only thing that fuels me hope to live.

The mirrors are still dizzy with your presence, still I recall. Still I recall.

Had I known better, had I not given up trying to stitch hopes in your head, you’d still be here.

And I am here, wandering as light as cloud, trying to stitch hopes that are far too broken.

‘Before you know how shall the world matter to you,

you must lose things,

feel your body aching alone and every heartbeat of yours on the way home.

Lose everything,

that’s the only way to life.’

Stop all the clocks beating, stop all the tablets knocking up, stop the tube rushing in blood to your veins, silence the piano, the football games, the backshed movies— and will me to the second you said you had your faith in me.

Will me to the second I had not realized for nothing now could come to any good.

Let them circle, let them circle without hanging sights on any beat they could ever hear from your chest.

Your life, love and labour, a power of a time beings. And I thank you for giving me hope.

So, next time, pour away the resemblances, sweep away the good,

for you must lose everything,

as that’s the only way to life.

[agridocea]

Let the bus take me in circles downtown.

Dare disturb my universe!

Give me the rain and the sky so huge I’d treat it as a blanket prisoning me around. Give me the person I’d thought I’d be, tell me how I will then throw her out of my rib cage.

It has been half a year since the second I touched the pen; I don’t write anymore. In the darkness I persist, searching for words to articulate. They say healing comes in waves, which by today could hit rocks and shores. The sun now makes me feel like I’m forced as bugbears or a piece of stone fruit. Or the hand of a stranger passing by behind me in the elevator, how I wished for any hand. I can’t blame anyone for not breeding on the same soil, hence the mirror is the bowl for my trigger finger.

I am scared, I am thrived, what will happen this time? I don’t exist today. Not this second, not this time.

9 dec 2020 - zalfa, raisa

[agridocea]

‘zum Guten oder zum Schlechten, du wirst es immer sein. und ich hoffe es wird immer so sein.’

It’s good that you managed to crawl out.

You weren’t a crime, though the aching distance erodes still on the back of my throat.

Had we choose not to go separately, in such different ways the sun shall wasp out, I am sure we’d built arches of sticks and stones.

Yet, I still sit beside the window.

Still I sit beside the window.

But no, I despise staring at a broken reflection of myself, though too much of your sight can see right through me to this second. My lonesome and my muse, my 4ams and my showers at 7, my candle and my tape.

And I desire to at times, applaud myself for keeping up promises to dear you still— I manage.

The heartchild of my writings in the front seat of your car, though darling— my soul is young, wrecked, beaten like a fleshed-up mouth.

As if love was not as tragic as it seems, as if I never would lie wondering if I even still know the name of love.

In the hours I whisper for you to come back. Tucked between my notes unread, I whisper still for you to come back.

Or is it how we barely talk, because you know as well that when we do, with the bite of the serpent’s tongue we’d go by a distorted universe made by the language only we know.

Hence, how is it possible for me to decide whether it is your mind or your tongue, an indulgence disguised as my drug for sanity?

28.11.20 rz

[agridocea]

ingin rasanya menggambar peta.

menarik garis dari tepi keningmu— jatuh, meluruh menuju yang tak pasti.

pandangku, dan kau, diukir pena yang mengarah terlalu timur.

tak tahukah kau tentang sang rapal angin?

berpegang pada helaan nafas yang bernyali tuk memikul seabad lagi, aku tersesat.

visiku pun berdarah merah kental, merenggut corak pelangi dari sore yang berpuasa akan merah.

sampai mendung kali ini tak punya mimpi, tak tahukah ia pundak ini bak semesta luar dan dalam?

Jakarta yang tak pernah segan memayungi gema hentakkan telapak kaki pria paruh baya sewaktu fajar saja larut dalam kasat senja— gambaran lukisan dirimu dalam benakku.

ya, kasat senja— potret dirimu dalam benakku.

tersesat! raga menari buta bersandang kemeja kusut bercorak,

tak lagi ku melihat tenang.

sayang,

langkah kaki begitu bising,

hingga pulang menjadi asing. [23:11 - perihal pulang dan perih]

[agridocea]

“But, the thing is,..”

I expected this.

The ghost of your touch, stumbling upon my knees. And I expected this. Your lips, a dull ache in my ribs, a crack docky joke you always offer, one that could tighten my lungs so my breaths became shorter—

or the day you called me crazy for as if it doesn't take any strength to pull my broken pieces from your arms and mold myself into the soul I was before you came.

Awoken without a start, each day, I smile through fear at the unknown known on the mirror— my riot & the self. Years and years I tried, I tried, I tried.

Skinning my bones through ever not letting myself to face the fact that all we’ll ever be is an incomplete sentence. I tried, and I tried. You’ve tucked your heart under your red plaid shirts I used to mock around lavishly, and that was something you dropped under and never bothered to take it back.

And I’ll still be here, I will always be here.

I remember the faith I wrote in a book you carved for us, I remember all the unspoken glances I used to write there without you knowing. Living under the shadows you sketched as castle for us to breathe in. Or was it just the way you kissed me so profoundly— I had forgotten that what I needed to breathe was air?

And I’ll still be here holding on to the crumbling parts of the bricks we used to carry together, in hopes that one day, we can rebuild our states. But,

the cab has pulled over. Beneath the stormy skies and the heavy rain, God knows what was banging louder. I tried and I tried, yet I am always the one running out of breath trying to chase piles of my eternity in seconds you said we were nothing.

3 may 2020 rz

[agridocea]

[agridocea]

I woke up, with a dangling slide on my throat, soaring it up like poured lemon juice. I woke up to the sound of flashing lights in my head, just by the thought of somebody coming up on my doorknob. The sound of the knock echoes through my bones, unraveling my skin without a force.

The air rattled my skull.

Fear had shaken my vision.

And that’s the moment I realized,

I thought I have long forgot about you.

Hi, so long?

I was not even sure that was what I expected to keep me company, yet God knows how it has taken control over my whole. Somehow, it was like folding my fears, and tucking my shame into a box. They were gone. And you, were there, for the first time, in a change of a season, a soothing hollow sky that reflects as a smile.

So long,

so long.

You came up today.

And I, per usual, went crazy on the glimpses of us, when we used to walk everywhere because your sister needed your car— and how you were the only person that could create heaven out of torment.

Still I wonder.

A year has gone on I, trying to fabricate love and humanity through people passing, MRT rides, plastered posters underneath bridges downtown.

The lights on the freeway on the way home that doesn’t take me home to you, the dusty books you gave me that night, and the taste of your lips hovering on mine started to disappear from my memory. Your face would probably soon follow.

And to this second, it was nothing. You came up to my dreams. And all and all was nothing.

It was the pressure of driving myself to remove your noise from every known possible matter which would result in us, and that day I left you too soon.

Insane, holistically insane I was.

Thoughts I tried to grow from the tiles scattering across, and some nights I pretend my aching soul would finally grow a different face, that I’ll name a bus stop, a new city which name I can’t spell, lecture hall.

And that was the moment I realized,

I have been skinning my bones while running from you.

Days I went wondering on where do I go from here if I have lost all of the maps that were supposed to bring me back to you? I remember how our sun sank behind Jakarta before we could truly love again, but I guess the sunsets suddenly return to remind us why we embarked on that impossible journey of us,

loving.

// Day 12 of April, 2020 | RZ //

[agridocea]

[agridocea]

dusk lays heavy anteriorly to my door knob. on the floor are madness— transparently pouring through the painting you gave me, call me mid-february, the tenderest parts of myself.

can we run out of here for a while?

can we run out of here for a while, just like how it used to be?

the teardrops from my eyelids freefall just like we did last year. until the phone lines run out of static, until our next summer has long be gone. mother, my soul, my riot, my archer, i am floating face-down in the ocean.

with now being the first time, with you not being here to hand me your hand.

i looked at the mirror.

and the next thing i saw was the world going down like a melted roman candle.

here is the knife, here are the darkest secrets, here goes the loudest songs I heard on the background while you pushed me out, here lies tossed cigarettes I hid, here lists all the places inside me where it will hurt the most.

tell me which sin is mine! tell me which sin is mine!

tell me which sin are all mine.

is it me or the sickness? the sickness or me? i am eating up my own soul, the roadkill of my mind— it burns and it always burns, my radiata and femoral playing rubrix and twisting minds. both our souls lying on the shower floor before my holy december slits your wrist, as if we are all existing just barely within ourselves.

then i blamed you, look who i darely blame! my mind and body, two syllables away from your shuttered lips and the holy trinity. starved as i am, as i looked back again at the mirror,

“honey, i am sorry you are housed in such soul”

2:26 AM — raisa zalfa • 8 mar 2020

[agridocea]

[agridocea]

bicara hidup, bicara makna. esok malam, sampaikanlah kepada sosok bayangan di kaca,

“terima kasih telah bertahan”.

perlahan, tarik balik ulurmu. susunlah ulang anak-anak tangga yang dapat membuatmu kembali merunduk. perihal menyusun serta menaikki anak tangga tanpa melihat ke arah belakang, memangnya,

di atas ada apa?

serta,

jika memang benar ada, apa benar itu yang kau mau?

agar tak ada andai yang menghasut lebamnya belenggu di pundak, agar tak ada desahan menyesal, serta agar tak ada jiwa yang terburu terlepas dari pelukan akibat hasrat berlari sendirimu terlalu kencang.

di marak dari arti kehidupan, bergelimanglah spekulativitas suara ataupun ekspresi ideologis setiap seniman di bumi. entah tergemakan oleh intrinsik, rasa, karsa, talenta atau hasrat yang dimiliki, yang diaktualisaikan kedalam ragam klausa yang berbeda.

maka dari itu, perlahan, tengoklah ke belakang. tak menentu saat kau di atas, kau tak akan jatuh.

tak menentu saat kau pergi, kau tak akan merindu akan rumah.

tak menentu saat kau agung, kau tak bisa kembali runtuh.

sekali lagi, tengoklah ke belakang.

seperti yang kau sering dengar di radio saat berangkat memikul ilmu di Depok,

cepat tapi sendiri, untuk apa?

|| tamparan demokrat 14/2/20

[agridocea]

Lama delapan belas tahun saya menapak tawa maupun tangis di muka sang Ibu Pertiwi, rasa demi rasa saya belum memiliki kesempatan untuk mengucap terima kasih terhadap segala.

Semesta telah mempersilaku mengecup bahagia dengan menghadirkanmu untuk menaungi segala pilu dan biruku.

Bagaimana tak heran? Terhempas semua duka, pernah ada sosok manusia yang dapat menyuguhkan semesta kepadaku dengan hanya melalui konversasi pukul tiga pagi.

Terhempas semua duka, pernah ada malam-malam indah yang berseri di atas flyover Antasari ditemani The Walters.

Terhempas semua duka, pernah ada sosok orang yang sempat saya gadang-gadangkan menjadi nomor satu di hidup saya.

Dan terhempas semua duka, pernah ada pilu yang mereka-reka pula hingga terasa sia-sia segala hempasan akan duka yang saya pernah lalui.

Lika-liku jalanan menuju puncak tuju, kapan pula jalan itu dikenal ramah?

Saya pun telah menampar wajah saya berkali-kali untuk memastikan bahwa ini bukan khayalan. Saya pun telah merombak rasa berkali-kali untuk memupuk kembali ego dalam-dalam untuk memastikan bahwa yang nyata hanya asa.

Sekiranya hidup hanya untuk diri sendiri, mungkin saja Hawa tak akan diciptakan untuk menemani Adam.

Sialan, saya memang tidak sedang berkhayal. Kita semua pula tahu, mereda api yang membara tak pernah semudah itu.

Ketika pedih, memang begitu pedih rasanya. Sama pedihnya saat terakhir kali ia mengata bahwa saya dan Nya telah usai. Setengah dasawarsa, begitu saja? Saya pikir, sial! Tak pula berkhayal.

Dan nyatanya, tak juga mengapa.

Lagipula, lika-liku jalanan menuju puncak tuju, kapan pula jalan itu dikenal ramah?

3:38 am || 8 Februari 2020 || Raisa Zalfa

[agridocea]

buku hitam, cumbuan ronanya anggur, pengamen jalanan.

pipet gondok, halogenasi, perahu asal Seychelles.

monumen Chastelein, kretek Kerbau Mas, desas-desus Aufbau.

perihal senyumannya yang menggantung bagai elokasi Sphinx dan muara laut merah berkarang, tetap saja.

pasar, para dewi dari kahyangan, pepatah suci Bunda Maria.

apa kabar?

raga telah pergi.

merenggut wiski dari naungan jamrud khatulistiwa adalah aku, sang hamba dunia.

sayang, diri ini menggantungkan aromamu di secarik kertas; layaknya bualan sigaret yang menggantikan indahnya Antasari pekan lalu.

sayang pula, ibukota terlanjur terpahat pada besitan corak di keningmu ketika kau menjadi saksi pertama kebisuan ini.

sembari ditelannya mentari Maghrib,

sembari mendayung lagi layaknya aerosol.

keji, semesta berpayung keji.

bak dibengkalai pelancong-pelancong antara barat dan timur,

atau asa-isu arwahku yang digiring kesana kemari; meninggalkan haru yang entah linglung memikirkan tempat lain untuk merebahkan keringat.

lantas, dari sekian banyak aksara yang sempat diutarakan,

masih saja ada satu yang kian bergelimang, menggenang.

apa kabar, Angkasa?

6/3/19 || koleksi penggalan Fajar tahun lalu