construct
17
Poems and prose are written by Future Collective
Writers
Bayu Galang Cassius Song Jalang Mode Pohon Poetra Slamet Seorang Kalajengking
We publish strictly digitally every two months. Access all our past and current issues at theconstructdocuments.blogspot.com. Contact us at [email protected]
Designed in Jakarta
All images are properly credited to its respective owners We do not claim any form of ownership
Cover photo: Biosphere 2 Crew, unknown photographer and date
Masthead photo: Palais Stoclet by Josef Hoffmann, 1905
CONSTRUCT 2018 The views expressed in CONSTRUCT are shared by the publication as a whole.
EDITOR’S NOTE Fixed 4 FRAGMENTS OF YOU CAUGHT ME DRIVE-THRU Contents SPACERS ON A BAD DAY (AGAIN) 9 11 13 LOYALTY, TOTALITY 17 editor’s note
One cannot imagine the fragility of human life until she has caught a glimpse of Death’s fragrance.
We couldn’t shake the faintest moment when the Black Boned Angel sent a spine-tingling sensation that could condense 60 years of life into a 6-second-long flash of memory. It’s a sudden glitch in our head, a cold sweat on our pounding chest. Our body knows, even when our head said she’s got nothing to worry about.
Those greetings from Azrael came to each person in their own unique way. It cannot be replicated, nor multiplied; one could extract the pattern, but the exact moment couldn’t be reproduced. So Death, in all its might, is that friend that no one else had. Maybe he sent those greetings in your travels, when you had to hit the brakes to avoid a giant truck. Maybe he came to whisper a few words when you ate that last piece of meat. Maybe he manifested into a fatal combination of liver, lung, and heart failure when your kids have all grown up. Or maybe he came every day, creeping behind your shadows, and chipping away at your lifespan like an old paint job.
Nowadays the cold tide of Death has swept our families, friends, colleagues, neighbors, comrades, in a much more subtle and grueling signal. We see them struggle just to keep their heads quiet and their feet idle. We help them to wake up and welcome the sun each day. We sit by their side when they’ve been awake for too long. We come running when they try to tear up their veins. We try and try, and yet Death welcomes them like an old friend, or a nice warm bath.
One has to imagine that there are better days than this; the ones when our Future doesn’t seem like the inertia inside the belly of a rotting beast. When the car is on fire and there’s no driver at the wheel, would you give in to Death? Or would you rather build another Future, the one where the paving stones end at the Beach?
CN O T S
theconstructdocuments.blogspot.com contents
N T UR T S C
The death of a friend is the end of a world. This realization, metallic and serrated, lodged itself inside me when I held my childhood chum, Murni, in my arms for the last time. Warm blood gushed from his back onto my shaking body; three bullets opened up his flesh like little fish-mouths agape and choking. I was shaking from my crumbling sense of place and purpose, but also from the rough dirt road and even rougher suspension of the beat-up Toyota Kijang we were fleeing in. Ramli, an oil palm plantation worker, kept his wits about him and floored the pedal, never looking back from behind the wheel, but from the rearview mirror I glimpsed the tears on his anguished face whimpering in the moonlight. I hugged Murni from behind and kept repeating, “Lu gak boleh mati,” but he took my hand and with his last breath replied, “Udah, tenang aja, lu udah gede,” and died. In the morning I buried my best friend and unearthed my own private apocalypse.
Murni was the type of friend who’d road-trip with you with no money at all: stowing away on freight trains to feel at home among stowaway smiles, hitchhiking on trucks, offering to till fields and water crops for the chance to bunk a night in sharecroppers’ lodges—the list is improvisational. He was also the friend you’d trade terrible but honest homemade poetry with; the friend who’d bring a boombox to the BMX park equipped with goceng-priced NOFX tapes; who’d make slightly overlarge hemp bracelets for the whole gang, just for the fun of it; whose arsenal of verbs stemmed from to love and to fight. Last but not least, whenever we went on a trek or expedition Murni would volunteer as the party’s rearguard. The role appealed to his good heart, because he always wanted to protect everyone else. In the end he died as he had lived: making sure he was running behind me and soaking up the shots.
The world has since forgotten about: (1) a small school building in the middle of a Sumatran oil palm plantation; (2) the souls of plantation workers who once gathered there to fan the fires of resistance and rest in the last cradle of warmth they had left; (3) the kernel of human dignity that they fought and died for; (4) the first reports on an imminent thug-led incursion; (5) the unwitting conceit and romanticism of two men, who took it upon themselves to dismiss the reports and hold their ground in an attempt to uphold what they saw as the mantle of societal responsibility (the Leftist’s burden); (6) the school’s errand boy that I’d spoken to earlier, how he crumpled to the ground with the first shot of the night; (7) the panic and confusion as screams and souls and gunfire filled the air; (8) our escape through a back door and the final sprint to the car; (9) the sickening thud of nearby bullets and the horror that filled me when I turned around and saw my best friend fall; (10) the whiz of a bullet that barely missed my ear as I ran back to drag Murni’s limp form; (11) warm blood that flowed from Murni’s wounds onto my shaking body; (12) the dirt road and the car’s fucking suspension; (13) Ramli’s tears whimpering in the moonlight; (14) six final words; (15) the death of a friend and the end of a world; (16) the burial, the unearthing.
I wonder where Murni is now. Sometimes you cherish a person so much, you refuse to acknowledge that they are gone. Sometimes, just when you think you’ve finally put the past behind you, you wake up screaming and drenched in sweat, and your flatmates will testify that you’d been calling out for someone irretrievably lost.
FRAGMENTS OF SPACERS
I see office workers frozen by central air conditioning; a fraction of the condition of the ultimate cursed ism with a capital C
for a second I forgot that this planet is overheating
for a second I forgot that it doesn’t matter how cold or hot it is because we’re knee-deep in Kacke
I’m tired of being angry I just want to sleep and dream of a society that’s so utopian the word utopia wouldn’t do it justice
but sleep has become impossible and I’m on my phone again scrolling and scrolling until - attractive men - memes - melancholy start to become one and the same and suddenly I remember
we’re as fragile as the latest iPhone as easily drained as replaceable even if we prefer Samsung
아, 씨발…
someone once told me: pessimism breeds optimism which would be nice to believe if that person wasn’t a realist who says things just to fill the air
it’s hard to live with reality but here we are, in bed together, fighting over the duvet and my phone’s out of juice
All stopped / I guess that’s ours to blame We have lost our lives / that’s also ours to blame We have lost in the quietest compromise / I don’t know what it means anymore It’s not that we don’t want to live but it always stopped & it is always sadder than it seems —sadder than before
They know how to use our hunger against us They told us it was nothing serious But they always dream of us being dead I try to remember what it was first made me hate what I still like to call the ‘straight world’ / this divine wind that doesn’t heal but rather makes everything sicker Yes, I’m in a bad mood as well & I’m sick of it as well
I wish we could do something to help each other / But we don’t want any help / We are separated by so many tedious enemies / it makes us feel helpless
Fiction is our smile Have a seat Think it over In the long & narrow alley
If only we could whisper to each other the language needed to describe that devastation
II
Have you experienced keeping your eyes focused on something / only to see it disappear quietly? That is happening now
III page 15
I was sitting by the pavement / around McDonald’s There were lots of hungry mosquitos hovering around my damped body; & my face already reached dusk I split two different methods in reading our realities / What implies in our realities are not utopian: “The ‘straight world’ never touches anything, its victims never do anything else. None!” I thought to myself
as I walked around / feeding my mouth
with Fish Burger & coke
& my dirty hands / accustomed
to arranging great affairs
All these
while I shamelessly complained
about my stupid prostate
We are cursed by the ones who controls history and steal our time
We’re nothing but leftovers for rodents inside the mosque of justice
but they left it untouched, never really get to the bottom of it
FAQ: Who do you actually represent?
Whistlin’ the ballad of lost souls Injecting poison through our eyes and ears While our anger’s being muffled
Hello? Is the weather nice there? It’s been raining fire here for months
Goddamn you, weatherman! We demand answers, not advertisings!
Meanwhile, chants fill the air: “OUR LOVE FOR YOU IS EVERLASTING!”
They forget that nothing lasts forever. They forget that they’re also part of the problem.