construct
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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: The White Disease by Marlene Dumas, 1985.
Masthead photo: First People by Marlene Dumas, 1990
CONSTRUCT 2018 The views expressed in CONSTRUCT are shared by the publication as a whole.
NATIVE SPEAKER EDITOR’S NOTE Fixed 4 AROUND THIS THINGS Contents CAMPFIRE 9 11 13 SELF EAT A KID, (DIS-COVERY) CARPE DIEM 15 17 editor’s note
When Prometheus stole fire from High Establishment he gave us a promise of carnage, but also a reason to assemble. We feel it now, in our bones, this inheritance of loss: the carnage continued as the assembly boiled down into the plastic assembly line of surrender.
Nowadays we look to past ashes as the soothsayer approaches tea leaves, even as we are backed into a thousand corners. Unborn children too, eavesdropping from their mothers’ wombs on the strange hell outside, understand that every point is populated with heartbreak—every line has become an intersection, every corridor a cul-de-sac. Born aflame they soon realize that each defiant gasp of air is a beheading momentarily postponed.
At this critical juncture, perhaps what we secretly crave is to admit defeat in the face of so much rot. It just might be that only then, within that plot twist of revolutionary act, will we uncover the hidden whispers necessary to reforge our ties and rebloom our clasped hands. It is important now more than ever to violently trust each other with our lives: the road to perilous humility will only become steeper, while the toll gate to premeditated regret is forever displayed in HD, haloed and in vogue, ready to consume and be consumed.
Maybe the children know the answers; maybe they have always been trying to tell us. Their cries remind us that all human screams speak in the same flagless tongue of horror.
CN O T S
theconstructdocuments.blogspot.com contents
N T UR T S C
A movie reel taped behind my eyes
Force-fed on screams
Visions
Bloodied gurgles / Sledgehammered fists
Spectacles
I want to reach beyond the veil
Solid breaths on this whimpering screen
Can you teach me how to touch a ghost?
In return for your kindness
I will show you how to plant a bomb
Inside my folds of flesh / Warm blankets
Offer you a tumbling trigger
With which I will blow myself
Into a multitude of howls
Is it too sci-fi to crave
Being in a million spaces at once?
To lose myself and rejoin the rest
Is to paint a rainbow hivemind
Inside a black and white sanitarium
No hurtful senses necessary
Just a feeling shared
Around this campfire / Pass the hot drink
That we are all in this together
Things Things Horrible things they demand your time demand your answer demand your every move demand your life You wish they won’t look back at you Too bad you’re made of glass
To think that language ends at an imagined frontier is to forget what the tounge can do when it’s not wrapped in a flag I am a native speaker don’t need dictionaries to bear meaning that can be understood by = to speak of equality is to say less and act more that is to say: walk the talk or better yet just walk
whose language is a mixture of experience and dreams coloured by dialects of loss, failure, hope, determination… pain and wonder
a heart that wants to listen to others like itself translation is happening as we speak between nods and glances = mutual acknowledgement
all the way to the boundless
possibilities of human interaction
of kisses and innocent wishes
of a brand new day
and another way of living as
native speakers of our only world.
We know within ourselves that we are better than we think we are but why do we keep looking for answers? is it because we don’t want to think ourselves as naïve human beings?
Hesitation hurts
Pop songs on the radio, they know that we should love ourselves Advertising know, we should own things that will eventually end up owning us Consume forget about the debts for now
we don’t need to be represented
by candy-coated lies with full on make-ups
false idols will eventually
jump off a cliff
To whom it may confuck, What of the dead children? Six years and twenty-eight lives Are nil in abandoned coal mine pits The Daily Amnion—drowned they float Bouquet of balloons strung to lake Stomachs black / cyanide gravelives Beyond Friday se(r)m_n / I swallow Your power, my candy fucking malls and Arson is my daydream.
Feed on your own medi-sin won’t you Breathe the spittle of sodden kites Kiss the pus of living room photoframes? You won’t. Corporate infanticide is News/nothing, but, the, children, Have bloated in abandoned Smiling deflated CEO testicles / you die Gurgling, blasphemed, but rich so hey: Sleep, rest in lights angels, and you, I will murder you too.