Ogipung: the frog that writes

yep.worklife is affecting my mind.cut my brain and it’ll look like some rorschach monster.it’s taking too much memory space,i’m running out of built-in RAM.i lost my writing mood,i lost my chatting mood,i even lost my calling-boyfriend-mood.

Pak,
permisi Pak,
permisi tanya Pak,
kalau masih ada
kebaikan setitik saja di hati Bapak
mengapa hanya berdiri
menonton di samping

Pak,
maaf Pak,
minta waktu sedikit Pak,
boleh kan,
toh bukan uang yang saya minta
saya hanya minta waktu
ya, Pak

Pak,
nanya nih Pak,
kenapa sih Pak,
baju gembel itu cuma satu,
kotor pula,
tapi masih Bapak ludahi?
Mentang-mentang ya, Pak
mentang-mentang baju Bapak berminyak wangi
(tempelan dari PKS yang baru Bapak kunjungi)

Pak,
nanya lagi Pak,
Bapak ingat gak
bayar pajak Pak,
jangan cuma porotin orang aja Pak,
ada budi ada balas,
nanti gantian Bapak yang memelas
seperti orang yang Bapak peras

Pak,
Pak,
tunggu Pak,
jangan pergi dulu,
jangan tutup kuping dulu Pak,
aku bukan cuma suara,
aku ini nyata
kalau saja Bapak mau meluangkan
seiris hati untuk mendengarkan
aku,
suara nuranimu

This is a prose I’ve written quite some time ago but haven’t had the time to finish. Hoping someday to perfect it….. but in the meantime, gotta put the ‘inner conscience’ out for public consumption.

I believe that people are inherently good
I believe that freedom is meant for everybody
I believe that no one should be killing anyone else
I believe that joy will come after suffering
I believe that one day the world will be at peace
I believe that people are born with the capacity to love

And I believe that if I keep saying ‘I believe’,
it will one day come true

What should I do when people ask me “What should I do?”

Can’t tell you what to do because I don’t want to take the responsibility of your life. I can only let you pour all grudges and tears and despair out on me, and maybe make you see the situation clearly. But please don’t ask me to dictate you how to live your life.

Just out of curiosity, I looked up Pulitzer Prize winners for the year 1982, my birth year. Surprisingly, the nominated list for fiction includes Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson, which I got interested in recently. The winner was John Updike’s Rabbit Is Rich (I’ve seen the Rabbit series before but they just didn’t get me, somehow). Poetry winner: The Collected Poems of Sylvia Plath, published posthumously. I’ve always thought of her as a bleak character, sinister and brooding–I can never be sure that her works were pure genius instead of the end-product of some twisted thinking.

T o answer Tashia (in case she remembers to check my blog instead of waiting for my reply email): yes, I’m STILL alive. When are you visiting?