Kemang Afternoon Blues - Poem by Sukasah Syahdan

1/
Had it not been for the traffic jam
You'd have thought being elsewhere
Most the niceties seemed so foreign
Speaking a tongue so unfamiliar

2/
The bookstore you were in
saw a sea of printed words
of books beyond reach
So beautiful they were doomed

3/
Even a minute you were denied
A meeting with the busy manager
Who had sent you over the phone
No help in sight; you'd better go home

4/
Clinks of glasses
Suffocating smokes
Chuckling women and men
dressed to kill in fashionable lifestyle
This café where you got stranded
Found you wondering what went wrong

5/
A man my age plugging his notebook
Deciding to trot down the globe
Without an exchange of words
He vanished to another world

6/
The soul you could relate to
Was the one serving the coffee
The bill that she later gave you
still remembered your poetry

7/
Poems jumping out of your heart
scurried down the busy roads outside
down the antique shops up to galleries
Come back! Poetry unallowed here.

8/
In the corner of an inner alley
Wartegs* stood solemnly
Waiting for the regulars:
Hungry waiters and secretaries

9/
In the mountains of garbage
In the clogged gutters
And the spits of taxi drivers
our future was in sight

10/
"Sorry man, no mosque around
But if you want, over there:
Quite some sweats away
Mind telling Him to wait?
We're too busy down here."

(Kemang, April-May 2006)