There would not be a few who could remember that elderly woman
Squatted at the door of her house, reciting the litany of evils
That was coming to the village, it was poetry, it was tradition, no one
Rebukes it yet no one shuts the window view to the glowing thrills
Of the progressive life, the many indestructible objects of our desires.

So we took the crone’s litany and we made art, we took photos of our
Selves making art, and we invented a lavish carnival we called Culture,
Conference, Festival, where our symposium papers are the sites of power
Where we pierced pins into the voodoo dolls of our ills and the puncture
Wounds can change the world, we believed, we aestheticize, we become.

Fatima Lasay, San Roque
July 16, 2018, Monday

I am hunted and there is time to write a poem about it, here in the refuge
Of a forest thick with the calls of birds telling me there are too many of my
Enemies and too few of my kind still alive; might I be saved by the deluge
In the distance or the gun in my hand? For my legs are tired and they sigh
With the sway of bamboo in the wind, and the lights are hurting my eyes.

So I stop and between drawing my breaths and the bullets that pierce them
I think of the sea gypsy who sold me the faux pearls that decorate my ears
Whose name was Jilby, who was born and who died on a boat in the open
Sea, who was hunted for twenty-nine years in between, whose hopes and fears
Fall into darkness as I kill as many of our enemies as there are days that remain.

Fatima Lasay
San July 15, 2018, Sunday

The café was where he saw her again, the place familiar to them both
a place expected but unwished, for only a matter of time to be stricken
of the rigor mortis of his arteries, he wondered did she not, did she see
did she ever but he will never really know until the blood starts flowing
once more, and he walked home as if his feet touched glowing coals
and as the sweat gathered between his breasts, swelled and trickled
to his navel, he wondered, was it real, was it not, was it ever going
to come true in the light of day, how can an apparition drive him mad!

Like darkness cast by trees in the forest, shadows touch but the fine
branches of foliage carefully keep that small but discernible distance in
between, they will not touch, not beneath the sky, as he never touched
the skin of a woman who could strike him down, he lay in bed, got up,
touched the keys of the glowing machine, the only anima that kept him
and he lay in bed, got up again, looked out the window and wondered
should he tell her, he wondered, about her and the glow of her skin
he wondered, and at the café she also wondered, is it macchiato day?

Fatima Lasay, San Roque
Thursday, December 22, 2016

His house was a hovel, a permanent reservoir of the scent of
cheap wine and wild berries chewed, the seeds spat on the floor
with the butts and foils of cigarettes, the fire outside a permanent
encampment of fish, game and some time hock from the market
when there is money to buy, otherwise, there is enough in the
woods to gather for a meal, a clay pot seals a hoard of fermenting
fruits, and in the evenings he is never cold, there is always room

This inheritance from a spinster aunt, she was a seamstress from
the first Chinese encampment in Kuala Lumpur, the third floor of
some British architecture, some fellow rumoured to have been
her lover, it is a small space but it is enough for a spinster and her
lover, enough for her solitary niece and her derelict muse from
the woods, from whom she decorated the bequest with the dried
pods of mahogany, crickets woven from coconut leaves, and such

She kept everything he brought her, and over the years curated
a diorama of his hovel in the woods in her colonial bequest, they
are witness to their laughter and chatter, the touch of his fingers
upon the lobes of her ears and her sighs and tears when he goes
and she is alone, perhaps cursed by the spirit of her spinster aunt
until the very last few years at the verge of heaven when their hairs
are as grey as their lips, he falls somewhere in between, and dies

Fatima Lasay, San Roque
Tuesday, December 20, 2016

There is a woman currently in psychiatric ward number nineteen hun
dead and famished is her heart, her prostituted heart, the cardiac ar
rangement that take place between patron and prostitute, that trans
vestite in her mind, the sins she should never be guilty of, endless mir
age of miracles and the many years back upon which she gazed

I tell you –

A hundred cardiac arrests will not transgress the mirror of the schizo

She is a friend from the bitter and grey winters of northern Asia, ambi
tious and determined to survive, born with a delicate meticulous mind
less wary of the realities that imprison the majority of humanity’s gen
eulogising the philosophers mostly Germans yet suspicious of intelle
gentians that heal misinterpretations unbearable to the gazer

It seems –

Ambivalence comes from excessive mindreading without the generosity of intellection

But I love her and her grande horizontale mind despite the petty quag
miration between us numerous misinterpretations of poems written with
holding kindness between gritting teeth, is kindness worth its weight in
ingots that we tenaciously cling to it like middle-class yuppies profess
tering in their goods and chattels?

Rise from the quagmire within, my golden, my Fescennine.

Fatima Lasay, San Roque
Tuesday, December 20, 2016

The winter breeze numbed his hunger but not the bullets
That lined the pocket hidden deep on his side all metal
Bearing bombs cradled in a peaceful slumber like pullets
Waiting for the egg to fall the cock to call the cum cumall
The opportunity to hatch !bam! in the head of the quarry
And to flee with empty pockets but a bird in the hand
That’s worth two corpses in the neon bush they queerily
Dance on and drink on as if the music don’t die, the band
Played in the evening news and the next morning papers
First the dance, second the wake and third the vespers.

Reed thin man shopping for ammo, sitting amongst friends
Of his victims, picking flowers to lay at the doorsteps
Where he had walked in and out of for just a few seconds
Of carnage and carnival, like the president’s speech preps
For bombing at your daughter’s wedding, quite nonchalant
Or perhaps motivational, coaxing applause from the public
Each time a drone hits a target in the desert, such scant
Regard for life traverses a spectrum of morality that which
Makes this corpse uglier than the other, the hitman’s pocket
Is deep with bullets cast in the many names of no regret.

Fatima Lasay, San Roque
Tuesday, June 28, 2016

The coconut trunk I left for dead has hollowed itself to
The rhythm of white ants, leaving a shell of pale earth
Mimicking the mud on swine as the sun beckons who
Loves me after the rain with a bowl of mais to the heath
We guzzle our morning meal then play rooting searching
Turning over the vegetation until we are tired, the ground
Breathes and our breasts heave of excitement, tickling
Our bellies with scrubs, there is a dark fellow the sound
Of his voice scrapes the skin on my arms because he has
A knife I fear him for you are sleeping when he will pass.

But there is comfort for when he comes you don’t know
And I’ll be away thinking of your mahogany fur and coppery
Taint when your blood is drawn, your tongue wet and cold
As the snouts of pigs wrinkling, patting, beautiful, a tetany
For a second or two and our suffering is over and with it
The days of gay and the white hairs on your head fade
From my registry of childhood comforts leaving every
Coconut trunk in the garden a niche in the cuddly shape
Of your body, there will be no fly strikes or graves for you
Are bacon, ham and sausages an honour made when due.

—
This poem was inspired by my duroc pig, Bootleg.

Fatima Lasay, San Roque
Sunday, September 6, 2015

There is magic in the pressurised air of the Udderground
Aground of wordly machinations where the magic happens
In way of Error: Poem Not Found in way of Poet Not Found
In the Udderground Game of Tit-for-Tat and human kindness
Hence the prisoner’s dilemma plays out once more for thee
Whence the poetry factory never sleeps its frenzy its madness
Its following and sadeness follows what predictable patrony
Of likely admirers, of fans fanning the fart of arty farty friends
Of friends of multi-level marketing and organic herbal paranoia
No Approved Therapeutic Claims: is she writing about moi?

Lately I notice how popular she is the poet Anonymous lest
From the Dialectics of Tit-for-Tat arise the contradictions of
Disgust and Adoration, where imitation is the sincerest
.. flattery hits the poet like a bus damaged in transit behove
Of postmodern plagiary and no approved therapeutic claims
Before the congress of god-man, is she writing about me asks
He, is he making fun of me asks she, who cares and blames
Anonymous without looking in the mirror afraid to see what lacks
For the surfeit in the magic number of points, but hey don’t count
Because the poet Anonymous don’t care, she don’t count.

Fatima Lasay, San Roque
September 3, 2015

I am no woman of the boondocks and yet now here I
Am bewildered owner of five hectares of agricultural
Land with a view of the sea and thank heavens high
Ground away from both inundation and the proverbial
Giant of the mountain top where now my vision blurs
At the sight of Charlie halfway up the coconut tree
Amidst the gales of a storm that has passed his slippers
Upon the roots and soil beneath him young Charlie
Is old with wife and many children beneath him mother
And mother-in-law and her mother all past their hunger.

I am no woman of poverty and yet I feel the uncharitable
Lives of these people, the lessons that I have learned
In catechism, the drama of the telenovelas, the palpable
Pain from prize-winning photos of emaciated children
And the visits to urban orphanages and slums, and yes
I feel the drama and see the gritty life of these people
As my own, Charlie up the tree, he stops his ascent less
Than a foot away from the top, and I gasp ready to call
Not to take his own life at least not upon my rose garden
When he swings an arm and pulls out his phone and chats.

Fatima Lasay, San Roque
Saturday, July 4, 2015