for Affan Kurniawan
Leaning on top of Monas’ golden flame,
I piss over all of Jakarta. I am so high up
that the trickle turns into precipitation:
golden clouds carrying golden rain.
This is what falls onto a mass of motorcyclists
clad in green, like a carpet of moss drifting
across the asphalt river of Sudirman street.
Within them, sirens yelling in red and blue.
The white car, now yellow, carries him home.
Affan: chaste, modest, virtuous, pure.
Affan: trapped in a crowd of bodies, run over.
Affan: limp, pale, dead.
Later, they will scrub his name from the history books.
Children will watch sunlight play tricks
on the pages, rearranging the letters into a man.
Affan, what will your gravestone say?
Besides God, who is most gracious and merciful.
Besides how we have brought you here in our thousands.
Besides how we have loved you as countrymen.
The loam-balls thrown on your restful face
sparkle under the yellow rain.
When my father was in college,
he pissed from Monas too,
after his classmates fell like mannequins,
full of bullet holes, like a pin cushion
which has been poked too many times.
Later, the students walked all over parliament
like a child kicking an anthill.
The day Suharto spoke the words of resignation:
people in bars and campuses crowded TVs
and hugged each other, laughed and cried.
Generations of men in my family have pissed
from the sky even before Monas was built.
Affan: lily, banyan, person.
Soon, a green blanket—of grass, of people—
covers your body. Workers, rise from your slumber.
Affan, when the yellow rain gives way,
the blessed sunlight then shall stay.
