All you need, hypothetical reader, to understand this poem is
here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javanese_mythology#Java
and: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javanese_alphabet#Alphabet_as_poem
.

A Script1. Hanacaraka
'There were two messengers',
two tongues, two paths
or ways of being. Dora: 
'I am fluid, ocean, second-
wave feminism, I transport like
a ( Read more... )

There are many mantras in the
blade of a kris. A kris might move
about, might stand on its tip if
possessed by a strong spirit. A
strong spirit is trapped through
the deployment of many mantras.
There are many mantras in the
blade of a kris.

Here is my fieldtrip report instead. I am quite proud that I wrote this in less than a day, tyvm.

( it's 4.5k words long! )

We are halfway up the slope of
Mount Lawu, the roads are narrow and
twisty, eyes cling like gnats to the windows.

Smoky Java is spread out below,
patchwork of tobacco, tea, chili, pisang,
tea, tea, dry-season tropical drugs of choice.

It's funny, we do the same things
over and over-here is a kind of temple,
Candi Sukuh, perched at the tip of everything.

( Read more... )

'Hooded by seven cobra heads with 
flat, round crown jewels, broad 
necks and neck wrinkles', 
flesh emerges from rock; things become 
Things and take more than 
sounds to grasp them.

We shall be akin to this, unafraid of
diverse beginnings-still some
tremble at the Hydra-
and 'gradually merge into the flat surface
of the stone'. Other tongues are
ammunition ( Read more... )