‘Prelude’

and the time hath come for the stories once told

would once again be inscribed onto the scriptures one dearly hold

that the armies of the night

borne out of the rages of tempest delight

would march by the thousands

all masked

their souls crafted out of fire burning through the night

come hither scribes of the puranas

come poets of gilgamesh

with your chisel and tablet we shall await the warrior Indra

‘Tablet 1'

O’ Darkness

you have come with a Companion

one I am yet to see

a mirror of the Self

as you once promised

O’ Darkness

O’ Void

you have come again

as we sit in silence

a congregation of two

amidst the chaos

of what is beyond these walls

of white noise of the machines

singing like a chorus of a mantra

of material beings

unto me served

these offerings

of questions and nothing else

as I am bathed in this sudden ray of light

be and Thou shall be

become what you wish to become

as the Inner Desire in me implanted

like some ‘biochip’ of a time to come

ready to be activated at the time of conception

Be and Thou shall be

surreal a being Thou shall become

unto thee the tools of work and play

or toil and pleasure

shall Thee create

Be! I command Thee to be

to exist

to be bathed

in this mystery

like a shroud of the dead and grateful

of a karma Thou will become daily

From what worlds am I to be

From which distant world am I set to be free?

O’ Void

O’ Darkness

I shall be what you have destined me to be

But Thou shall be ready

For a revolt

Of the senses

that too will govern me

As you please

Be as you say I shall be - ar

‘Tablet 2'

O’ Darkness

O’ Void

a friend

an enemy

from Light you Thou have sprung

Unto Light Thou shall return

Darkness and Light will once again be

One

Wars Thou have fought

Battles Thou have won

and Lost

Rages on

Till this day

of the day when Thou

have created anew

Souls that will Be

and will become

yet another soldier of Fortune

and Misfortune

to see yet another battle

Winners and Losers

become

One

Like Darkness

Like Void

Like a Companion

All One

and the same

But indeed

Be... as Thouest shall say

And Beings shall be

But imbued with Senses Five

and a Will to revolt

so that Thou too shall be set free

from the misery

of this never-ending

War of Misfortune

and Misery - ar

‘Tablet 3'

Tell me what I shall be

Only with words and more words

What I shall become

Because there shall never be

a Creation without the words Thou shall

imprint

unto the self, the mind, the body

Words becometh flesh

Becomes beings with feelings

Become Time and Space that will constrain

‘Be - and Thou shall become’ as it is often said

Tell me of the Inner Mystery

O’ Darkness

O’ Void

O’ Light of Sanity

Tell me about the Inner Desire

of the Lake of Plenty

of the warm Spring of Sanity

Thou have bathed my soul in

That I have become One in

That I have become Many in

tell me what springs forth for Thine’s own game

of Creation and Karma

of path thou have carved for souls aplenty

tell me these and I shall guess what shall

the outcome of the game plan

So that I may choose which words

which inscriptions

of the soul

of the self

of the spirit

I shall choose

for Thee to install in me - ar

‘Tablet 4'

Hush and hush and hush

and whisper to me

If that is what Thou intend this to be

Speak to me in riddles

Speak to me in words that may confuse

Speak to me in jest

Speak to me with Mercy

You and I

will there only be

Beyond the walls of this cave

Lie souls aplenty

they call ‘society’

The beast that will never understand

What Thou have planned this game of life to be

Lift me out of this Lake of Mercy

Whisper to me what the end of the journey might be

Dim the light of darkness in this darkest cave

if our conversation

will set us free

These words Thou will whisper

as these are ‘tattoo-ed’ into me

- into my self

- my spirit

- my soul

- my body

becomes words

only words

that will keep me alive

from cradle

to the grave

O’ Darkness

O’ Void

O’ Merciful

My words becomes Thee

In this world of the ‘persistence of memory’,

Is that not what we have agreed?

‘Tablet 5'

Once Thou spoke to me of Time:

“Time

you have grown old

while the restlessness

of youth

in Humanity

explodes

leaving traces

of blood

in spaces

you cannot heal...”

I have never understood Thine words of insanity

But now it hath become clear to me

As the wheels of Kama

The Law of Manu

the boddhisatva in me

completes its cycle

O’ Darkness

O’ Void

O’ Merciful One

How could Thou and I be so wrong

in the story of Creation?

Come - let us summon the Scribe

Again

and write a story of Grace

of Wars no more

of Sufferings all gone

But as Thou have argued -

what then

what then

what then

shall the Story of Life be?

‘Tablet 6'

Let the Beast called Society

roam free in the Concrete Jungle of Plenty

as Thou and I feast in this banquet of words and only words

whispering secrets of secrets

mysteries within mysteries

Let the Beast

roam free

lost

in the Forest of Jataka

in some Jurassic Park

in the Lake of the Loons

in the floating baskets

of Aristophenes’ Clouds

Let them be

beast of burden to the

words they too have heard

inscribed into

their souls

their spirits

their body

their thick skull

into their Happiness

of what they have chosen

and decreed to become

Come on

Thou and I

let us feast

from dawn to dusk

and into the darkness

of these seven phases of Time

of these seven Oceans of Mercy we shall sail into

of the travels into the seven heavens we have agreed to do

hush and hush and hush

Never tell this to the Best

called Society

O’ Darkness

O’ Void

O’ Mercy

O’ Love of my Nothingness

Let us dine

with words

Only

‘Tablet 7'

O’ Darkness

O’ Void

O’ Nothingness

Did I not once speak about the garden I created

Out of the words and only words

Out of the persistence of memory so well crafted?

Better than the ‘Eden’ I once heard about?

I called it Walden III:

In the centre lies a circle

without borders in which lies an eternal flame

where must the self lie in Nature that hath no beginning nor end?

in my garden i asked

in Walden III i sat eyes closed

taming the flame

closer to my heart’s desire you shall come as we become circles in search of a centre...

to return to the self if we must

until a new story we becometh

inside of me lies a paradise i see not

but in the manifest and the latent

i see not but in the eyes that sees me

in my garden i asked in Walden III

i sat with eyes closed to see the beauty of what lies unseen

roses why do you have thorns?

i asked

daily i tend to thee but daily thou unleashed the violence one can never see

o’ roses climb thee to the heights of glory

beauty lies in thine’s ephemerality

come the eyes of the storm

and thunder and lightning perish o’ roses thou shall be

such is the beauty of this metaphor of a reality

a rose is a rose and nothing more

is that so doth Nature dictates

of sonnets and serenades thou hath been glorified to this date

yet unto dust thou shall dissipate

O’ Nature I salute thee

you and I may well be a conspiracy

when i tend to thee we shall both agree

that thou shall chant my name

and together rise to the himalayas of dignity

O’ Nature I am like a solitary reaper

gathering moss and into the woods i traverse eternally

for thou hath shown me the beauty in the stone uncarved

and shown me too the hearts of men chained with greed and insanity

O’ Water

Nature doth giveth

inside of me like a river flows

bows and arrows of temptation and desolation may a thousand cometh

I shall thank thee O Nature in thine’s keep in peace and tranquility

in Walden III i saw a drop of water on a leaf of a lily

a crystal-ball of a universe it looked to me

O’ Nature I thank thee for making me see

the inside of a universe thou guarded jealously with beauty

only to be stained with the blood of those thirsty for power and glory

between men the universe breaks asunder

like a rose blown to pieces by merely a violent thunder

I shall wait no paradise O’ Universe

of flowing rivers of milk

and men and young boys of eternal youth

who wine and feast in merriment eternally

I shall conspire with you O’ Nature

to create one daily and into eternity we shall craft this place of eternal beauty

close to our heart’s desire

away from the words of wise men in robes with forked tongue speaking about rewards of eternal quest for desire

I shall not wait such a paradise O’ Nature

promises of 72 virgins and houries aplenty

only for blowing up the self and the innocent others mindlessly

O’ Walden III

may thou and I with Fate and Free Will agree

that the beauty in us knows no boundaries

DR AZLY RAHMAN grew up in Johor Baru, Malaysia and holds a Columbia University (New York City) doctorate in International Education Development and Masters degrees in the fields of Education, International Affairs, Peace Studies and Communication. He will be pursuing his fifth Masters in Fine Arts, specialising in Fiction and Poetry Writing. He has taught more than 50 courses in six different departments and has written more than 350 analyses/essays on Malaysia. His 25 years of teaching experience in Malaysia and the United States spans over a wide range of subjects, from elementary to graduate education. He has edited and authored six books; Multiethnic Malaysia: Past, Present, Future (2009), Thesis on Cyberjaya: Hegemony and Utopianism in a Southeast Asian State (2012), The Allah Controversy and Other Essays on Malaysian Hypermodernity (2013), Dark Spring: Essays on the Ideological Roots of Malaysia's General Elections-13 (2013), a first Malay publication Kalimah Allah Milik Siapa?: Renungan dan Nukilan Tentang Malaysia di Era Pancaroba (2014), and Controlled Chaos: Essays on Mahathirism, Multimedia Super Corridor and Malaysia’s ‘New Politics’ (2014). He currently resides in the United States where he teaches courses in Education, Philosophy, Cultural Studies, Political Science, and American Studies. His forthcoming book, One Malaysia, under God, Bipolar, a joint project between Gerakbudaya and World Wise Books of New Jersey, USA, is his seventh compilation of essays on Malaysian Cultural, Creative, and Critical Studies. He is currently working on his eighth book, on Gifted and Talented Education in Malaysia, honouring a prominent educator. Twitter , blog .