Please Don’t Arrest Me Under The ISA

Please Don’t Arrest Me Under The ISA

 

This is not a poem about Malaysia

This is not a poem about Malaysia

This is not a poem about Malaysia

 

This is not a poem about institutionalised racism

Not about fear, division, hatred

Not about conformity, self-censorship and blindness

This is not a poem about mindless construction and destruction

And slash and burn economics

 

This is not about a one party state

 

Nor is it about theocracy, autocracy, hypocrasy and a complete lack of democracy

About dead Mongolians, sodomy or segregation

About apartheid, 13% discounts or sons of the earth

 

This is not a poem about propaganda, fascism, consumerism or detention

About the disappeared, the Orang Asli

This is not a poem about Malaysia.

 

This is a poem

About the poem

I cannot read out

The words I cannot say

The things I cannot think, or feel

The person I cannot be

Even though this poem is not about Malaysia

 

Tell the hakim

Tell the jury

Tell my lawyers

Tell the people when I disappear

When I am detained

When I am revoked

When witnesses testify I sodomized them

Or drugs are found in my house

Or a bullet in my head

That it should not be so

Because

This is not a poem about Malaysia.

Inside-Outsiders

Inside-Outsiders 

Whatever happened to individuality?

Whatever happened to idiosyncracy?

Whatever happened to unity? Unity? Unity?

Whatever happened to you and me?

 

There’s a war going on in Batu Arang

There’s a war in the Bukit Bintang

There’s a war going on in Chow Kit, Brickfields

There’s a war going down your street

From the KLCC to the Damansara Heights

From PJ to Puchong to Ipoh

Port Klang, Melaka, Penang, JB

There’s a war in your kampong scene

 

You need to get up, get alive and get free

What you see on your TV is not reality

Camera cannot capture a conscious duality

Liberation

I express through creativity.

 

In a society where art is a travesty

Self-expression denied with screams of death to originality

A championing of bland, oppressive banality

Of musical theatre and brash commerciality

I fear the seductive lure of mediocrity

And self-censorship, where you don’t say what you think

(Muffled) People here acting like their shit don’t stink.

 

I call up warriors of words to combat this depravity

Because word sound have power, charged with liberty

Literary emancipators, the inside-outsiders

Introverted heroes of rhythm and rhyme

Extrovert to reconstruct our world with a freedom cry.

 

There’s a war going on all across the globe

You fighting in that war as you crossing the road

The war is for your thoughts, your mind, your desire

From the moment you born to the time you expire

How you gonna get-de-get-de-get-get free?

Buh-buh-buh-buh-break your mental captivity?

For me-me-me-me-me the answer’s plain to see

You gottagot to think, you got to write, right?

Conjure lexical spells to challenge lies and hype

Thinking free and feeling fast

Combat dead futures by remembering past.

 

There’s a war going on in London Town

Brazil, India, China, Japan

All across the globe from shore to shore

Whose side you on in the cultural war?

 

Here is the time you find creative revolution

Artists, poets, addicts in a new art evolution

You can’t see us; we throwing cultural bombs

Art-terrorists, wailing freedom songs!

Storming the barricades of your mind-wipe galleries,

By chanting poems we burn-up those lethargic calories.

Fighting fit, mentally clear

Overcoming the little death of fear.

Guerillas of thought in the jungles of your apathy

Cathartic expression changing lives subliminally.

 

You see our words is weapons

A poem is an army

A poet is an ideology.

Freedom fighters of the mind, born to defy

Heart warriors and disciples of Hakim Bey

The inside-outsiders, we are many not few

Living amongst you

But never of you.

Civil Disobedience

Civil Disobedience 

Who here can get down with civil disobedience?

Who here can get down with civil disobedience?

Who here can get down with civil disobedience?

Who here can get down with civil disobedience?

 

People protest in the street and they call it a riot

People screaming for their freedom, government try to deny it

They smashing private property, but who own it all anyway?

The same company you sold your life to today and yesterday

They call it private property, but who own it a crooked lottery

Coz when 1% of the people own 90% of the wealth

We know they taking it all through use of stealth

Selling you prepackaged life straight off the shelf

You think the rich care if you get socialized health?

Or you get treated fair by employers or banks?

They too busy reinvesting in bullets and tanks

Protecting they interests, minimizing ours

It’s time we burn ‘em up in they ivory towers

So fight your fear and if you dare

Grab up that tacky plastic McDonald’s chair

And break it over that policeman there

Coz police are the first defense of the state

Brainwash education reinforcing their hate

Of anyone, anything, any idea that challenge them

They authority the face of authoritarianism

Politicians the mouthpiece of big business corporations

Not the public, when you gonna realize there ain’t no representation?

Just a regular process of disenfranchisation

Of misdirection, propaganda and privatization

So grab up your banners and get on them streets in demonstration

Coz the people got the power against dehumanization

Against racial segregation, against corporate sanitization

And there endless delegation leading only to more oppression

 

So now can you tell me you up for some civil disobedience?

Now can can I hear you want some civil disobedience?

Show me what you got with civil disobedience!

Tear it up tear it up for some civil disobedience!

 

“Now hang on there, Jah-J,” I’m hearing you cry

“You have to work with the system, just give it a try.

The government works for us, why would they lie?

You just paranoid, thinking it some conspiracy.

We live in the free world, a capitalist democracy!”

The system? The system? The system?

They motherfuckin’ system total hypocrisy

Your motherfuckin’ system sucking people dry

Leaving old folks on the street to die

Starving refugees born to cry

System all about profit margins, not starving Marvins

Who getting the biggest slice of the pie

Depend on who doing the carving

They got the knife and we get the scraps

Videotaped while we eat em, listened to on phone taps

The system don’t right wrongs, only drop bombs

And you think we gonna change that singing peace songs?

We need to reclaim the streets, reclaim our minds

Reclaim our lives, reclaim our rights

It’s our responsibility, not our parents, or our children, or our government, or our corporate sponsors, or anyone but us.

 

Down with it? Down with it? Down with it? Down with it?

 

So get up wake up live up smash up crash up burn up fire up smoke up toke up punk up kick up drum up shoot up rock up break up take up no fakers no more liars no more dividers no more us and them us and them us and them it’s the system that killing our minds our love our lives our futures so what you gonna do what you gonna do what you gonna do?

Punkrock Dreadlock

Punkrock/Dreadlock 

I don’t believe Bob Marley died of cancer

The CIA made him pay

They knew he had the answer

Now all your hatred is directed at each other

When it should be at the state, economy and Big Brother

 

Your apathy merely keeps you in line

Pointless hatred only wasting too much precious time

We need some new revolutionaries of rap/rock/rhyme

Teach all y’all peace and unity

Is no crime.

 

I’m getting down like a new de la Rocha

With my fist in the air and a finger for the motherfucker

Keeping us in fear of our sisters and brothers

We should be fightin the power

Not turning on each other.

 

So be a fighter with a true cause

Give a fuck about the truth of new terrorism laws

Give a fuck about Guantanamo Bay

Innocent men and women deprived of their fair say

 

Cause this democracy a true sham

We could take it back

If you only gave a damn

But you too busy getting drunk, fucking bitches, chasing money

You won’t realize that it’s wrong till all the rebels are gone.

You Are What You Eat

You Are What You Eat 

Mutabaruka tell the truth

When he tell me and you

That they call it fast food

Because it kill you fast too

If you comprehending me point of view

With all that fast food you will be through

Stay I-tal, is vital

Delay instant gratification

Pollution of the body now a national vocation

Are what you eat in more ways than one

Media images make up daily consumption.

 

So you are what you eat so live well and live clean

Purify your mind of the obscene

All that you touch and all that you see

Is all that your life shall ever ever be.

 

A fast food nation

Living in stagnation

Happy meal don’t make you happy

They a plastic degradation

Now me gotta a crappy toy and a heart condition

Caused by salt, sugar, fat and cholesterol addiction

Food with no nourishment like life with no soul

Consume, consume

You never fill that hole

Liberate from processed living that is our goal

To subsist hand to mouth and eat what I grow

 

Got no need for no KFC bucket

Got no need for Big Mac, fuck that!

Got no need for no pizza delivery boy

Got no need for no crappy little plastic toy

Cause all these things they bring me no joy

They trick you think you eat

I say that a ploy

They mek you think that you nourish a-plenty

Your belly full but your mind is empty.

 

What they feeding you through your TV screens?

Designed to delete your personality

Eliminate free will and criticality

With a white supremacist cultural hegemony

30, 000 adverts per annum

Warping your brain cause that’s how they plan ‘em

Now every thought and desire you can conceive

Originate with the devil on that MTV.

 

Don’t be brainwash but wash your mind clean

Don’t be a brainwash but washit washit washit.

 

They call it fast food cause it kill you fast too

They call it fast food cause it kill ya!

This Is Liberation

This Is Liberation 

Frustration

My mind blocked like constipation

When posed with the question

“How do we correct the state of the nation?”

Because I’d learned from a young age that any vocation

Be it in a food court, shopping mall or gas station

Was preferable to time spent in thoughtful oration

And certainly better than interpersonal communication

Or acknowledging our mutual quiet desperation

As if a little human honesty would be met with

Castration.

 

Ouch!

So when this question’s put about

I feel the need to speak out

To let my balls hang out

Ready to receive a knock-back clout

Because I’ve realized beyond any shadow of a doubt

We’re all caught on a hook, like cod or trout

We’re all trained to accept, like young boy scout

That you can never break the rule

The rules you can never flout.

 

Bullshit!

I’ve got independent thought and I’ll use it

Like police have authority and abuse it

Like politicians have power and misuse it

Like fundamentalists take faith and confuse it

Like media take truth and misconstrue it

I’m through with it

Looking outwards for answers

Misguided

Like looking for loot after a natural disaster

Deluded

Like healing a severed limb with a sticking plaster

It’s never going to make you happy

Faster.

 

Victory?

Only achievable from within

If you refuse to give in

Everyday you get up and you keep striving

The journey to change the world it begin from within

The journey to change the world it begin from within

Try to change your mind, not what’s happening

Battling what’s happening’s a battle you can never win

But your mind you own through a little training

Our mind creating the world we live in

Our mind deciding our definition of sin

So therefore is the source of all our dissatisfaction

So stop your crying, and whining, and lying, and fussing and fighting

Our everyday reality

Is of our own conceiving.

 

Positivity!

A weapon against hostility

Running out of me and direct into thee

Growing from fallen leaves like a seed into a tree

Cleansing the mind of all impurity

Through perfecting intentions achieving clarity

Understand the relationship of temporal causality

Through compassion and wisdom, achieve that unity

An understanding of universal beauty

Through meditation to peace and harmony

Remembering always the imperfect beauty of you and me

And you and you and you.

 

This is liberation

Not war against states or rebuilding nations

This is revolution

Not violent insurgency, but militant mind poetry

This is inspiration

Not art in galleries but the heart that’s in me

This is freedom, o freedom

Simple as birds, singing in trees

Reaching out to touch people

Opening up gladly

Unafraid that they might be horrified

And flee

Why would you flee?

Would you flee?

 

Only we have the keys to set ourselves free.