Ekonomi Gelap
: buat Ayu, Tercinta
Di luar, kota ini mendidih dalam jeritan,
seperti tubuh yang dipanaskan oleh sepasang tangan yang keliru.
Mahasiswa melempar batu, poster berkibar,
bom molotov meledak seperti kembang api murahan,
dan seseorang di Twitter menulis manifesto revolusi
dari kamar ber-AC yang sunyi.
Aku seharusnya ada di sana,
di barisan depan bersama mereka,
menghantam tameng polisi dengan keras kepala dan kesia-siaan,
tapi aku di sini,
terjebak dalam kamar kos yang baunya perpaduan antara rokok,
kopi basi, dan dosa-dosa kecil yang tidak ingin kuakui.
Di atas meja, laptop menyala.
Angka-angka berlarian seperti tikus dalam sistem ekonomi yang sudah busuk.
GDP, inflasi, devaluasi—
semua kata-kata yang diajarkan dosenku
seolah punya makna,
padahal kita semua tahu
bahwa ekonomi hanyalah cara yang lebih sopan
untuk menyebut eksploitasi.
Di ranjangku, seorang perempuan masih telanjang,
kulitnya berkeringat,
bau tubuhnya bercampur dengan sisa malam
yang penuh teori revolusi dan desahan.
Rambutnya berantakan seperti neraca perdagangan negara ini,
dan aku tak yakin mana yang lebih kacau.
“Kau ikut demo besok?” bisiknya tadi malam,
jari-jarinya menyusuri tubuhku
seperti investor rakus yang mencari sumber daya baru.
Aku ingin bilang Ya!
Aku ingin berteriak di jalan,
melawan negara yang hanya tahu cara menundukkan kepala rakyatnya,
menjadi bagian dari sesuatu yang lebih besar
daripada sekadar mahasiswa ekonomi
yang terjebak dalam lingkaran teori dan tugas yang sia-sia.
Tapi saat itu,
tangannya sudah menemukan revolusi di celanaku,
dan bibirnya membisikkan teori sosialisme
di antara desahan dan kebohongan.
Aku menyerah.
Pagi ini, aku bangun dengan rasa bersalah,
bau alkohol dan seks masih melayang di udara.
Kulihat layar HP yang retak:
BRO, KITA BUTUH ORANG LEBIH BANYAK DI GARIS DEPAN. KAU DI MANA?
Tanganku gemetar,
bukan karena takut polisi,
tapi karena kopi yang kuteguk terlalu pahit.
Aku mengetik pelan:
Maaf, bro. Tugas menumpuk.
Lalu kuhempaskan tubuh ke kasur,
memandang langit-langit yang penuh bercak,
entah dari hujan, entah dari sesuatu yang lebih pribadi.
Di luar, Medan terbakar,
di dalam, aku hanya mahasiswa ekonomi
yang memilih menghitung angka-angka hantu
daripada menulis sejarah dengan tangannya sendiri.
Dan di antara keduanya,
ada seorang perempuan yang masih terlelap,
tersenyum dalam tidurnya,
seolah tahu bahwa revolusi—
seperti orgasme yang tertunda—
adalah mimpi yang selalu
gagal mencapai klimaks.
(2025)
–
My Poetry, Not Theirs
I vomit these verses on a woman’s body,
between the curve of her waist and the secrets of the night,
between trembling thighs like the pages
of books I’ve burned in rage.
They come knocking on my door,
with lengthy reviews and academic jargon,
dissecting my poetry with sterile knives,
as if words could be measured on a scale,
as if the breath on a woman’s nape
could be squeezed into literary theory.
They want my poetry about proper love,
about sweet promises beneath a purple sky,
about gentle breezes and sacred longing.
But the love I know is
a hand pressing the nape until it moans,
the trace of lipstick on a bitter coffee cup,
lips bitten until they bleed
in a night abandoned too soon by morning.
My poetry is born of hunger,
of empty glasses and cigarette butts,
of women selling their bodies
because the world is cheaper than rent.
Of students carrying books full of theory,
but without enough money
to buy a rice packet before the protest.
On this woman’s body,
I write with sweat and saliva,
with fingerprints on her back,
with the heavy whisper of breath.
She is a scripture that cannot be censored,
a revolution swelling between gasps,
a manuscript written in the language of motion.
I don’t write for those bastard publishers
who sell poetry like merchandise.
I don’t write for well-dressed critics
who orgasm just by mentioning dead philosophers.
I write on this woman’s body
because paper is too bland,
because ink is too dry,
because only here can my poetry breathe.
My poetry is not theirs.
My poetry is a wound that will not heal,
the clinking of shattered glass at dawn,
the whisper of devils behind the ear.
And I will keep writing,
until this skin is gone,
until this flesh disappears,
until there’s no place left
for them to read.
(2025)
–
Exodus
On the flickering TV screen, like the eyelids of a drunken god,
a suited official—his hand trembling around a cheap wine glass—
says with lips too wet:
“The economy is booming!”
“The nation is stable!”
“Young people, work hard and prosper!”
Meanwhile, at a roadside coffee stall,
at a table stained with cigarette burns and greasy fingerprints,
an old man, his hair falling out like campaign promises,
sips black coffee bitterer than economic reports,
chewing the morning news like stale chewing gum.
On the front page: Inflation.
On the second: Corruption.
On the third: A child in Gaza missing half his face.
On the last: Horoscopes and massage parlor ads.
HAHAHA!
I glance at the next table.
Bodhidharma sits cross-legged,
his gaze emptier than a factory worker’s savings
shaved down by banking fees.
He doesn’t read the news.
He knew the headlines before they were written.
He whispers in piercing silence:
“If this world is but a shadow, why do men still trust numbers?”
Odin coughs,
spitting out black phlegm from lungs filled with war-smoke,
lighting his cigarette with the embers of a collapsing economy,
humming a dirge for migrant workers
who trade their youth
for a slice of a dream wrapped in blue brochures.
Outside, Fenrir bites his chain.
He knows the time is near.
Ragnarök isn’t just a war of gods,
but waves of layoffs,
workers selling their kidneys to pay rent,
children trading their childhood
for graveyard shifts in garment factories.
At the sticky counter of a dingy bar,
Inanna crosses her legs,
her short skirt riding up just enough to remind
that sex and economy are never separate things.
In her hand, a torn headline from last night’s paper:
“Just run! And never come back!”
She chuckles, sips whiskey,
and looks at me with eyes that know more than the ministers.
“I once descended to the underworld,
lost everything,
to return with wisdom.
But modern men?
They flee without a plan,
without knowing what they’re running from.”
In the corner, a drunk scientist,
his T-shirt stained with coffee and relativity theories,
tries explaining how the universe is just a quantum dance of futility.
“We’re all electrons, jumping from one state to another,
never truly knowing why.”
At the bus terminal, Quetzalcoatl whispers into a migrant worker’s ear:
“In a foreign land, you’ll toil harder for a slightly higher wage.
At home, you’ll die slowly,
reading false reports
about an economic boom you’ll never feel.”
In parliament, Hanuman leaps onto the conference table,
mocking the terrified officials,
reciting a political poem:
“They discuss taxes, foreign investments,
numbers that rise and fall on luxury LED screens.
But they’ve never walked the city sidewalks,
never smelled the sweat of an ojek driver,
never heard a mother’s sobs
for a child lost in an electronics factory.”
On the other side of the world, Zhuangzi is still dreaming,
uncertain if he is a butterfly or a man,
and no longer caring,
because both are equally absurd.
Laozi sips his bitter tea,
scribbles on the bathroom wall of this bar
with a red marker:
“A nation is an illusion created by those afraid of chaos.”
And outside, Fenrir finally snaps his chain.
He howls.
Not to summon war,
but to mock the absurdity of human civilization,
which builds pyramids from the suffering of others,
then wonders why their gods
never come to save them.
Now, I sit on this plastic chair,
sipping coffee that grows colder,
reading news that grows emptier,
and ask myself:
“Just run?”
Or stay here,
waiting for Ragnarök,
laughing amid the ruins?
(2025)
–
LET ME GO, POETRY
No. Enough.
Let me go.
I don’t want to be here,
I will never be here,
in a world that worships dead poets
and spits on those still breathing.
Poetry doesn’t pay the rent
in a room that reeks of stale semen
and crumpled tissues,
doesn’t buy me a bottle of cheap wine
or a woman who spreads her thighs
with the same smile
she gives every bastard who pays.
My poems, they say, are too obscene,
too filthy, too wild,
too much crotch and spit,
too little light of God and prayer.
But they read those verses
in secret, in the dark,
with trembling slick hands
beneath the bed where their wives sleep.
I once wrote about
a whore
who sucked the life
from my lips like Aceh weed,
about a night when
I reached into a virgin’s chest
and found a hollowness
deeper than a Sunday morning sermon.
Editors tossed my poem
into the trash,
the way they tossed
their first love
onto the back of an old preacher
in a church storeroom.
I am hungry,
not the hunger of aesthetics,
not existential hunger—
just hunger, real hunger.
I want to lick rice scraps off the kitchen floor,
smoke a half-dead cigarette,
press my lips against the neck
of a woman
who doesn’t even care who I am.
I want my poetry to struggle,
to spit in the faces
of bastards
who write about love
while slapping their children’s asses at night.
They don’t read my poetry,
but they preach morality on TV
while sucking their secretary’s fingers
in the office restroom.
And hunger becomes aesthetics,
becomes the last drop of vodka
on an addict’s lips,
becomes spread thighs
in the backseat of a taxi,
becomes a marriage vow
cracking on the first night,
becomes blood on the walls
of a dying dive bar.
Let me go, poetry,
let me crawl into this dark hole,
where a whore’s fingers are gentler
than the pages of a great poet’s book,
where words rot
like a rat carcass beneath a bridge.
Let me wander through Egypt and India.
Let me seek Mesopotamia.
Let me split Greece and Rome
with a touch of Ghazal and Sonnet.
Let me weave Arabia and Persia
with Haiku and Elegy.
Let me complete Scythia and Hurrian
with Ode and Pantun.
Let me embrace Hittite and Norse
around Limerick and Ballad.
Let me go, poetry,
let Enoch and La Galigo be,
let the Vedas and Gilgamesh,
let the Shipwrecked Sailor,
let The Book of Job,
let Hammurabi’s Code,
let The Book of the Dead,
let the Odyssey and Medea,
let The Symposium,
let The Tale of Genji,
let Tagore and Louise Glück be,
let Sully Prudhomme and Neruda be.
Let me die between trembling thighs,
on a motel bed that reeks
of sperm and failure,
among nights filled
with lies and empty prayers,
for this world has never made space
for poetry that calls
the crotch holier than God.
Yes. Let me go, poetry.
do not stop me.
Just this once, let me not be here.
(2025)
–
TO THE ANGEL WHO STOLE MY POEM
Some holy men said:
“Keep personal regrets out of poetry.”
Some clerics decreed:
“You must ready your soul for the afterlife.”
Nonsense.
They want me to stay silent,
to stay pure, to stay empty.
But for the sake of idols—
I never gave my poem to anyone
but myself.
I kept no copies.
And you came to steal it,
like an angel with torn wings,
a sweat-drenched face,
slipping your fingers into my drawer,
then clutching my breath.
Why didn’t you take my suffering instead?
Or the sorrow I’ve piled up
like cigarette butts in a cheap ashtray?
Are angels too used to
stealing human joy?
I’m drunk,
collapsed in the corner of my room,
remembering life like smoke drifting
in a bar that’s too bright.
Take my clothes,
take the coins in my pocket,
take my kidney if you must,
but not my poem.
I am not a poet,
not a prophet or a fortune teller,
but I know one thing:
the same poem is never written twice.
Dogs bark! Bombs explode!
Sperm spills into dim alleyways,
corruption preaches from digital pulpits,
new gods sing sacred algorithms.
Take it all!
Take time, take the city, take the future!
But as God once said,
arms crossed:
“I have created so much prose,
so much poetry,
so why are there still angels
who steal everything?”
Some holy men said:
“Keep personal regrets out of poetry.”
(Jakarta, 2025)
*****
Editor: Moch Aldy MA
