#Hamid Rosland

[poems-from-around-the-world]

"write statement for what?" - Hamid Roslan - Singapore

Write statement for what? If write must

sign. Must appear on TV say sorry sorry

Ah Kong. Sotong. You think if you write

you must follow other people. If they

makan potato you swallow starch—huh

I cannot use starch? Should I cave in

to your force of habit, sight scanning

line swooning over turns & tricks?

Ok. Statement is metaphor for tuition,

for textbook, for discount sticker label

at Fairprice. Use your brain. If got formula

we sure export lah bodoh. Kan dah kena

bodoh. Don’t ask me for footnote. When

you read English you look up. They always

tell you speak up boy speak up

now I speak up

An axiom accents assumption, lends credence

to charred dust, dialect administration &...

basis to provide a blustering planet with

conventional approach: bitten apple,

jargon arrangement doctrines, supplication

of prose-ethics, parching creation in advance

& searing guidelines to the sound of a

found nation—in short...fundamentally

bankrolled & broiled with cooking method

to roast code, styled speech for vocabulary

regulation, not forgetting voicing universes,

entrusting seething vale to word-truth &

shriveled big blue marbles, loaning canon

to argot to world with protocol to communicate

—which is to say: criterion, or rule, or

plunging dictum to conversation...or dogma, diction,

or to stake into discursive form a welt: doublespeak.