"Medan Tuanku" by Yusuf Martin

Medan Tuanku

by Yusuf Martin

morning
Medan Tuanku
forlorn

solitary male
camera on sign
self portrait

security VDU
sound and vision
hollow
heartbroken Chinese love songs
temporary Top of the Pops

ghostly carriageway traffic
reality semblance
sans connectedness
sans belonging
sans responsibility
sans correspondences

A platform
monorail pulls in
and out
in and out
disgorged passengers

B platform
solitary
refuge
entrapment
grasping
holding
transfixed
imprisoned
street’s exile

mechanical Godot attachement.
Rm2.50
KL Sentral
telos


© 2008 Yusuf Martin


Listen to this poem:


Yusuf Martin: This is one of a delayed series of poems set in KL city, depicting contemporary life as it is lived in the city - alienation, despair, loneliness - but always tempered by opposites. It is about a city and its people in flux, seeking new identities, fresher ways of being, between the yin and yang in the augenblik, a heart stopping moment.

Old Hippy, former bookbinder repairer and restorer, dustman, road sweeper, factory worker, mental hospital porter, graphic designer, digital artist, social worker, guest curator at one of London’s most prestigious museums, now exclusively writes short stories and essays from his country home overlooking lakes in the South East Asian countryside.

Yusuf Martin was born in London but lived mostly in East Anglian, England, briefly in India and has finally retired and settled in rural Malaysia, amidst the water buffalo and civets.

He has written several short stories published in collections in Malaysia including Silverfish New Writing 5 (2006); Silverfish New Writing 7 (2008); Urban Odysseys, due shortly from MPH; and an essay for New Malaysian Essays 2, due next year by Mata Hari.

Yusuf is currently putting the finishing touches to a book of short stories about kampung life in Malaysia (Kampung Tales) , writing more fantasy stories about a bomoh (shaman) called Melvyn, magic and ghosts (Melvyn the Bomoh) and a novel based upon his social work experiences (The Unsocial Worker).

Yusuf's sites:
http://mondaymelvyn.blogspot.com/
http://fatmankampung.blogspot.com/
http://correspondences-martin.blogspot.com/