Read Online LONTAR issue #1 by Jason Erik Lundberg (editor) - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Jason Erik Lundberg (editor)
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bone-yard where they piled our heap of dead.
Although each wall and pillar of the body
has crumbled back to dust, my eyes can see
the past and future from Pelangi Peak.
Looking down, I note my chronicle
of rajah years like childhood on a playground
underneath a wide waringin tree.
I am lucky that I got to live with dragons.
The teller is inside his story now . . .
2. Birth of Dragons
This world began when Mountain Naga met
with Water Dragon Dewi from the depths
on each side of an island, balancing
on the turtle of the world. They kept alert
as guardian snakes awake to sea-bed earthquakes.
Then collided in a squall. Their cold union
hovered as a hot monsoonal threat
for weeks, until the boiling sky let loose
one hundred thousand baby nagas like
a storm of blistering meteors on the sea.
Over time, these emerald islands rose
like vertebrae at buckling intervals,
poking through the ocean's bluish-green;
and so we have our archipelago.
Now, note the head, those jagged spinal humps,
a whiplash tail, and how the morning changes
from yellow cantaloupe to midday blue;
and when green hills go dark each afternoon,
the coastal sky returns to pinkish rose.
I and my lineage had lingered long
with mountains, cliffs and beaches, reptile rocks,
until one night. The Father Rajahs brought
into my dream some storm cloud like a fist
with a future looming bad for all of us.
So they divulged the soul-shape of the Barong,
the good Barong of time, space and protection,
our primal Guardian—tooth, wing and claw
part lion, tiger, boar with serpent tail—
joining the far quarters of our island.
A dragon nagaserpent is cold fusion.
3. Making the Barong
I had the icon carved. Light changed the look
of his fierce mask to scare away base spirits
sunrise to dusk. This was a ruse to front
our fears, a demon form with bigger claws
to slay new demons. His snout and snarling teeth,
and jagged fern-sharp wings were set to guard
the sky along the half-moon of the beach
and eat invaders, ripping heads like rats.
I placed him in the garden on the hill
and let the sun through slits in palm slats taunt him
green to red. Then growing huge, the shadows,
length to length, each rose colossus-like
like soldiers in his service standing guard.
This is where we taught our young to sit
and look with eyelids closed, through champa joss,
rising up around our hook-nailed god;
and as we sat to ponder our ancestor
like an old volcano smoldering, yet ready
to unleash his molten fury any moment
we came to learn that nothing stays forever.
Whatever brought us to our pinnacle
dispatched us into the dragon-breathing wind.
4. My Land, My People
My subjects were the simple nutmeg race
old as mussels, cuttlefish and clams
scavenged from the rock pool and the beach,
or running free between liana trails—
bamboo blowpipes poised upon two legs
according to totems of tiger, snake and boar.
And the fishermen among us cast their nets
from outriggers. They were cut for speed,
swerving inside reef and atoll rocks
after ray and turtle, crab and eel and shark;
while the bulk of my subjects lived upon the uplands,
because they believe the gods are in the mountains
enjoying cooler winds while tending padi,
employed by hard seasons of the hoe,
pinching down each rice shoot into mud,
trickling pools of rain through gates of earth
and terracing the hills like steps to Heaven.
A clever few maintained the bomoh calling—
one who scratched a melody from the rebab,
while the other moved with ghost-cries on his tongue—
shamans who then sliced the throats of bantams.
Soused in rice arrack, they paid the Dead
for fear of failing crops, or a stillborn son.
Then, there were my subjects who chose to live
outside my laws and edicts' lucid ways—
outcastes with the lust of raiders and pirates.
Nested like spiders in green bays,
they hoisted sails to loot with kris and club,
hoarding gold and jewels and
Although each wall and pillar of the body
has crumbled back to dust, my eyes can see
the past and future from Pelangi Peak.
Looking down, I note my chronicle
of rajah years like childhood on a playground
underneath a wide waringin tree.
I am lucky that I got to live with dragons.
The teller is inside his story now . . .
2. Birth of Dragons
This world began when Mountain Naga met
with Water Dragon Dewi from the depths
on each side of an island, balancing
on the turtle of the world. They kept alert
as guardian snakes awake to sea-bed earthquakes.
Then collided in a squall. Their cold union
hovered as a hot monsoonal threat
for weeks, until the boiling sky let loose
one hundred thousand baby nagas like
a storm of blistering meteors on the sea.
Over time, these emerald islands rose
like vertebrae at buckling intervals,
poking through the ocean's bluish-green;
and so we have our archipelago.
Now, note the head, those jagged spinal humps,
a whiplash tail, and how the morning changes
from yellow cantaloupe to midday blue;
and when green hills go dark each afternoon,
the coastal sky returns to pinkish rose.
I and my lineage had lingered long
with mountains, cliffs and beaches, reptile rocks,
until one night. The Father Rajahs brought
into my dream some storm cloud like a fist
with a future looming bad for all of us.
So they divulged the soul-shape of the Barong,
the good Barong of time, space and protection,
our primal Guardian—tooth, wing and claw
part lion, tiger, boar with serpent tail—
joining the far quarters of our island.
A dragon nagaserpent is cold fusion.
3. Making the Barong
I had the icon carved. Light changed the look
of his fierce mask to scare away base spirits
sunrise to dusk. This was a ruse to front
our fears, a demon form with bigger claws
to slay new demons. His snout and snarling teeth,
and jagged fern-sharp wings were set to guard
the sky along the half-moon of the beach
and eat invaders, ripping heads like rats.
I placed him in the garden on the hill
and let the sun through slits in palm slats taunt him
green to red. Then growing huge, the shadows,
length to length, each rose colossus-like
like soldiers in his service standing guard.
This is where we taught our young to sit
and look with eyelids closed, through champa joss,
rising up around our hook-nailed god;
and as we sat to ponder our ancestor
like an old volcano smoldering, yet ready
to unleash his molten fury any moment
we came to learn that nothing stays forever.
Whatever brought us to our pinnacle
dispatched us into the dragon-breathing wind.
4. My Land, My People
My subjects were the simple nutmeg race
old as mussels, cuttlefish and clams
scavenged from the rock pool and the beach,
or running free between liana trails—
bamboo blowpipes poised upon two legs
according to totems of tiger, snake and boar.
And the fishermen among us cast their nets
from outriggers. They were cut for speed,
swerving inside reef and atoll rocks
after ray and turtle, crab and eel and shark;
while the bulk of my subjects lived upon the uplands,
because they believe the gods are in the mountains
enjoying cooler winds while tending padi,
employed by hard seasons of the hoe,
pinching down each rice shoot into mud,
trickling pools of rain through gates of earth
and terracing the hills like steps to Heaven.
A clever few maintained the bomoh calling—
one who scratched a melody from the rebab,
while the other moved with ghost-cries on his tongue—
shamans who then sliced the throats of bantams.
Soused in rice arrack, they paid the Dead
for fear of failing crops, or a stillborn son.
Then, there were my subjects who chose to live
outside my laws and edicts' lucid ways—
outcastes with the lust of raiders and pirates.
Nested like spiders in green bays,
they hoisted sails to loot with kris and club,
hoarding gold and jewels and
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