Q&A

You may not want to barge in through the chimney
'Cos at least Opportunity knocks at the door.

We'll put out the milk and the cookies
We'll sit by the tree with bated breath
But Age will serve to tell us
That it's another no-show;

For silver hair live out our golden years
Before our bronzed skin is taken
By the things we fear.

Eyes will glisten and
Hearts will listen
As radios speak of
A Berlin night of terror
After Aleppo waited in horror
and the world didn't seem to bother.

Santa,
Santa
For all your gifts
Your hand-crafted blessings to Mankind
- does world peace happen to be
one of them?

I know
they say everything is nicer in
black and white
But we're all still after colour,
chasing rainbows we cannot ride.

To paint is to taint but to sketch,
To sketch
is a means of drawing hope
from our deepest reserves and sometimes
Sometimes
That's not a bad thing.

Dust the dirt off your carousel
Whisper
Shout
(Sound like you mean it)
There is plenty
to be Merry about.

In time gone by

If Dream had a best friend it'd be the acrid smell that rain leaves - no, hangs - in the air, suspended not by wires and ropes but nagging persistence and a little companion called Hope.

If Dream had a face it'd be nondescript; the kind which gives little away.

If Dream had eyes they would be soulful like dirt, and you could look into them, and at that very moment you look into them you would see into a world of possibilities. They'd just be a vision, in a dark, extensive, elusive experience beneath his eyes.

If Dream had a hobby, it'd be running, so no one could ever catch him (but they'd all keep on chasing).

If Dream had a dream it'd be made up of the things he fears the most, and yet it takes courage to fear.

If Dream had a favourite colour it'd be blue because the sky is the limit - it's just that there's no one to tell us there's nothing up in it.

If Dream had one last day on Earth the planets would all stop spinning and watch with wry smiles on their faces; time will play a fool, and Dream will lend himself to the very air he breathed, slowly carrying him beyond existence.

Fortune's always hiding

No moon is too blue,
and yet no flag too white
You join this late game
of darts and sights.

Gaiety glances are shot

and questions abound

But they're cunningly cerebral

And it's loss that I've found

Words have a curious way

Of reigning themselves in

Absent then, of course, are

The things I truly mean.

To keep another's words

In a time-tested safe,

And to think they keep yours

Takes a measure of faith.

When silence glares at you
with its head in the clouds
You begin to wonder
if thinking's allowed.

(What's worse...)

Happy endings are a problem

We can never mend, for

Whatever happened to

Being happy before we end?

Untitled

Maybe

if we ignored the darkness

Then

the light would have no excuse

for not showing up.

Ghosts in city lights

Perhaps words
are people
with bipolar disorder;
now they are dying to be said
when we are all living to die;
the manic meandering
through lost fields of coherence

then, moments later,
not looking too wise
nor frightfully fearless
- they are here to stay

and yet they lie in wait
still they stand in line
to traverse the sky
side by side
on another day

51

The thing about birthdays is, time
- in all its fleetingness - heaves to a halt
and stops to smile; an aesthete pausing
to admire a painting in a museum of
memories we hold onto by the string of
a kite performing pirouettes in the weighty air.

Birthdays are, to too many people,
a lesson in the art of appreciating the ones
we too often fail to appreciate;
celebrating the triumphs
we too often sour with defeats.

But you can't do justice to a cup of ice lemon tea
without a piece of lemon.

.

Your birthday bash will be back at the Kallang this year - I hope
you still remember those times, even if
it's now a dome that we can't really call a
home; an architectural feat to behold, yet
one without a
soul
Is the grass greener there?

Tonight we shall sing for you,
all 5 million of us, and
25 in Brazil will wonder
who will sing for them. They will

run, jump and fight

for you

They may even watch you - yes,
you and your birthday bash, but
you will not watch them.
They may be in Rio
but there is to be no Redeeming.

You're in a mid-life crisis.
An ecosystem of tastes, ebbing
away - you see, it takes more than
six letters to spell 'hawker'.
A heartland wonderland, where
kids come and play - football
and catching into the dark of day.
But it is no more; today you build barriers
yesterday it was the railings
- how long before you stop
voiding the void in our decks?

I'd like to think that when we age
we leave a part of ourselves behind -
a morsel of the birthday cake
left uneaten, a crumb
carried away by the ants
into holes we cannot see,
spaces we cannot enter.

You're still the same, yet not
quite the same; you're a flapping bird
in an endless game. You try to paint
your feathers here and there:
a ferris wheel, a casino,
and the lavish marriage of nature
and the man-made, where trees
can feel more super than they already
are. Lewis Hamilton will tear the streets. Some
even say you've put on a short skirt and bought
a pair of Oakleys you thought you'd look
good in. But what if I told you that
it's okay to grey, that when the tides
come in and the Merlion has had
its laugh, I don't expect to see a
fifteen-minute fireworks display.
What if I told you that it's actually a pity
that people come from all over the world, and
they board the Flyer, as if they can
see the real you from up there. All I'm saying is,
don't try to be something
you are
naught.

And I know I'll grumble, l'll tempt -

no, test

the line your Father drew in the

Changi sand. I'll curse myself for 

knowing you, for writing to you at all. But

I also know that when all is said and done,

that when the bright lights and awe-ful
sights have had their say, you are still
that crescent moon that follows me in the car.

In a chorus of 'lahs' and 'lehs' I find the you
I know - not a hipster hyperbole but a
no-nonsense nanny
not a H&M human Christmas tree but a
discount-preying
4D-praying
parking coupon-strategising
queue-curious
bee hoon loon on
a daily prescription of Yakult.

You are the number one of
number ones
or at least you try to be;
fyi, NUS is top in Asia,
which is, frankly, not surprising, given
their avant-garde orientation camps.
On to the more obscene,
let's see whose neighbourhood can
put up the most flags.

Speaking of flags - you are the
commuter-harassing
tin can-juggling
uniformed student
with the kempt haircut
and "non-striking" shoes - that is,
if there's a good reason it's called "Flag Day"
and shoes could actually go on strike.
(SMRT can help with that)

Like all middle-aged souls
you are desperately trying to find
yours, only,
you don't have to.
You don't have to identify
your identity or define
what defines you
because you just are.

Alpinists never use the word 'conquer'
so please don't climb the mountain to get
to the top
climb it
because it is there.

You may have put on shades.
You may have dyed your hair.
But
You are still that crescent moon that follows me in the car.
Only a slender crescent, yet
ever so
whole.

--
First time writing in free verse on here so please let me know what you think...

P.S. Sorry, the stanza on Team Singapore at the Rio Olympics was written before Mediacorp announced its last-minute deal with rights holders to broadcast the Games 'live'.

Silent and sure

A congregation in constellation

Faithful and far

The world an endless question

Under a sky full of stars.

--

I grew up on 'Calvin and Hobbes' but it never gets old because Bill Watterson was always presently futuristic.

Across the Causeway

I know night and day, and
I also know black and white, heck
I even know of,
"the dying of the light."

But here I am a headscarf,
coming into view,
and covering all the parts,
of the things I thought I knew.

I am visiting my neighbour
(she's fifty-nine this year)
and now that I'm on her turf,
I find her kind of queer.

A world away
Across the Causeway
I know now for sure
This is a world
a way.

Bishan Street 24, at a coffeeshop for Sundays

Teh-tarik mornings chalked in fine print
Condensed worldwide wisdom (or lack thereof)
Soft-boiled sentences and runny lines
Bread-and-butter, matters that matter,
Hail,
The life of a dying newspaper.

Louis Armstrong thinks to himself...

The Earth is weeping.

The Earth is weeping because she shivers on a summer's day in June, a warm afternoon, yet cold as the touch of frost; Frost, who once lamented, "and miles to go before I sleep."

The Earth weeps.

The Earth weeps because her residents are too busy to be humans; too busy firing and wiring weapons, too busy fighting for peace. Fighting. For peace. That's why we drop bombs on people who dropped bombs on us.

The Earth weeps because her inhabitants are too deep in debate to be deep in thought; too obsessed about who you should be allowed to love to actually love; too busy flattering the ones that "matter" to praise the Earth's quaint hills and luscious gardens, to look up at the sky and exclaim, "How nice."

The Earth weeps because these days, "niceness" is defined by one's acts of compassion and courtesy, as if one must "go the extra mile" to be a human being; as if it's not in us to do the right thing; as if we don't expect that of ourselves.

The Earth weeps because she realises she can't expect that, not when her world has descended into a wintry picture of its former self. Hatred has grabbed her by the collar; Heartlessness has poached her heart; Grief, well, Grief couldn't even look her in the eye.

The Earth gently weeps, for her beings are no longer being and the living are no longer live.

The Earth is weeping, but it's all just a teardrop

in someone else's ocean.

--
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xsP-J_-rv8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3yCcXgbKrE

A full void

The voices, they boom, and
I daren't call it noise
for they speak in tones of grandeur,
as if to portend their own
importance.

I can never quite understand,
how words can shoot like rockets,
how
they can seem to swallow each other up
- an hourglass choking itself.

My words, they glide on paper.
My thoughts, they float in mind.
That is not to say
I have nothing
to say
for this is just my kind.

Guffawing may be a thing,
but to me it's not worthwhile,
and when all break into hearty cheer
the most I can manage
is a smile.

The quiet, we are 'cold' souls
accused of nonchalance.
If only they knew
just how much
we knew
while not part of common parlance.

Sometimes I think they'll never know
(like a moon that can never know the sun)
the longing to speak with -
not to
- someone.

It's me, not to be loud,
And I'm pretty sure
that's
allowed.

--

Author's note: I think for many, silence is seen as a void - a gaping hole in a world of buzz and chatter - but for the quiet,  I think it makes the world whole.

Of tales told and stories sung

"He'd gotten the idea from a book, not unlike the one you last read and loved, whose lurid covers you have already forgotten. For a canvas, he used not his own skin but his very life, spending his days as if he were made up of the most telling bits of other people. To do this, he learned to watch quietly and look deeply, past the busy surfaces until he could discern the colours beneath, the ones that did not change. One by one he would name them as he wove them into his heart in the deep of night. He touched you once, borrowing pieces of your story in passing. They are here still, in case you wish to look."

--

Alvin Pang, 'What Gives Us Our Names'

Thoughtless thought

Quiet of the night
Noise of the mind
The dying of the light
Is wrought with thoughts.

A bruising day finds nature's way
What's the use of a picture of a picture?
Dabble in utility but some things just 'be'
The world, like it or not, is fraught with this lot.

A fixture of cocooned contemplation
Sometimes life's a poem that rhymes without reason
And the people walk by without a sigh
No ostensible regard for unreasoned treason.

A shadow lurks but lends to discovery
High-definition's all the rage these days
But chasing clarity has made us blur
We could see better when things weren't quite so clear.

Quiet of the night
Noise of the mind
There can be no thoughtful light
Without thoughtless darkness.

For a fear of fear

And yet again, I
find myself, at a
loss for  w
                   o
                        r
                            d
                                s

In the evening

At 6.15pm on a damp Friday evening, a 50 year-old train I am riding stages a play that is unknowingly playing. Some, with their feet, are shuffling. I, being discreet, am thinking.

The faces of my fellow commuters are worn, some bordering on forlorn. Rough week, perhaps. But that's just what I think every week.

Here, onboard this mover of the earth, exists a sacred silence. No words are spoken, no niceties uttered. There is a quiet order about things - the doors open, you hear the shuffling of feet, and then the doors close, as if to shut everything and everyone up. At each station, people make way, they wriggle their way through, and then they close themselves in. Here is a script with no lines of dialogue.

Within this still stampede of zombies, it is a crime to make eye contact. Passengers steal glances at one another, but they don't make artful thieves. Being caught staring earns you a look of exasperation. Eyes bounce off one another - they cannot, must not, lock. There is a line you cannot cross, a space you cannot enter. After all, we're told to stand behind the yellow line.

A lady fumbling with her possessions finally drops her phone. Heads dart towards the "commotion" - like prairie dogs alerted to danger. The poor lady - visibly abashed by her clumsiness - kneels down to pick her phone up, before the commuters turn away, returning to their private, enclosed worlds. The train chugs on.

I wish I was on a bus. Here, underground and sucked of sound, I stare out of the window, but I'm only looking in.

The train hiccups its way into the next station. As it inches along the platform, I no longer see a reflection of myself, but a reflection of something greater. Hope has been injected into the bleary-eyed commuters waiting on the platform. They may finally board the train. But it's not the glimmer of hope we usually think of. It's a kind of spent, wearied hope. At the end of the week all they wish for is to return home.

The doors slide open, as if waving to greet the boarding passengers. An extravagantly-dressed lady boards the train, flanked by equally flamboyant shopping bags that are too full of themselves. A single step of her high-heels attracts the awe of her fellow passengers, or is it disgust? The air reeks of opulence. At that very moment, a man clad in a plain white t-shirt with torn sandals sinks into his seat. I sink into the inequality of our world.

A student trudges onto the train - books heavy, feet heavier, heart heaviest. It is the start of the end of the week, but for him, it is a temporary end to routine. Respite. Brief respite. Two days, to be exact, of which a significant amount of time will be allocated for homework. Just the thought of it makes him light-headed.

The doors shut, before the most talkative person onboard reminds passengers, "Next station, Novena."

Some, being discreet, stop themselves from yawning. Now, with my feet, I am writing.

--

Author's note: My experiences on public transportation never fail to provide inspiration for my writing. The idea of me "writing with my feet" captures how my journeys empower me to write. I'm not sure if it's just me but I don't tend to use my phone like everyone else. At the risk of sounding like a creep, I prefer to observe my fellow passengers. Watching others tells me so much; looking out of the window, too. Sometimes we need to look out to look in.

Dreams

Sure
There would be
no disappointment
without expectations
no despair
without hope
no poor
without the rich

But
There would be
no triumph
without defeat
no success
without failure
no strong
without the weak

And there would be
no love
without hate
no pleasure
without pain
no will
without fate

no reality
without dreams

and for 
as long as we lose 
as much as we gain,
no misses -
but no hits too
- without taking aim.

All The Same

Beirut

Bangkok
Paris
Baghdad
Sarajevo
Jakarta
Istanbul
Brussels

At first, it would seem,

A list of travel destinations,

When really, it is just,

A reminder of our dereliction.

How a day, could begin,

With the hope of a new dawn,

And end, so suddenly,

A gory city torn.

This cause of yours,

Not at all worth a war -

When this travesty of religion

Is the tragedy of a nation.

How long before this red curtain call,

Before we extinguish these scorching flames,

Before we see that it's how we're all different,

That makes us all the same.

Untitled

Poets speak without talking
In a world where
People hear without listening.

Endless End

Time is finite
Time is precious
Time, it's unforgiving,
So go make your wishes.

Like a broken record
People say
'Carpe diem'
'Seize the day'

But
This tormentor Time
chases us in
majestic malevolence
robs us of
eternal enjoyment
dictates all our
advanced actions
sucks us dry
of youth
of spirit
of memories to be made.

Timetables
Timesheets
Time slots
Time rules
For us to rue
the day.

Left forgotten,
In the dust,
Like a bicycle flaked in rust,
Screeching to a halt
Squealing for another day.

Yet
Time flies with reckless abandon
Rushes us and our ambition
It moves on
With no amends
And so
We trudge towards,
Towards this endless end.