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.