Wildflower

I.

You hated losing control of your life to strangers.
That time you fell in love, it was a bookfair and
a pair of nerdy glasses gazed right at you. She
wasn’t a chick, more a wildflower growing
by the roadside hoping to be picked up
by a good guy seeking flowers for his mom.
Her hands were soft, yet her heart callused
from fighting too many inner battles.
You wanted a rose, nothing short
of spectacular, so left her wilting to the dusk.

II.

How easy it is to be lonely and not know it.

Take aching shoulders, the fierce but subdued
longing for a pair of soft hands to rub those
hard rocks into cushions. The heart sighs on
its long flute of silence, wishing for the face
of a loved one to be the moon.

Perhaps she was that stranger you unwittingly
walked away from. Wildflowers swayed by the roadside;
mimosa brushed your soles giving up their dew to you.

How easy to miss all these: the phone call you rejected
in favor of dinner outside, cold shots at a bar hoping
against hope to get someone’s phone number
slipped in your breast pocket.

III.

Cats. Stray cats. See how they run
or reproach you with narrowed eyes as you
approach them. You judge your self-worth
by the way each stray flees or stays, trembling
like hamsters as you caress it close to its heart
canvassing for soft affections there.

How to Settle Into a Room

Put some music in it. Anything –

relieve the bass of your speaker
silent in its corner, the walls weeping
for some classical, some blues.
Chopin never works; metal, sometimes.
Violin pieces soothe a violent mood -
the fire burning cities through the veins. Stray

thoughts bought by the wind urge your
feet to dance, to drum, go somewhere
then somewhere. Eyes linger on imagined seas –
ripples are moods becalmed, inner storm
tamed by rising, then dipping waves of

song. Toes wriggle once more their futile
attempt at flight; the hour inexorably escapes
no matter mind’s chosen escapades.

So you choose to trace the light curves
of wind, slide fingertip over your lips teasing
that caged smile into being. The horizons
glimmer beyond the window broken
by construction noises. Like freshly-caught
fish the feet turn still, tamed by a song.

Plump Package

Touch is transient. Your hair smells
of lonely nights shampooed into one
fine silk. Your skin is some baby
fresh bath i can't quite place a
finger on. Bonding time is a bench
where my arm tries to shawl itself
around the package of you: plump
postage of love that tangles for
a happy night, then delivers herself
to another man tomorrow.

Past the Lonely Patchwork of Night

How quickly the night grows old.
Like sitting with a bitter at the bar
only to realize they're shutting the pool
table after a few sips. Or how the sky
wisps darker after the assassin's wept
his final gun-song in the movies. Credits
rolled out from your visa after a good
sing on life with the cabbie. What did he
say, you ask, leaving a blank where a
status should have been. (Kudos to the guy
who returned your dropped wallet - but
he's gone now.) Back home, the kitchen stove
stutters to blue life; the noodles tastes
of several long nights thrown together.

If only it were ramen, you muse, slurping
the mess down with half-hearted milo.
If only someone's hands could knead
magic, pat the dough of lives together
the way egg melts on a quilt of leavened
flour, beside a window where the lonely
room pulses against a universe of lights.

Post chaos

Today, you will leave the universe
how its spans: world rotating on its
canvas of day & night, birds flocking
in formative obedience of the wind's
mouth; the active or passive voice you'd
take with members of the office. For words
occur when the need for words arises.
You speak not of weather, how cars
choreograph their dance of swerves &
short rage; or politics governed by the
hues of faces in the office. Tongues
will bless or curse the world as how
the leaves fall with wind's command.
You map yours by the pen in your hand.

Shoulders

Newly incubated from loneliness, her hair
falls in fresh waves on my shoulder. We
share a long ride toward imprisonment
or joy of days: some station she'll stop,
sling her bag in defiance of the world,
click off on concrete, steel of heels.
They will fade as the train doors close
while I will lean my head on manicured
glass, feel the draught of shoulders &
ponder the comfort of sharing them
like common places on a morning train.

Lost Buttons

You rattle off your list of sundries
then groceries, while I fall into the motion
of silence - letting my gaze do the talk
of surveying the mall after purveying you.
Perhaps you are blessed with a silver
tongue or the charm to conjure every
passerby's attention to you with the spell

of soft gaze. I do not know. Your long gown
brushes the ground and I suppress a tender
tendency to remind you of dropped things:
apples; a dollar that's escaped the folds
of pockets; a lost key whose soft clink
drowned out the volume of voices; my gaze

dropped at the floor as if pursuing
lost buttons

Throngs

Mornings open not the shutters of your eyelids.
Rushed rides, not happy, says a psychologist,
who probably took the mean of countries’ statistics
to make this statement. So, explain the lethargy
of eyelids, how they gaze at train throngs
like a movie one harbors no wish of watching.

You sneak sleep on the Reserved seat, pray
the old man lumbering on board is staunch enough
to refuse the seat you will not offer. Eyes
glued to phones require no permission to steal
glances at yours. How that woman wafts her
scent of cherries. This man’s crotch planted at
eye-level negates your smile at her smell of cherries.

That fiver-year old needs a lesson on balancing.
Once more this book of poems fail to intrigue
your hands. The young girl beside dips her
head toward your shoulder. A glad support – except
that you are not her boyfriend, so withdraw the
unwitting cushion of your shoulder. Besides this

seat, what else serves as the day’s logwood
over a sea of commitments? Train doors aren’t
ghost doors till they open at your station: get
down, get out, take the people-thronged path to
an office that holds no sympathies with your wish
for five-minute coffee before flipping on the laptop.

Poem to Mor(u)ning

To conquer the lands of tension, I have tried

different remedies: dreamless sleep, subjugating

the bed-monsters that cannot be once controlled

by human means; letting go the need of choping

a seat on the morning train; discarding my KPIs;

addressing the boss as “bro” & saluting him

in his Room of War for free black coffee; leashing

my heart to my chest & offering it those

who would not hold a finger to my throat – yet these

visitations of the mind run like a film reel,

like the mad train bounding on its endless tracks;

my breath force-slowed in longer exhales

as I pull the handbrake on a headlong life.

Were We Told in Class to Grasp Mindful Listening

Watching her solo concerto was

scarier than mannequins through glass.

Her pupils dilated; she conveyed riddles

in gestures, hair falling from a middle

parting mussed up by a hand whose

slender wand I could not pose

any spell of defense against. She gazed

at a point above my nose, fazed

over the impacts of positive perspective

(quite unaware of fools seeking God's directive

to blind the fall of lips, eyes, hair

and sound of her voice that made the air

shimmer with heat and music). The lecturer,

suddenly rising, intervened like a treasurer

of time to break the class up for notes.

I scrawled a name below Carl Rogers' quote

on _______ and change. The mind fractures
on reasons. The heart authors its lectures.

Laws of Attraction

Picking bits of fried fish off
the porridge, your heart races
to find an answer to why
two ants repel each other.
Two leaves' friction in mid-fall,
both pasting the pavement to point
in different directions like two South poles.
The magnet that kept you glued to
your food has long since repelled it -
rejected, the porridge sits cold. Two
flowers fall from a tree; the evening crowd
divides and merges like fish. Each a
stranger bearing no law
of attraction to each other.

The Other Self

Your thoughts race from sunrise

till sundown like F1 circuitry,
or a television gone static.

Every notion of solitude in
a room makes you quiver
like a butterfly in your own body.

Your eyes are danger beacons
looking for someone to warn
of the perils of living, little knowing
it’s your life that you are
intent
on fixing.

I withhold from you my number
in fear of your incessant contact.
Too much of a moment gets you
sizzling; too little, and the winter
strikes the cold whites of your eyes.

I am aware of you dogging
my shadow sunup till sundown.
Perhaps you

are the shadow, my

own thoughts intoxicated
with dark solitude

yet I wish you
away from me,
and I wish you
away
from me.

Into the Wilderness Once More

A forgotten pleasure, this
turning away from cyber
sorrows to absorb the lush
wafts of manicured meadows -

Or rather, the lawns procured
by town councils charged
with the sheer mandate of
development and neatness
of a new town estate.

Legs orbit the pedals
like mirrored moons
and my bike is some
Troy machine of war
scattering the sparrows,
pigeons and mynahs

dividing stranger from
stranger and myself
as my lips imbibe
the voice of wind
whispering joys forgotten
granting names to lost
tokens of the wayside

the hands finally
letting loose
its
taut
grip
on life’s
handlebars
of ruled 
occurrences.

Shy Piece

Last piece dogging
the dish; the table folk
trade glances, then share

that pagkain with a guest
clueless of their cultural
norm: last abstinence.

Ayos, someone says.
“For you, kain!” (smile) I know
how paiseh feels – pink

cheeks meek with health, wealth
of friends – Filipino humor.
It’s just not a good time

to take it.

PDA

Those couple cuddling by train's corners,

they probably know the cold storms of

strangers, staring; yet desire, stoking

fire between their limbs and lips

forces them to smother the crusading
face, locate reddened spots for smooching.

Whether in twain, two become snakes
or passive cats adulting adoring humor
only the teenagers know. I'm inclined to
sink my chin even lower below dimples'
crevices on my device - almost kissing it -
and bless the young creatures their trials
of trysts - (not) guilty of my time on my PDA.

Job Seeker

That tipsy state of midnight sorrow
will not drag the rabbit out
of its hole. And head buried
in burrows of worry, neither
will you find your lost
dollar. The periwinkle flower
once blossoming strong in
your palm, shredded into petals
of worry as you stuff it fisted
in your pocket. Last week, a
hole broke, dropped pennies
for unnamed tramps. Toast
and coffee were all you could
cough up, cowering in a kopitiam
amid this towering city. Yet guilt

has no place in one's life - once
you chastened my beaten mood.
I reach out with the long probe
of a finger, lift your chin to indulge
the flame of the setting sun as it bows
its way beyond the sands of gold.

Over a Kopi

brewed from memory.

I met you over a cup of kopi. Rather, two kopis, my lobang of initiative to lure you closer into the cozy ambience of table talk. Sips of brown murk, shale burning our tongues. I coaxed your history out of your initial reluctance to lay out your life like a map, like kaya. Later, you lay a hand on my lap – we molded our lives into one thick toast. Then long beach walks, the sun blazing your scrawny skin a tanned brown. I licked your hand the color of biscuits. Fingers – your salt and shingle filled my mouth; the evening sun pooled around your thighs. Then, I failed to fill you with the thrust of my promises for tomorrow. Seagulls forgot the special names we gave each of them but seagulls. Kopi tasted of distant surfs from different seasides. What resides is the murk in cups, sentiments the sand has left in my scoops to build a castle for two.

Paradise

It gnaws at my eyelids, bidding
me sleep. Eighteen hours spent fumbling
for job, food, later keys to the heavy
grilled door. Somewhere, contentment
rots like the handicapped's art in a drawer.

I dial the PIN to the wall safe, inspect
its contents of expendables. Somewhere
a mouse squeaks above the silent
church of my house, then above the
soft Chopin I stereo on to drown
the silence. I note its simple cares:

a crumb dropped from last supper's
crackers. Lord Jesus smiles
on a wall: Seek and ye shall find.
Beneath, a cousin's doodling handiwork:

Nature Provides.

The Waking

Because the mysteries of light are unsolvable.
Because it rests on my eyelids like moths,
fluttering for dear life, scattering immunity
against the pulsing waves of sleep. I open
the curtain-eyelids of windows and there,
light plays like cats on distant sills. Birds
take flight because of its insistence
that they find food, some common psalm
of joy. The man-made fountains by the
malls wink in its reflections, refractions
like so many disc-plates threaded by children
at art class. Once light bounced off my plate
as I tilted it to catch the rainwater. A stray
ray, sudden as epiphany, swift as lightning
cast like an answered prayer from clouds.
Because my heart strains to lay a claim
on sleep, as moths do in the face of light.

How the Mynahs Forage

A lone ranger. Puffing up his black chest 

like a conceited child to call the rest.
Soon they arrive: one, two, three tarred feathers
knowing the grains’ somewhere atop a stray

tray. Dark cloud forays into darker clouds.
Stray grains invite a growth of storm
or is it rude beggars clawing over dropped
coins? Only the leader’s arrival splits

the flock. He is a monarch striding, pecking
his subjects’ feathers to cleave a path
to enthronement. Only, the Bully arrives,
cleaner uncle whipping hurricanes of cloth

and vile words. The mynahs flee like a ghost

seeking nirvana in the heavens heaving
its own wrath.

Sticks of Wrath

“Toilet”, he mouthed, over the balloon

heads of patrons, throwing me the sales floor.
I know his excuses: claiming a hyperactive
bladder so he could light up another stick
of wrath, drag on it like a man peeved with
the longer haul of work and day.

Once, in the empty shop, I asked him
what favors he’d found with cigarettes.
“Oh, smoking kakis, you know,” he rasped, sizing
me with that right eye squinter than left.
“It’s a drag to cure my people-anger.”

He flees the shop like a cat on meds.
The sales floor is a sea of creatures
seeking their choice of food. I pat the
stick he’s left, poison-candy in my breast
pocket. I remember sucks, a coughing start, vile
bile of days choked on a lit stick-puff.

The city rolled by like neon tombs in a desert.
Cold clinks of glass, two hackling sips,
the night lonelier than liquor.

My colleague slinks back, a dapper dog.
Sometime in the day he will put his
tail between his legs, sneak out to air
job miseries on a glowing stick.

The Barista

Afternoons pass like dark cups of coffee.
Barista’s etched a mural on a face of froth,
wishes me welcome with a trace of something
like sadness. Over time, he’s worked his way into

turning his back on patrons, smiling through
mural art. One day, I caught a koala bear

dozing on brown rock, missing dot on a paw.
It woke – its belly halfway gone into the maw

of my abyss. Dark froth gurgles the way empty
afternoons do. Perhaps a giggle at empty
expressions a barista’s bear-like face can bear.

He turns, udders more froth from a coffee-time-
machine, squeezes once more the giant pen,
creams in waves over another fresh coffee.

the man in the moon

tonight, the man in the moon

hides behind clouds his globe.

grandfather of worlds, chief

general of oceans, magical staff-

fingers drawing quilts of tides

over every sleepy child’s eyes.

tonight, he failed to draw the

shades over my eyes. a lizard

on the darkened moon of my

ceiling lamp befriends me. years

ago I would’ve crawled under the

double blankets of my eyelids,

shivering like a lizard-child.

years later I recall the crinkled

grin of granddad, how he used

to languish over my crib, face

shiny as the man in the moon

tonight, I search out his face drawn

by constellations of nothingness,

the way stars are born and perished

the way the man in the moon touched

my tiny baby face, played with my

tiny baby hands, and vanished

Living in the 8ights of Things

Today’s lucky number is 8: 8km/h 

on the treadmill. 8 pushups because you
can’t hit 20^th. 8 jumping jacks, the last leap

sending pigeons flying, breaking imagined
windows. 8 sips of kopi before you consume
8 spoonfuls of rice for 8 dollars.

The ache in your chest is no more than
a longing: getting up at 8am, taking
to the lawns at 8 minutes past 30.

8 crows ring a plate of leftovers, gobbling
faster than 8 salesmen gobbling down the
kopitiam.

8888^th heartbeats later, you will reach
your workplace. 8 emails blink like the

wink of cats. You take the 7^th, drag out

8 fingers at keyboard (88 words per minute),

fold in thumbs like wings of birds and
leave no. 8 for after the 80^th song, before

8.08pm when you drag your corpse in
bus no. 8 home.

Zahir

He holds my hand like an injured pigeon.

Heart beating like a sparrow I lead him
across the MRT, two guys entwined by
a hand. My eyes are daggers piercing off
unwanted stares. I ask him for destination.

“Bus stop outside,” he smiles, handsome 20s
guy in sunshades, one side attached with
audio device to track his tapping stick.

Handsome blind fellow in sunshades I lead
him to the bus stop. We talk as we go along:
sadness, loss of sight, childhood trauma, thick
glasses, surgery, less sadness, acceptance

of the permanent

abyss

of vision.

“I’m working at a restaurant,” he says. His eyes
are phantoms; his lips curl in a grin that’s
whiplashed
the worst of chagrin.

He tells me he’s getting
married in three months, his fiancé
having weighed the loss and gains of

blind spots: how passersby passed him on
like temporal caretakers at strange locations,
finally into her good hands. He whispers
a prayer of gratitude at my appearance.
His eyes, like his heart, are oceans.

I ask how he sees the bus numbers.
“Oh, I ask people, you know,” he shrugs,
oblivious of the sea choking up my chest.

If We Should Talk

If we must talk, let it be of purple twilights
and the way silence hobbles across the fields
like an old man comfortable with his rheumatism.

If we must talk, let it be dragons, unicorns, elves
hidden in crevices between the creeping leaves
and how the wind galloping over your back
are my fingers gently winding your wet hair
to curl the moisture out of its rope.

If we must talk, let it be nudges, caresses
and the small ways you push me from your body
as though too much contact was reserved for leaves,
the birds. They hold court with the wind, conferring on
who has the clearer rustling call.

If we must talk, let it be green lawns and taiji
we do as one at dawn. Growing old with you,
living in the city yet holding the retro thoughts
of kampong folk; long walks on paths, rain-dried,
a stray chicken or dog beside, and always, the
green green lawns.

If we should talk, let our peace with strangers
pervade the landscape, and us in quiet marriage
with slow dusk, savoring its dewdrops on our lips.

RIP 曾火桂 - Poems

棋敬诗

曾日光阴如盘棋
车战炮火逢贵人
百河汉边桂综师
只惜火燕归天榜

Moth Waltz

The moth eggs in my wardrobe have
vanished now. Not long ago, I found
a moth, mistook it for a butterfly
save for its law of attraction to light.

For months, moths of different shades
danced beneath my washroom lamp.
I sense them like ghosts in the shower, 
breaking reverie with water to admire

their soft fluff of wings, steep dive & climb
like lifelines patterned on my wall. That night, 
moths traced a new horizon on your cardio 
monitor. They might've danced over your face

before doctors drew the curtains over it. They
might've retired to waltz their transient waltz
in the shade of ceiling lamps at the void deck,
where you'd burnt the chess tables with
stubs from your cheap cigarettes.

The moths don't lay eggs in my wardrobe anymore.

For Old Fire Who Passed By
R.I.P. 曾火桂

1.
He passed like sparrows knew the wind
knew rough of leaves, knew the still landing
of dead twigs by your feet. He passed
like ghosts lost in corners of the void deck,
chanting & whispering their stories of living,
pushing pawns, puffing cheap rolled cigarettes,
sipping kopi or teh donated by white-haired kakis.

(Ah Gui ah? He never come for two weeks already)
(No one beats him at chess except you, ah boy)

He passed like fire, moths dancing beneath aged
ceiling lamps as old stooges push their last
pawn into foray with their final days: Time

chronicled its passing by tracing one more
line on his face snailing into dark wood
grains on the altar I have not visited.

2.
Joy for him was coffee, cigarette, xiangqi,
and later, teh, after he got worn of coffee.
Kopi-C his choice, humbug mouth soothing
the smoke-foam rising out of thousandth cup;

shaky finger pressing cannon too weak to
squash an ant braving the bombardment
of ceramic pieces on our chessboard.

Most of all his laughter, carefree, cantankerous
as only old men who's beaten cancer know how
to laugh; the dark snakes of his eyes seething
with cunning at slaughtering my other chariot.

Next game, and the next, through years I repaid
the debts of checkmates. They evoke his wild
laugh, that of defying his one more loss, that
of handing his baton of prowess to my youth,

his humbug smile framed at the altar
of memory.

RIP 曾火桂

His name is 曾火桂, former A division national player of Singapore in the 1980s.

Tonight, I got wind this old soul passed away less than 2 weeks ago. He's been my erstwhile chess opponent and indirectly, teacher for many years. We'd sit at the cosy little bird-filled corner at blk 263 Sengkang, later Hougang Interchange, playing chess merrily till the evening. His old friends would supply him with another cigarette, he'd light it & puff away, warning me of being thoroughly refreshed & that a good thrashing for me was coming. Initially, it was a miracle I could take him down in any game, given his old bag of 'street-tricks' picked up over many games and years. Now, I could hold more than my fort with him, but that's besides the point.

Truly, he's kept the flame of chess alive for me, more so the spirit of street chess: spontaneous, played anywhere without a care for the world. Zeng reminded me what it was like, being simultaneously young and old through a shared pastime.

Zen between two noses, two shared minds.

Last I played him was a month or so ago. Now he's mysteriously disappeared- I only got news tonight of his supposed passing.

I really owe it to him for my improvement in chess & the sheer pleasure of hours we exchanged rooks and cannons under the clouds. It is indeed my honor to have absorbed his skills.

If pawns could respawn at the end of the line, I'd trade all five on my chessboard for his renewed lease of life with God.

It is therefore only right I pay my last respects to him.

Moth Waltz

The moth eggs in my wardrobe have
vanished now. Not long ago, I found
a moth, mistook it for a butterfly
save for its law of attraction to light.

For months, moths of different shades
danced beneath my washroom lamp.
I sense them like ghosts in the shower,
breaking reverie with water to admire

their soft fluff of wings, steep dive & climb
like lifelines patterned on my wall. That night,
moths traced a new horizon on your cardio
monitor. They might've danced over your face

before doctors drew the curtains over it. They
might've retired to waltz their transient waltz
in the shade of ceiling lamps at the void deck,
where you'd burnt the chess tables with
stubs from your cheap cigarettes.

The moths don't lay eggs in my wardrobe anymore.

Why I Will Not Have Children

I.

Mynahs raining around the hawker centre,
families of black commotion. Nearby, a pair
of young parents feed morsels of fried
carrot cake to their toddler. He is a bundle
of noise, refusing tablespoons of something
like congee; quiets finally at the cradle
of mama’s loving arms.

Close by, I roll my eyes at houseflies
doing the courtship dance over
my cup of kopi.

II.

I did not wish to trouble my parents any farther.
Rented an apartment, stayed out and listened
to birdsong, insomniac near each dawn. Soon,
an affinity with early arising, taking the cool
and dawn-colored parks as acoustic hall for self-
repressed strolls. Loneliness was a dog held on a leash,
walked by an owner whose long hair flamed the
color of beng-ness. His arms and legs, tattooed to infinity.

III.

Age of three. 

In my mind is an image of me reaching up
for basketball. Then mother falling
ill after nursing well my fall and cold, 
sleeping on my dried patch of urine so I
could have the clean patch of the queen-sized bed.

IV.

I will never have children, I once told
a potential mate. She remains a lover
in my department of contacts, someone
to love away the cold and lonely nights.

October creeps on the dark roof of my hair.
I wait for the question my parents
will pop next about her; 

resigned, perhaps, to picking up
a guitar. Make my living in bars, singing
with her the long and lonely years away.

The Story Beyond a Song

The Story Beyond a Song

Summertime Sadness drowning the senses
and you're not satisfied, you confided,
unclipping your headphones to glare
like a chauvinist at buildings as if they
had offended the neon dark.

"We are slaves of this Age!" you rasped,
raising a hand as if denouncing the gods
of music. A twinkle found its star
in your stare and I was simply contented
to feel the static of my hand attending yours.

A lone star winked - or was it a passing
lamp? I could not tell. Neither did I care
if this soft hardness was your shoulder
or my pillow; contented, to close my eyes
and feel the trundle of train between us
like a live animal vibrating our wrapped thighs.

The Blind Er-hu Man

Blue is the color of heat

creeping up cheeks, the dewy 

waft of er-hu sounds to ears

strung with everyday industrial

noise, sound of an old man strumming

for a prayer of brilliance through sunglasses,

for a coin to shine his pocket

now lined with tissue waste and hungry days,

a dirty hanky used to wipe blue heat

off the pockmarks of his face. Time

is a race to serenade each passerby 

with aubades deep as subterranean streams,

cajoling folks to look away from phones -

look here - stay here and listen - 

for someday in the midst of meals or sleep

you and I will have the soft quilt pulled

over our faces - faces we tried to chisel 

our days of blue youth in -

the way the er-hu man covers his face

of seasons at nightfall, and sleeps beside
the walkway- repeats - his song of alms.

Bluebird in the Heartlands

That tree by the window grew
a blue leaf last night. The bluebird
sang on its branches, a phantom's
song that hung a blue mist around the sun.

The HDB blocks, flecked blue, white & blue
in the last general elections of residents
votes. Out of town, I missed my ballot.
These days, rain's ballads keep me going

beneath tin walkways painted blue, color
of peace disturbed at night by boys at playground.
They frustrate the bluebird in her sleep.

This is why she sang no more - until one
night, fearful of shadows, she burst into
song, a vocal flower in sudden bloom.

She moved into my chest this morning,
found birdseed & an old, low fire to
keep her going. I hear her sing in times
when the draught of days turns my nose blue,

when the public drift like leaves outcast
from trees of life, of being, dying infinite
deaths by their bowed heads & light
from tunneled screens.

Moonwatching

The moon hangs
like an orb of insolence against
the tides of day, changing
hue by hue.

Arms clasping heads we sync
 our thoughts beneath a canvas
of sky always helpful with stars dotting
dreams to eyes downcast an eternity

on devices. A long moment dies
like wind; we do not speak
nor feel the need of pouring
sounds to soothe a void. It

is there, this thunder of thoughts
wifi-ed between our heads, and I
bask in your strands of hair drawn
near by wind, perfumed by your presence.

A Bottle of Water

I.

Pigeons quenching thirst in a roadside puddle. You turn to face the sun, partake of too much
shine to be mistaken for wine – pupils flared
with fire like swallows spotting far-flung land.

Salvation is drinking too much heat to be sick. Where locals hide their faces on air-con buses
you conquer the roads on the rickety edge
of an old bicycle.

II.

Pigeons quenching thirst in a roadside puddle.
How glad I am for water
bottled in a secret compartment
of my haversack. On grassy edge,
an old pigeon flops wing-spread as if sun-
tanning, or burdened by too much heat.
(She does not appear to be laying eggs).

Around, her young broods jostle for
life in a puddle. My bottle cap could
serve as water-trough, yet the incoming
bus ploughs down my hopes and theirs
in a wheel-screech, taking a leak
on the road as it throws widespread
its wings of doors at the bus-stop.

III.

Pigeons quenching their thirst in a

roadside puddle. So you turn toward

the sun, partake of too much shine

like wine, spread your heart like birds

of joy, send a prayer for the water bottle

mom's troughed in your haversack.

Mary Oliver's A Poetry Handbook - and experiential sharing

Mary Oliver's A Poetry Handbook is a dead useful teacher on the techniques and technicalities of poetry (writing). She mentions "a poem's great weight of glittering pulls it down", "I like to say I write poems for a stranger who will be born in some distant country hundreds of years from now. This is a useful notion, especially during revision. It reminds me, forcefully, that everything necessary must be on the page....  like a traveller in an uncertain land, it needs to carry all that it must have to sustain its own life - and not a lot of extra weight either.",

But most of all:
"It is also good to remember that, now and then, it is simply best to throw a poem away. Some things are just unfixable".

So true for life as well! We all have tried to pen a poem some point or other in our lives when we were down or needed comfort. A minority of us progressed to make poetry-penning part of our lives. Yet an even smaller percentage pursues it formally in University - Literature.

How easy to just write and let go. After reading Oliver's work, may I just say I'm just beginning to see light on what true poetry writing is? It is a never-ending journey. I'm quite unnerved by the hard work one must put in in order to comprehend things more. Experience and imagination combine threads to weave a poem that holds its own world in self-sufficiency. Through the art of poetry, I think I'm just beginning to appreciate that excessive glitter really weighs one down..

The hallmark of a good poem is its ability to transfer its experience, without attachment to the poet's life. You do not get to know the poet through the poem (usually). Poems are living creatures, magnificient as unicorns, nostalgic as a rainsoaked toy in the gutter, meant for us to love.

In a Watch Gallery

The watches stare at me as if their smug

faces hold riddles: hands frozen in 10-2 smiles
as the rich foreign tai-tais sauntering by
too eager to flaunt a purse or high ass.

Some watches contort as if in vain
of expressing human emotions: 4-8 sadness,
9-3 bummer. I catch one in the act
of sidling me a nasty grin: sitting still

for hours, luring a tai-tai to open up
her yearning, out credit card. The long
hours have taught my colleagues the art
of statue kung-fu: holding in paused-play our smiles

for loudmouthed Chinamen and Texan countrywomen.
One colleague chooses a watch, breaks it out
of mocking trance, winds it back to grin again,
like our slow bonds forged over smiles on aching lips.

Words in Supper

Over supper, dad speaks of leaving
one’s body on earth when he dies.
I glance at bread, my palm that lies
in lines; the coffee ripples as if believing

a statement it tries to solve in brown broth.
Words vaporize between us: this staunch
man I’ve loved for years, and the paunch
he developed digesting truths and wrath

from a boy. I bow my head, noting moon orbits
around his eyes, asteroids of storms and ages.
A sip – the coffee, cooled, like all beverages
simmer with time as ruminations absorb it.

The man raises a hand to pat my head, crinkles
the way I often do in photos, minus the wrinkles.

Fetal

She slurps wanton mee as her child
rests, fetal position. Watchful, eagle
eye cast over the lamp-halo of her girl’s
head. How it reminds me of you, fetal-
curled in my lap, tasking me with the role
of stroking your hair unto sleep, protector
of your brief crib from the snow wolves and bears.

Give-up Gloria on the Reserved Seat

Opposite, Stand-up Stacey smiles like a popsicle

in a trash bag. Beside, fat-assed with meaning,
old auntie glares like an old man missing a testicle,
says with her eyes, “Hey kid, how unbecoming –”

Regressed in rhapsody, I bite a retort –
Fat Stacey can break her glasses, chew on daisies
and the station wouldn’t hear a stop-train report
going off. “Auntie, you buy your veggies

standing up, comb afternoons at the market
for hot deals. Right now my legs are wobbling
like tofu. My buttocks have lost their bucket
of firmness. Can you stand your grandson hobbling

on crutches?” Curiously, Thought tendered its resignation
letter; my Heart stood up, as if by obligation –

To Conquer a Cat

To answer a cat’s sphinx riddle,
first look into her eyes. Amber-spirited,
temple of soul, they’ll tell you
the fate of your hand approaching
for a pat. Judge her temper now by the speed
of her tail. Come from the side, stealthy
as a rodent humbling itself to be eaten.
Your fate rests with how sneaky
your own paw can be, extended
like a fireman’s ladder to save her
from loneliness. As you advance, watch
the glowing coals of her eyes: slitted
request for contact, for fellowship. The catch
is to calm her ego with the palm of your
soul. Tame the runaway spirit. Bring the god
of trust back into the shrine of her eyes.
Let her reward your coming by the sacrilege
of her furry head rubbing against the pillars
of your thighs.

Feather of your presence

Feather of your presence floating
toward dusk. Too far for me to reach
yet your greeting comes in a text
message I would've missed if not for the
false companionship of strangers, so drawn
to cellphones like fireflies to light.

Bowed, somber heads forever missing
a rainbow's colored magic, connected to
consciousness beyond the loops of logic

Slowly, I reach out to you back in slow
reply, one eye on a stray cloud following
my bus, the other covertly trailing the arc
of a game on a girl's cellphone.

Quietly, the stray cloud settles.
My pilgrimage of you still treading
paths of amber shrouds home.

The Shop and the Children

The children play, brick by brick by brick
scattered over the floor, a mess for
mothers’ admonishment. Theirs hangs around,
vulture of supervision; she flashes me
a grin that devours my guts by

the cashier counter. Patiently, patiently, like
a weasel of its store of game for sale, I
wait – the children continue playing, their
mother hawks commands to “hurry up and go”
(some elder vultures are waiting).

Chuckling to self, refraining a bile
of impatience from welling up, I bid the boys
leave the toys on the floor – my next chore.

Strange how vultures know compassion too!
Her mouth, now crinkling like granny’s,
raptures me ten seconds deciphering
dimples for answers.

The boys are gone. Dread drops its
talon-weight; the shop seems suddenly
too endless for its shelves, awaiting
the next batch of boys to come and
scatter its toys over the barren floor.

The Taste of Bygones

I ordered her favorite plate
of sorrows, poured in
with steamboat soup.

The restaurant holds its proud past
in mahogany furniture, their armrests
rawer now, like rough wood
or the once sandy brush
of her arm resting on mine
like her head of fluff and inertia.

This air-conditioned wall, still
a pillow for work-worn heads
grateful to lay down their worlds.

The sparse patron scrapes
their plate clean of leftovers.

My soupspoon scratches
a tune and the soup thins out
its bittered broth. I am left

with a bile of phlegm on a napkin,
served by a soured owner
willing the years behind.

The River at Sundown

The river bears its share of monsters.
Deep splashes from depths
as you toss your own ghosts into it.
The stones sink without a ripple.

Over quaint shophouses the sun
plunges its flame, flares out the souls
of neon and sunder. I'm reminded the crowd
floats, fades in mid-walk, reappears
like dead kin. I befriend for the moment

the wind, flicking her hair like a temptress.
She pulls me by the fingertips somewhere,
a bank where no more lovers frolic and the
moon throws her pale face on the water.