Thursday, May 21, 2015

A Lifetime Problem


At six, the way to school is filled with
construction noises, dust debris like
insolent children on the playgrounds nearby
to remind me that school is a tedious,
tardy, obnoxious place on the island of desolation.
One day, I asked my father for not going to school.
Now thinking of it, I could have asked for
a day of stakes, unlimited side dishes, and
that may have stood a higher chance
beside the impossible, and the harsh
pummelling that comes with my crudeness.
I don’t know what happened in him,
but he looked to the side; moments, I was worried,
thinking what happened to him, perhaps
what happened to me — for just staring
at his skinny, crinkled face. I thought
he’d sent me to my room after school,
to give me the gift of battering, or forbid me
to eat altogether, for what I said was a sin —
to the rustic upbringing of his disposition.
But, he took a breathe; I saw his rib
bursting from his overstretched shirt,
and no signs of anger in him. He spoke,
and asked me whether I want to speak
English and Chinese really well;
I said yes, for I had a talent — the child
naiveté. “Then go to school,” and he points
to the workers in yellow hats, reflecting the
magnificent sun rays that the day gives,
shining brightly from the iris of my eyes.
“Or you will end up like them.”
Childishly, I nodded; knowing nothing
different between me and the worker,
thinking we are all humans, and he can
speak. Perhaps read and write. So I
moved forward, not realising the differences. 
To this day, I can still remember how vivid
the scene was; a pouring of water
over my mind, and how a knock twelve-years ago
is now a departure for me: on the tarmac
road then, through the air now.

Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Sailing Adrift From the Moon

Once upon a time, a fisherman asks,
in the midst of fishing at night, dusk abounds, alas,
the sea, why it recites its hymns to the
fluctuations of the moonlight, why it
turns down its volume at night.

Then, the waves went raging, and the fisherman
hanged onto his boat. He went sailing,
slashing back-and-forth, surreptitiously seeking
the sanctuary as he moves on the unforeseen
journey, on such quiet, perhaps too peaceful a night.

Pounded onto a pool of rocks, he found himself
ceasing, shuddering to only an immediate halt, and
he took a breathe to feel a relief — in his
abrupt journey. He is now afraid to ask the question
again, for he thought it was punishment from Poseidon himself.

The fear did not last long. The dark mist dissipates,
revealing the long-awaited moonshine. He stared
into the globular light; his empty-minded eyes
reveal how he knows everything is a staged voyage
in a bag of tricks — to fool people of its supposed exhilaration.

Then, fortuitously, the fish, shells, pure rocks of virtuous heritages
rush their ways into his near-torn fishing net, and
stayed there for as long as he gasped for air,
like a butterfly trying to escape the dust in daylight —
in the city where it lives in. Only now entrapped for a long time.

Then, the waves went raging, and the fisherman again
hanged onto his boat. He went sailing,
only now sailing slowly, adrift in stasis, and in
the sanctuary that was unforeseen in his narrow mind.
But tonight is all, perhaps, too peaceful a night;

So he didn’t question the serendipity,
and let go of his preys, in much of a hurry,
for he knows he is sailing adrift because of the moon.
And he signed a quick, albeit tender gratitude to the enlivened night.

Thereafter, his ardent question never plagued him again.

Sunday, May 17, 2015

The Little Treasure from a Little Mind

I stood on the balcony of my mind       The
Prospect of waiting put me       And me only
On my journey to wish       A dream
That never ceases to fuel itself
Living in a pool of hawthorn encased by a treasure box
From my childhood       In it lives a story that
Should be concealed for years       That should not be opened

A painful moment       Now the years of yearning
Goes with the wind that blew by       I witness it fly
Fly       Fly with the wind So
I opened the box       To find what I hoped for years ago

The heavy chassis uplifts       Reveals
Pink       Red       Flowers that greeted my presence
Fragrance in the air       Supremacy reigns the room
With a quiet hiss of       “hi there”       Enough I thought
To pull the wreckages of my heart      Back together again

But in it is a letter        From myself       A tiny reminder in a tiny package
My ugly handwriting that I first cannot decipher
A cryptic clue to my own disposition

But with such quietude       What a tranquility I must’ve been in
No matter how cryptic I was still young
I should dismiss it I thought

But something reached me       “Read it”       Strong pulses to urge me
So I read       Appreciate the hawthorn       It says
But not too long       Just long enough to find the woods charming
Short enough to stand without fatigues
Then to find my way back to the reality       And bargain with the Fates
For a huge gift in the eventful course
      The latter I already knew to be the commanding truth

Now I am wrong       Now I am pulled back to life
Again       To greet time To bid farewell
And suffer in them       Be choked by them
A course that pettiness is needed more than ever

But now       From time to time
I still see the hawthorn in my mind       How it still is so vivacious
And now I know the reason why why the pink the red still blooms
And why the angel       Saying “hi there”       Dancing to her own rhythms
Appears again and again       From time to time

It all is a quiet godsend in itself

The Smell in the Car

It was a compact, silver-ridden, four-wheeled
monster; a beast to the eyes of a five-year-old,
who was also carsick easily,
and runs faster than even my mighty father.
The sanguine leather seat cover
stitched right down the middle of each oblong
cover, sheens a fainting colour

Into the thin air in the car. I didn’t know
how to oblige by the dictation
of catching colours, and
neither did I know why the leather smells
funny during summer, sad during winter.
I just kept my breathes tight, squeezing them,
like sewing a loosen bag of crops during

Harvest season, and I know I should not
ask my macilent father on why his car
smelled the way it did. I knew I would be up
for lectures, or some real beatings if he snaps.
Now, unlike the seats, the smells scintillate
even to this day, where my father
grows more taut, more bubbly in comparison,

And I cannot forget how the smell enthrals
me, haunts me, then warms me to
make me find comfort, making me tuck squirt
suavely in my own pain. And I, now caught in the stasis
of my own reveries and memories, can now
resort myself to the next day, without the smells,
the car, and my loquacious father. In tranquil.


Sunday, April 12, 2015

The Sad Life of A Cuckoo

A clear chirp. The morning chooses to
suffocate itself in a maelstrom of
thickened, but mostly thinned, air.
A cuckoo meets itself in the midst of fields,
a silent chuckle — too early in the morning,
farmers are not awake. The lucid sound,
travels to the farthest of farmland
to remind himself that the highway ahead
is his own enfer. The sad, lonely reminder
that he owns the place. An unwavering
chirp, again and again, strikes the imbalance
that the ripened grains accidentally trigger.
A clear chip, continually resounds itself
until the end of day, reminding people the
sad life of a cuckoo. Yet nothing echoes.

Friday, April 10, 2015

Befriending a Leopard

I walked on a chilly, slow road everyday.
Pace usually shudders to halts.
Why? — Waiting for surprises to hit me,
while expecting nothing but cool,
invisible flames roaring into my body.
Not eroding me. Though that never happens.

Sometimes, the road can be too placid
to accept a man, or a woman,
weeps, or laughs. Like a leopard,
it enthrals me to break off from the tangents
that can stop me.

It used to chase me. Yet he would
not come close; not close to
biting me. His wintriness
bites the air; I cry when the pain
of the frostbite eats into my flesh.
But tears freeze into droplets in mid-air,
supplanting the filigree, on the
ragged piece of cloth he carries along.

But, time passed. He started to turn
warmer, though still enough to bite.
But he is more mild. He is more caring.
Now sees me with no indifference.

Though the dense air does reminisce
the way that he used to stare at me,
he — the dandelion — grows fluffy
around me. Maybe touch is too true.
Maybe too fake.

But this is enough for a friend, like him;

for the friend who saw me. And sees me.

Adjoining Way

The stupor air always lends itself
to extend the long mile
I walk every day to bus stop

To the lengthening mile,
I always treaded my steps with care,
for even the slightest misstep can make
my grandmother, who sees me
from the balcony in metres high
above me, chatter or blare
at her star’s face.

Choirs of birds
clears the cold,
sleeted isle of enclosed doors,
and thaw the frozen bulbs of tears.

The brick-paved ground
cuddles in solaces,
and entwine themselves
with a deep, unspoken word. I knelt,
to feel its grace again,

only to find weeps will not
give back the golden,
brittle stares at the mirror.

The adjoining way, now silent
without chatters.