Poetry Play

A stray thought and resulting weird rambling

2007-02-23T07:11:00.000-08:00

I had a vision of love as perfect as diamonds and pearls and crimson rosebuds with lips shying to bloom.
Its’ other face -poison and cataclysm.

I wish to fall in love with the shy stranger on the train going nowhere.
To feel the clichéd trails of emotions that everyone professes to have felt but could find no adequate words to express how and from where it came
To experience the magic that comes out of communication that needed no words but a shared understanding in a pregnant glance
Feeling that odd pulse of desire and the sorrow in knowing that life will never be the same thereafter
I dream of the love that bleeds my heart dry, that makes the very flesh ache
The love that when it leaves, feels like a million violent shards is there in place of what used to be me.

Blue

2006-12-06T07:00:00.000-08:00

The colour of jubilant sky,
sapphire-crystal sea
a sign on a pregnancy kit

The womb feels strangely irrelevant
Disused
It's chatter echoes and falls silent
Unheard

An eternity
Stretches

The womb slumbers and dreams
Of baby-blue woollen socks
Chubby knees marked by playground grazes
Matted pig-tails and cherub faces
Twinkling brightly in the sun

Reminiscent of sapphire-crystal sea
Under a blue jubilant sky

The Nature of Despair

2006-10-05T13:50:00.000-07:00

An abandoned space,
Offering no warmth, there is only-

The taint of spilled beer
On the lipless walls,

The pollution of over-hasty excrement
Hanging in the air,

The promise of release in the drained syringes
lying exhausted on the floor.

A space so silent
You can almost hear
The whisper of your sanity sliding
out the space underneath the door,
Leaving behind madness,
And it's hungry gaping grin.

A cold clenches the lungs with angry fists. You can’t
.....breathe. And all that is squeezed out of you in the end
Are sharp tears thick and portentous as a newborn baby’s choked cries
As it enters our world.

I lost weight (with no dieting!)

2006-10-05T13:01:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

They fell all around me
Desolate wisps of hair
Thick black and sad as night. Serves it right!

I’ve too many things
In my head
And of late, it’s an extra burden
To carry around

No, It’s not enough to just let it lie
There, hair is not like
Ears in it's quiet reticence.

Hair is an attention seeking animal.
It demands washing and is forever starved
Sucking endless tubes of conditioning,
oiling -
Then in growing thick and fat
It leerily shoves it's unwanted presence
into your face

Until one day
You wake up and realize
You’re living for The Hair!

It’s too much
To expect of one woman!
Sweep it away, I will not cry for it’s passing.

I am tired of poetry

2006-10-05T12:59:00.000-07:00

Friday, September 29, 2006

Wasted minutes of my life
Spent pressing sweat-sticky fingers
To fevered temples
Prodding ideas better left for dead
Turning these over
Hoping to breathe new life into this desperate attempt at resurrection
Then thinking-

How to make these untrained words
Dance into well-formed patterns,
Step into well-timed rhythms
And work them up to a breathless final ending.
I insist on a crescendo of new meaning!

Why all this suffering?
What I used to appreciate as art
is now just jumbles of words
lost in it's meandering

Notes on Bumboat Journey (Sat 16 Sept 2006)

2006-09-18T09:28:00.000-07:00

The bumboat is suffering
Serious after-effects of sunburns
Skins of dirty-blue paint is peeling away
From the worn wood underneath

I shrug off it’s shabbiness
What does it matter?
There is quiet pleasure
To be gained afterall
In listening to the engine’s steady pulse
It’s rhythmic whirr

The bumboat cuts across
The resigned sea
For now
The bed is serene despite the mixed signals
From the brooding sullen skies.

The bumboat’s engine
Churns rolls of grey waves
And lacings of white froth trailing
Behind it’s wake, like a bride’s veil
Sweeping across shiny church floors

I lay on the hard moist deck
with ‘Great Expectations’ in my hands
Pip and Estella’s barren romance
Is an apt tale to be read
While journeying on a bumboat
That had seen better days

Funeral of a Crow

2006-08-07T06:22:00.001-07:00

A crow’s black corpse
On an otherwise pristine road pavement
Threw me off my leisure track

With furtive steps I neared the crumpled body
And saw it had been savagely torn apart
Coal-bead eyes dully staring into the sky’s expanse as if wishing
It could find refuge in the wind even as it’s life flickered and was violently stilled

The coils of pink guts made bright trailing patterns
On the grey-white canvas of pavement
Soon enough other crows would come to claim the body
Beaks pecking listlessly into eyes,
Beaks pecking solemnly into guts and wings;
To take into the body
What used to be brother, and absorb into self

Under Skin

2006-08-07T06:22:00.000-07:00

I remember your final goodbye
Left me searing numb everywhere except
For my heart where pain rubbed
like splinters disintegrating
under skin

Holiday Trips

2006-08-07T06:21:00.000-07:00

On the wall over my desk
Hangs our holiday snapshot

Your arms cocooned me in a snug wrap
We were smiling in response to the camera's cyclop-ic staring eye.

It is important to look happy
In a holiday snapshot

We only want to remember that
It had been good

Apologies - 5 July 2006

2006-08-03T21:02:00.000-07:00

A Question

2006-08-03T21:01:00.000-07:00

Looking Out - 23 June 2006

2006-08-03T20:59:00.000-07:00

Us- 9 June 2006

2006-08-03T20:58:00.000-07:00

Rant 2 - 6 June 2006

2006-08-03T20:53:00.001-07:00

In the past I would
Have known who you are
Now, your aspirations have caught up
With you and you are
What you wanted
An iron-pressed, glossed image
Of high success, a 30 something
With wreaths of flowers around your neck
And career achievements
You extol
With humorless pride
A leech filled to bursting
With preoccupied self love
Oh how
You will bleed
And
Fall

I dreamt of my eyeball last nite (a draft) -23 May 2006

2006-08-03T20:53:00.000-07:00

If you lift
the lid of mine eye
and peer inside
you will witness within, a resigned
eyeball clasping a contact lens
to itself
a plastic crutch
to help it perform a function
which it could no longer
do with accuracy
of purpose

Last nite
as if the eyeball
was trying to pass on a portentous
message,
it appeared in my dream
as a liquified creature
reduced to a pool of grey and white
mess
and lifting
the lid of mine eye
i witness within
the wretched eyeball
enclosed by a socket of fish-gills, rotten
purple

Perhaps my eyeball
has reduced itself
to threats
in growing awareness of its
mortality

Gone Bad (18 May 2006)

2006-08-03T20:52:00.000-07:00

Central Library (Musings) - 3 April 2006

2006-08-03T20:50:00.000-07:00

You can find
In between Victoria Street
And North Bridge Road
the re-born
Central library

Birthed out of
an architect’s
dream
A nation’s proud
Symbol of
an intellectually
Advanced island

Its sterile and strong
All steel walls and glass
A chain restaurant
Fronts the entrance
Selling cheap, palatable
Asian and western fare

A 24-hr automated
book-bin stands
mutely/ efficiently
In replacement to
Yester-years'
Librarian aunties

Security-protected glass doors
opens to more
modern wonders...
motion-detecting escalators,
electronic check-out trays
to replace the old
human-to-human type
Transactions

The study lounge
is fully wireless
So you can
Go virtual
with a swipe and click
of the mouse

A girl slumbers in a corner
Over a textbook while
Across the floors
Laptop wires snakes
and hooks
to a hundred power-points
On the walls
Like a surreal scene from “The Matrix”
come to life
the machines
Sucking life from the humans
Feeding itself

Outside the lounge
disenchanted students
Pass by the locked
“Imagination Room” and
“Possibility Room”
the irony in the names
lost to many

The Old days -5 April 2006

2006-08-03T20:49:00.000-07:00

Going home,
I took your offer
Of a sharp ride
on the back
of your bike

In the sudden lashing of
rain, I turn to the blackening
sky, icy
drops needles my face and busy wind
touches me with
rough fingers
she rushes past
loathe to linger
When cold turns to freezing,
I press my face
onto soft warm leather
on your back
its musky scent
a familiar
dark comfort

my hands circle
your waist
a protective charm
against bad luck

light turns red

Time stills as you press both
my hands
against yours
in a brief morse code
of understanding

In a Box (9 April 2006)

2006-08-03T20:48:00.000-07:00

The Marriage Bed -14 April 2006

2006-08-03T20:47:00.001-07:00

The Marriage Bed
In my marriage
the bed,
is the political centre
where administration
and Intelligence takes place,
not to forget
cultural exchanges
(and more)
of course

The exchanges
are always friendly
but--
a Berlin Wall separates
his space
and mine
by his preference and my
..................superficial
assent

That half space on the right
of the bed-
his last strong-hold
A place which Is his alone
I cannot intrude
a friendly arm or
stray a careless leg
to steal some warmth
left on the sheets;
for fear my actions be labelled
a violent incursion

Once In A Red Moon - 21 April 2006

2006-08-03T20:47:00.000-07:00

Once in a red moon,
the land below dark shadows
shifting; grasping, blind.

Hey, Mister! -22 April 2006

2006-08-03T20:45:00.000-07:00

So I stumbled into an area
Rank with stench
of sweat, seductive
sex and squalor

A plump old pimp sings to me:
Hey Mister! look see;
Pretty girls so young,
don’t worry, don’t worry…

He didn’t have to
be in suit and tie
It seems to me
he didn’t need
a Marketing degree-
for men to flock
to him. This Pied Piper
who trolls this street-
his song is wanton-ness,
Sick and sweet!
This ill song so tempting
I fight for my betraying body not to turn weak

Ladies of the night
in this glare of bright lights,
wait with glassy eyes,
with hungry sighs
But listen, their wait will not be long
Again I hear the Pied Piper’s old song…
Sick and sweet…
Sick but sweet…

The Interview (a draft)Saturday, April 29, 2006

2006-08-03T20:44:00.000-07:00

I had an interview
last week
at an art gallery

I think it went well

She asked me
if I know Cubism,
Impressionism,
Surrealism-
and whether I can
intelligently converse
about them

And how about Da Vinci…
Titian…Botticelli…
The Old Masters...
what do I know of these?
Can I talk about the Renaissance
like I had been there?

Do I know the difference
Between Chiaroscuro
And Sfumato?

My body propped on hard chair
as a product on display
My answers were scrutinized,
measured,
held to light
for authenticity
She smiled, and continued
The friendly interrogation

My answers were composed,
gilt-framed
and served
to her in careful swashes
and brilliant blending
of knowledge, wit and recounts
of my experience.
I hope
she was impressed

Snake (25 March 2006 , 3.32am @ home/bed)

2006-08-03T20:43:00.000-07:00

How can you live
a fantastic lie
Live a double life
To marry her, but
To love me
Like a two-headed snake
after it kills its
prey, snaps
the other head
for the prize

A two-headed snake
with a divided
mind
that doesn’t know
which direction
to slither
and die
You should
just die!

Note:I was kinda inspired by an animal planet documentary i watched once which featured two-headed snakes. And bang! an image of an ex-boyfriend clicked in my mind...well obviously you can tell i still have unresolved issues! Bah!

I dream in green (22 mar 2006)

2006-08-03T20:42:00.000-07:00

I dream in green
The colour of jealousy,
Bitterness,
New life -

In a leaf
The “Go” sign
The juxtapositions of my life

Last night the green dissolved
Into blue and yellow
Dissipates
into the strange
and unfamiliar
and new

the dream
is in rebirth

Black Ink ( created 22 Mar 2006)

2006-08-03T20:40:00.000-07:00

Black ink on white
What does it mean?
Putting pen to thoughts
Manifesting the invisible into
The physical
A hologram of the imagination
on paper

Writer's Block (25 Mar 2006)

2006-08-03T20:39:00.000-07:00

Pak Hermit/Mr Hermit Crab (24 Mar 2006)

2006-08-03T20:36:00.000-07:00

Spinning (24 Mar 2006)

2006-08-03T20:34:00.000-07:00