wb :

i miss feeling
like i've eaten a whole lemon
i miss
the hole in my bagel,
the inside-out california rolls,
clothes that refuse to dry;
riding rollercoasters
though i'm afraid of heights.


i miss missing you.
but not you - oh no - i look
forward to that as i would
visiting unfriendly relatives
in a deep dark wood.


and as you slip past
like an iced drink,
i take the next
merry-go-round
into the wind

as close as sun is to the midnightsky,
as near to moon as comets on the roads
and with a flick, a halogen explodes
and then, together, in our seats we fly
or rather, flew. for soon we must alight
and wrap our shoes upon abrasive tar
and walk together long and lone afar
upon a path that is but falsely bright
or will you stop as suddenly as hearts
when crashed into a wall of solid steel
my hand about your neck, a pulse to feel,
a key inside your engine, nothing starts,
and ambulances bring you off. I cry,
head raised; I walk beneath the midnight sky.

this is it
this is the answer to everything
reverse slowly
when parallel parking


look over
your shoulder, checking for glow-worms
before making a u-turn.
you must


glance at the
rear-view mirror, foot like a hover-
craft whirring
over the brakes.


lest from your
blindspot comes out
like flying fish from the sea,
raging instructors


who won't
let you pass. Alternatively, wake
from the frothy
bottle-green dreams


drunk upon
speeding the highways in smuggled
cars and yesterday's hours,
measuring


reason by the
dashboard's meter. Nothing could
be sweeter, not
even the eventual


funk,
needing to extricate yourself
from the wreckage
of fairy-dust.
____________________________
ps: sorry for the use of 42, nearly sacrilege i know. pls tell me if this is mad or vaguely normal, thanks!

Are written in the ink of night, and penned
With fervor on a sheet of parlour-white,
Blazed on the signs where gentlemen alight
And hold umbrellas, gazing on the sand
Fresh-turned, and splashed with wet sobriety,
The wording blotted by the feet of girls
And boys, all sombre, shuffling feet in swirls,
All watching the manic variety
Of frantic thoughts evaporating, quick
As silver, solvent in the evening light,
To leave a blank upon the endless reams
Of soil that covers him, his walking stick,
That hides his hat and, evermore polite,
So gently smothers what remains of dreams.

I built a flower, deep and red as rose,
As lucid as the dreams of dying men
As careless as the soil on which it grows
And sinful as the dolours of its stem,
Convinced by love that hearts are evergreen;
But they are dandelions, light and wan,
That break in flakes upon a winter wind,
And flutter, faint, their nectar bled to ice,
Each petal with a shadow's linger twinned,
Unfurled upon the ground, the peddlar's price
For holding on as love yet draws its close,
So stay your sobs and wipe your gleaming eyes.
For though you would entrap the summer's rose,
Your feet will tread it in the winter snows.

-~-

Because I love writing these best.

eight millilitres of water in a bowl,
to be overturned on the fourth of each month
and the drops spilled on the earth

slowly drying in the asphyxiating
throb of vines across a neverending field,
baking in the sun like bloated purple pies

watching as skeletons of cows drag their skin
on stilts across a plain of bones,
and the sun a grin of yellow death

that with its sadness brings the snows,
and with its madness rakes the wind
across a road that bears a single man

afraid of wolves that pant with every step,
who shudders in his sleep of nightmares,
and chokes on sand

there is a better place for him
that is a hundred journeys further on
so on the fourth of every month

he kicks the skull and spills the sins
that have accrued in eyeless sockets
and spatter on the earth like tears.

Today there will be an unprecedented spate of kissings across the island:

6.43 am - The home of Ang Teck Mun and Wong Swee Lian, Bedok. Teck Mun will awaken to the sound of rain against the concrete of his three-room flat. He will stare into the darkness of his room, then roll over in bed to kiss Swee Lian, his wife of seventeen years. Then he will drag himself out of bed and head to the toilet to wash up.

10.37 am - Rooftop, Hougang Secondary School. Foo Yuan Kai, Secondary Four student, will lead his classmate Jade Chan here under the pretext of showing her the view. The morning rain will have lightened to a drizzle. When the door closes, Yuan Kai will move closer to Jade, so close he can feel her girlish breath on his face. He will hesitate. In that moment, Jade will close the final centimetre and place her closed lips upon his slightly parted lips. It will be the first kiss for both of them.

2.02 pm - Nanyang Primary School. Tay Jun Liang, economics undergraduate, will sit outside the school compound and wait for Rachel Chua, part-time relief teacher, to end her class. When - out of the corner of his eye - he sees her walking out of the school gate, he will time his standing up from the chair to coincide precisely with the moment his girlfriend wraps her arms around his neck and kisses him on the cheek. He will have missed her.

4.16 pm - Maternity ward, Mount Elizabeth Hospital. Daniel Soh, sales executive, will cradle his newborn daughter in his arms and kiss her several times above the lids of her bright, staring eyes. His shirt will be crumpled and he will not have showered for several days. But as he watches her tiny fist clench around his finger, he will believe that today will be the start of a better time.

11.11 pm - Palawan Beach, Sentosa. Ng Sue-Lin will break up with her boyfriend of three years, Jason Yeo. As the dark waves pound into the soft sand, she will stand on tiptoe and, with trembling lips, kiss him on the corner of his drawn mouth. Jason won't react. He will blink straight ahead. After she leaves, he will fling a deck chair into the sea, then hold his head in his hands and cry.

Just to remind us of the importance of standards (of beauty, wit, language, grammar and whatsoever thing things) I've looked through the archives, picked what i thought were the best (even the gratuitous one I wrote myself, heh) and collected them in this post for all of us to marvel at. We will improve! Because most of my output for the last couple of years was crap, I'm afraid to say and rather disappointed to note. We will improve!

by Eli:

Chinese New Year
is the time to shed your old skins
like a snake. Pack rats
should not be cowed
by the mountains of memories
crammed in boxes, but be ruthless
as the tiger. Out with the old!
And tomorrow, as the rooster crows,
you can pig out on cakes and civilities
til you're hoarse. Pineapple tarts and
rabbit sweets are particularly good for this.
Just don't behave like a bull
in a china shop when goaded; only children
get to monkey around. Your thrice-removed
cousin's cat stretches,
yawning like a minature dragon.
Even it is dog-tired.

the stadium at night
seems to be preparing
for something
involving the universe

little satellites round
the bends, thoughts weighted
down by apples in a bag with

homework and long bus rides
- spurting from their shoes
the remnants of rain

by Derrick:

Sonnet 43
Deliverance is still an age away.
You know it when the skies are tinted gray,
The hue of seas that burst in ragged spray
Upon a night which parts in shreds and rags
For pins and pricks of light, the morning's dregs.
This is the night that births another day,
That spawns the brood of men which everyday
Are, drowsy, dragged from concrete cliffs and crags
To stir machines of painted metal slags,
Each sputter, chokes on smoke, another gags;
Scarce older than the trees, but looking hags,
Parading puppets dressed in tattered flags-
If these are children of the earth, I say
Deliverance is still an age away.

by ryan D:

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2568843/1/

by Me (heh)

IN 3046
I ran into a minstrel
on the red road outside town
he was singing for his supper
and he looked a little down -

"these are the last days
'fore time comes to an end
and we have spent our centuries
to break and then to mend

our pity, our art, our built-up things
our craftsmen lifetimes-wise
but the world will end tomorrow;
so now we improvise!"

adam

A song I wrote. Ask me if you'd like to hear the melody.

today
an arrow in the sky
today
an arrow in the sky
today
a train is going by
back on the track
my eyes are going backwards hey hey

today
a raindrop falling down
today
your face might form a frown
a crater in the sand
tomorrow will be damp

and if the streams are flowing from the rain
then the hilltops will not know water again
and if the valleys' mud sinks to your knees
then the hilltops know a desert's breeze

and if a child is born awake
a pianist will her keys forsake
and if the child is born asleep
a pianist will her keyboard keep.

-adam

Too many men have wrote of statues brought
To knees by time and wind and desert sand,
Great avatars of kings and countries grand
So reaped and fallen, leveled from their haught,
And thought it symbolized the end of Man
In watching spires crash unto the ground
The rhythmic crash, of falling empires' sound
A tolling of the bells for lord and land-

It starts much smaller. Those same eyes will know
The weakened legs, the ever-trembling finger,
And crooked back, and joints no more the stronger.
Minute a tragedy, a scornful show,
To watch his ending, in the sun to shiver,
And know that broken stone will last the longer.

-~-

Because at three forty-five in the morning I was a little pissed at Ozymandias.

2. contraindication

We go together like absinthe and God
A pair of misfits outcast by this world
Our paths a cube of ice in whiskey, swirled,
To drop into the heart, and lay forgot,

Until an age ago, when we did part.
Not many things could help me with my drink.
I teetered at the bar, to tempt the brink,
So many days, so many nights. I start;

Perhaps tonight has been too much.
But heck; some more, for letting such
A trivial score conquer my sense
Is not quite fitting with my plans.

So much for soberness. The lights are blurred,
My movements slower, and my speaking slurred,
It is a miracle I walk outside
And then receive a car into my hide.

A miracle, I heard the medic roar,
The nagging pain of needles in my arm
(Though nothing much could cause me much more harm)
And flashing lights and sirens' blares galore

But when he tried to start my heart, the doctor said,
"Just let him die. There isn't much we'll do for him."
I wondered why they left my broken body dead.
The air is colder, sound is duller, lights are dim-

I think I'm dying. Just as well tonight.
If drink did nothing for my awful plight,
There's medicine none that might relieve my blight.
I don't know much, but least this much I know-
They surely couldn't stitch a broken soul.

I walked a road, beneath a boulevard of trees that gaped and arched like the ribs of some monstrous whale that had swallowed me but was empty inside, ravaged by time and hunger and pestilence that it had to swallow something as small, pathetic, insignificant as myself to stave off its mortal pangs. As though its flesh was already half-eaten away, the sun poked its rays between the branches, stabbing spears of some great fisherman with a shield of shining gold that blinded the Medusa to take her head; so I walked down, its throat impaled by the terrible splendour of a vengeful god.

I walked that road alone, as though there was nobody else to walk with; the oldest monster of old, the last leviathan, its beached corpse sucked every breath with labour, swept every morsel into its mouth despairingly as its gargantuan bulk thrashed, twitched to keep warm, even as the rays of the sun warmed its carrion-to-be. I strolled beneath its hide, left my footprints on the flesh of that which wrecked ships, broke nations, wrought devastation on Earth so complete the ancients named it and feared its name.

So pathetic now!- but I walked the road, paved in pools of blackened blood, clotted and hardened in a profusion of pebbles, and stared as the sky sprung another salvo at the Earth, the two locked in a mortal grip like titans wrestling. At the dusk of day, even Atlas falters and Hercules wavers; I let the two rest in their writhing embrace, and brought my feet ahead of each other, intent on finding the end of that throbbing maw, the bowels of the great creature that even I called home now and walked the alleys of in search of something I only had a vague picture of.

That vague picture I held in my hand, a map or painting or torn shred of canvas on which the directions to salvation could be found. Perchance perdition, but the road I walked led me onwards, and there was nowhere else to go; so much for a map. Still its presence in my hands reassured me, as though the path I walked down, lined with the specks of shadows sprayed from the rays that spilled across the ground, was Destiny, was Fate, was the straight and narrow way that I should never stray from lest I lose my soul in damnation.

When the gods give you a road, walk it!- there is nothing else you can do, when the bars of your cage are the ribs of a nameless beast that yet flails its final breaths, shaking the world with the tremors, the inhumanity of its suffering, each quiver of agony rocking your path as a bolt from heaven splits the air and roars of its power. Each step I take is at the mercy of my maddened master, which might crush me in the labyrinthine folds of its gullet with the slightest sneeze. Stalwart I stride, but travellers as myself already know that any moment we might find ourselves less a breath and a heartbeat.

I am a traveller, and my journeying never ceases. Even on a road as straight as this, wrought by the same divinities that built our frail flesh from mud and air, there is a wanderlust in my heart that drives it onwards. May it be the patterns that the sun throws on the ground, or the shapes the leaves form in the whimpering wheezes of the grand entity that wrapped its jaws about me, there is always something different to see, something else that lingers at the edge of remembering, then bids me goodbye in the blink of a half-woken eye.

The shoes I wear are old, but scarce as old as the monster of the sea that gasps on land like a drowning man, scarce as old as even my own race, who were infants huddled around campfires when the oceanic behemoths had watched countless mountains rise and fall. Now the last of their kind lies with the last of mine, and we are two waltzers to the strains of some melody that ears cannot hear, notes that eyes cannot read, and instruments even the devil cannot hope to play. We are harmonics on the same frequency, the same flesh in different form, our hearts beating on the same accord.

I am a creature of the universe, that journeys down the throat of fearsome time who in his age lies dying on the shore. So long ago he counted all the grains, each one a day that he would live to see; now he has counted each and every one, and found the last beneath my feet, which walk and step their path because a merciless deliverer of judgement: fate, demands the souls of time and man alike.

-~-

In the tradition of posting once a month to keep the ol' blog on life-support.

// A sonnet cycle

An evening lost to strangers on the street
Who peddle hours, sell illegally
Exchanging for your soul, another minute-

You cannot come near them as carelessly
As I have done. They linger in the light,
And hawk their wares where one might triumphantly

Declare his victory over certain night
When all around, the hands of watches tick
Without a sound, so as to be polite.

And as I roared, the candle burned its wick,
The day dissolved to dusk yet incomplete
To leave a few lit windows, stark and stoic;

I checked the time, the sky, and found defeat,
An evening lost to strangers on the street.

-~-

It is the night, a shimmer in the night,
A glint of silver dream, a fetid finger
To graze my nape, the morning's old malinger
That stood my hair, that toss'd me left and right
Beneath my blanket, safe I thought I slept
But cold is flagrant, oh so gently burning,
And in my sleep, I never knew the turning
As cold and clamour carelessly they crept

I bed with Winter and a herd of nightmares,
Upon her needles, midst their maddened neighs,
The verve of phantoms clutching at my nerves
For when my eyelids flutter, into nowheres
The ghosts of morning fade by ancient ways
Into my past, a fate they scarce deserve.

-~-

My night is lit by clinic fluorescence
All through the hours, till the sun again
Dares peek through grey-wooled curtains, takes his rein
And rides his chariot o'er the senescence
Of worlds that rot in ignominous black,
The mould of time, held back by desperate men-
Like trembling scratchings of an inkless pen,
They wreak upon this earth with soul alack

For dreams are stronger, fiercer than the wan
Of pallid noon, the god of feeble yearns.
I slumber in its glory, torn apart
By night and dark, for day is powerless when
The fire in the sky no longer burns
As bright as that which lights my mortal heart.

-~-

I shiver. It is morning, and my sun
Breaks bleakly over rippling sheets. I sneeze,
Disturbing asymmetricalities,
And then their silk-dune shadows merge to one.
It is a time when I should be resigned,
But somehow, something tugs me to my bed,
That bows my black-capped, great, and mighty head
And swallows sunrays gingerly consigned
To fetch me from the maw of somnolence.
The shadow tendrils flit as light as air,
As tentative as morning's breath on glass;
Those heavy hands to hold my reverence
Have clutched it close and signed their sigils where
The brightest light will never dare trespass.

O God, thou who art mildly terrible,
You awe me with your stubbly clouds, which shave
And spatter their despondence on the pave
That shrugs the water off, immiscible.
You strike fear in the hearts of kids and mice,
O mighty one! who rocks the air at night
By knocking on the panes with drizzles slight,
The flaccid drops, o through the air they slice
To kiss the ground yet trampled by my feet
And sog up the foundations of my city
That through the years, it falls to apathy
Returning to the earth, a khaki sheet-
The slate of Gods that work their drops by drops
And watch the world until its turning stops.

-~-

since we don't seem to be posting muchly

Deliverance is still an age away.
You know it when the skies are tinted gray,
The hue of seas that burst in ragged spray
Upon a night which parts in shreds and rags
For pins and pricks of light, the morning's dregs.
This is the night that births another day,
That spawns the brood of men which everyday
Are, drowsy, dragged from concrete cliffs and crags
To stir machines of painted metal slags,
Each sputter, chokes on smoke, another gags;
Scarce older than the trees, but looking hags,
Parading puppets dressed in tattered flags-
If these are children of the earth, I say
Deliverance is still an age away.

-~-

This one was written in an epic burst of inspiration. I call it a sonnet because it's written in iambic pentameter, has 14 lines, and has seven or less rhymes. Heck, if Robert Frost could write terza rima sonnets I don't see why I can't play around a little. But eh, enough ranting.

You are like a needle shot into my vein
puncturing its wall
drawing out the gall
in a splendrous insertion of pain

Then you pulled out, and the wound bleeding, scarred,
and my blood thickened, clotted
widening, blackening, blotted
and stopped the throb of my heart.

Moonbeams gloss over cobbled streets
Washing them aglow.
A glass sea,
Deep as granite
Passes underfoot as you
Run into me.