Have you ever looked through frosted glass,
and tried, with futility, to define
the outlines of a distant subject?

All my life I have done so.

My eyes are the icy glass of isolation:
They awaken me to empty human shells that,
Despite their sharp scents of smiles and summer,
Are uncoloured with a vague sense of fogginess.

For if you thought them geometrically similar,
Outwardly identical and biologically matching as I:
Just as you would not expect one to talk to animals,
I find myself equally inadequate and

isolated.

I yearn to smash: first, this glass I look through.
Then, the shells of the first body I find.
In hope that, the blood of non-isolation,
Of non-emptiness can wash and flood,
Drown and dissolve the despair
Of an inability to reach across,
Of living behind a glass,
Of fading
away.

All your life you have looked through this glass, and
All your life you have lived in this claustrophobia,

Smashing futilely.

“how would a man live
if he neither
fully
believes in rationality,
nor in God?

how would a man resolve
the paradox of
meaningful existence
and yet, the
purposelessness it brings?

how would a man find
comfort in
fellow men who are
as equally as you,
mortal?

how would a man understand
Creation when he is
the Created,
and part of
the Plan?”

the blind one asked.

“how is it man’s obligation
to answer these doubts?

how could man not see,
that his duty is to
live,
not question,
not answer?”

the wise one reveals.

a lonely nightingale
laments tunelessly at midnight,
a stiff tone echoing in this empty shop.
the metal resonates with sympathy.

outraged by her clamouring:
bribed her food pellets for silence.
she croons less unbearably now,
but with the same wistful eyes.

she beckons with her broken beak,
she longs for life beyond a cage,
watches my relenting eyes,
the sympathy residing in me.

to free or not to free this child?
i think her life deserves much more.
with a tinge of hesitance and of worry:
a lonely nightingale i free

she bustles in the shop with freedom,
her wings still unaccustomed to air.
her croon has sprouted into an anthem,
she circles the cage and bids goodbye

until she reached the window ,
and is re-greeted by cold metal grilles:
reminded of endless entrapment…
she finds herself still contained.

the way i see it,
she will never be free
until she lies
in the arms of death.

sympathetic human i am,
i picked a nearby tool of freedom,
plunged it into her heart,
and freed her eternally.

the first of drinks in days descend,
in short successions, teasing rain.
the trees and earth will crane their necks,
to receive like wine on lips, the shower.

they savour not the cool of wine-water,
for the rain itself has travelled long.
and when it lands to quench their thirst,
you hear the sounds of glass and liquor.

the rain has passed, as transient as nature.
another glass later, when the earth croaks dry.
but now, the wine has cooled their lips,
the air revived by a rain perfume…

and down are the necks of the heavy drinkers.

take the man who knew everything:
he walked the boulevard knowing and thinking,
that a poorly-planted tree could, possibly,
let go its roots and knock him with a thump, or,
that he could perhaps, trip over a careless rock,
muddy his shoes in an unevaporated puddle
of yesterday’s rain, cross paths with ten thugs.
such foresight, he walked that boulevard with
a shield, thicker glasses, even thicker yellow boots,
except he could not stop no one ****, so,
he crossed the boulevard with that one discomfort.

now, take the man who knew nothing:
he walked the boulevard, and
crossed to the other side.

no man has seen him, but
when here, when making his grand appearance
the world prepares for him.

the trees are first to bow down,
bending their trunks and shedding their leaves
and swaying about their roots to royalty

the half-damp clothes on hanging bamboos prepare
with its fabric flapping to play a fanfare,
then sound off with a fluttering finale as he whistles by and leaves.

the angled windows then, as if by unanimous consent,
slam themselves painfully into perfectly parallel
posture – like soldiers in a straight file.

and in mirthful defiance, a wandering page of the news leapt
and caught the wind like a kite, riding the city
on its crests and troughs

queer creature of white stone:
the spirit of the island in the head of this lion,
the soul of the natives in the body of this fish,
spirit and soul, lion and fish, mingle together by
mere wry humour of evolution’s word

we revere this beast, (it watches over us
from nine metres above), we bow down our backs,
(worship it as our exemplar): for many of us,
unknowingly, we emulate the spirit and soul
of this queer white creation of stone.

standing tall (unshaken!) even as jaundice bolts of heaven’s
creep tip-toed behind its scales and strike:
its cemented steadfastness of stone we emulate,
for through the towering grey waves of crisis, and
the threatening dark clouds that foretell our very fears,
we too, have floated and transcended and appeared
unscathed.

mutated monster – child of bad genes,
they despise such unfavourable antagonistic features
(shall it rule like a lion or flail like a fish?):
its unlikeliness of surviving, of thriving we emulate:
for this dotted smudge of red pen ink on the globe,
destined to bow down to fate – bowed down not, and
flourished.

beams of white water spouting out in a
perfect shape of a quadrant’s circumference, endlessly,
its majestic spewing action we emulate:
this island of expectations, sterile smell of success,
fate of our future in the setting of an exam hall,
(in there do you not think we resemble the merlion,
our mouths the hoses, the papers our well?)

but, oh, the merlion – so many of it –
the merlions, same-maned, same-scaled,
fluttering and bursting with imitation across our home:
such congruity, conformity we emulate:
for years of yearning to swim in the mainstream waters,
of being goldfish, instead of losing the waters for flight like flying fish,
have made us very much, about
the same.

queer creature of white stone:
do you see not how we resemble your very self,
how we offer you praise (by
lifting our human arms, arching on our mere knees,
hoisting our lowly mortal heads, surveying your colossal royalty,
camera in hand)?