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SH Sep 2012
it is hard to translate emotions
into words and be wholly honest

our humours swirl ambivalently,
like vagabond alphabets which
have not found their words

as if insufficient time has
lapsed after the meteoric
impact of feeling, for the dust
to settle and for the words to cool
from the heat of the present tense

and all we can cough out is
soot: scorched and subjective,

a hurried attempt at translating
a restless disquiet into lexical entities -
ordered, grammatical.
SH Sep 2012
It's been over thirteen billion years
since we big banged into existence.
The universe is starting to get cold.

And like waiting toys abandoned
by some attention-deficient Owner,
things are starting to get cold.

We make our little bonfire of religion,
of science, of philosophy (other planks of wood)
to keep warm. Ah, warmth at last.

That He'd save us,
or We'd save ourselves,
or we'd explain everything away.

The night is cold. Stars. Are they
God's watchful eyes? But we do not
need a God

to know that they are
spheres of gravity-bound (but what
is our centre of gravity?) plasma.

Whatever empty space someone forgotten to fill,
we like liquids rush to fill up the vacuity.
But it's an artifice. The train is civilisation-bound.

Our hands and feet are tied to the cold, steel tracks.
We struggle against our lives to escape.
But the train is civilisation-bound.

So that when we look to our children
to inherit this world - which is false,
which is as concocted as myth -

it must be bittersweet to give them a better world.
This world we created can crumble like a candy empire.
Child-like imbecility. No happily-ever-afters.

The night is cold, still.
Stars.
Thirteen billion years.

We deny that it's Cold.
We explain it away.
Existential therapy.
SH Sep 2012
it feels almost
like a poem is
about to spill out
from my fingers (but

words clot and)

it feels almost
like

blood
SH Aug 2012
a shivering star
shatters and showers
across skies:

free-falling but
hesitant to fall
apart so fast.

staring down
detachedly watching
its new life:

memories drawn
home like
wistful magnets

dreaming of stars
returning to
their universes.
SH Aug 2012
He shakes the box she
gifts him, like a child,
or a fortune-teller, thinking
a divination will fall
out, to reveal the
insides, without opening.
But he is a child. He
gets tired of guessing and
moves on to the sofa,
to another toy. He treats
her like a gift – excitement,
disillusionment, the discovery
of things new. She packs and
leaves. The box unopened.
Wrapped in too many
layers for him to unwrap,
unpack. He didn’t think the
gift was the unpacking,
not the gift.
SH Jul 2012
I can tell when
your waves
recede or
wash ashore

tell apart
your crests
from your
troughs

but not when
your waters
tug
and release

(innocently or
lovingly, like
salt and water
inseparable)

how pathetically
attuned sand is to sea

and yet not
SH Jul 2012
love's office
is the heart;
its administration,
the mind;
while irrationality
leaps neurons
too quickly
to be stopped.

merely

brushing fingers,
                your hand,

(knock
love's door)

or
lacking,

(knock
against chest)

sends you

mad.
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