poetry is photography:
the photography of your soul

it begins as an observation captured in stuttering syntax:
the lens of your soul pointing towards a subject, a metaphor, a line
within you, within the world, within the two.

if vague and smudgy this image at first,
the lines rearrange themselves, the grammar settles,
and the image comes into focus - sharp and still.

as you would a camera, approach things at angles,
you flood your poetry with perspective, with self, with distance,
stamp yourself onto it, and you know it belongs as yours.

and you know you have captured that pearl in an oyster,
those millions of dying stars exploding within you,
an image of yourself.

yet, sometimes, you're out of film and however you click the shutter,
your words fall off the lines, burst into dissonance, or finds itself unwritten.
like photography, you do not expect a stable yield of inspiration.

then, with the years, you lay your poetry on a wall -
chronologically, alphabetically, thematically, or anything -
and you will step back to see a montage of your life in eloquent snapshots.

if poetry should ever be photography - then -
it would be the photography of one's soul.

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)?

as on a musical score,
our parts are dictated,
spelt out in dynamics,
in rhythm, in pitch, in
timing, in tone.

our fingers are being manipulated
across the instruments of our lives,
abandoning the very soul of our existence.

but observe how a little improvisation
in this large chorus of soulless players
does no harm.

it's liberating -
like a line that cares not for rhythm nor syntax nor sound nor length.

too often you **** me with your
monosyllabic question: your lips
form it, so gradually, and hence,
inquisitively, that i,  i would not
miss that diphthong you emphasised,
that question of why - yet too often
i find myself unable to proceed
beyond because...

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.

knot
        **upon
                    knot of ironies
that leave us        (upon
                                       knot)
to disentangle                        upon
irony from irony                            knot  
                                               ­                  (from irony)

In place of memories — embers.
Inextinguishable, yet untrue
to the fidelity of what was.
The smoky curlicues, too,
have been denied. That whiff
of the past. Smouldering,
it warms the prudent hand.
Sears the lingering one.

In place of you — embers.
Charcoal flake anklets at your feet.
Wrinkling, shrivelling.
Your impassive verse-marked
way of staying. But when asked
to disappear, become so
unwilling.

If reality is a bowl of
smashed cereal,
irreconcilable with
wholeness;

Then dreams are those
cartons of overnight
milk, mixed with reality
for a sour solace.

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.

It cycles between its pink
nascency and purplish age.

The same ambivalent yellow
as yesterday, today.

(It says something.)

That we are a consequence:
An echo, a shadow, a chill?

From loud words, night lights,
or an unsettling question of

our inconsequential and silent
stardust existence?

(It says Nothing.)

Removed for literary journal submission.

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.

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.

Tucked away
ribcage-bound,
each rib enumerating
a decade or a time
the heart retreats
to lick its wounds

If I tuck my heart
deeper, will you
excavate back to Eden
the origin of emotion?

a single raindrop
trickles down,
sphered
like a pearl,
racing down
the window,
with itself.

racing down
its life
until it
finally
loses its
shape,
loses its
wetness.
turns to
nothing.

at least,
it left
a trail,
made its
mark.

at least,
it--

no, silly,
it evaporates.

Temporarily removed for submission.

temptation is not
an angel right and a devil left:
there are no halos, no wings, no horns, no tails
who whisper into your conscience,
your eyes do not wipe your sockets
like wipers do the windscreen
to try resolve those dissonant whispers.

temptation is itself a full-stop.
not mid-sentence of an incomplete line.
you think you are mid-sentence,
but you're already surrendered.

no halos, no horns.

for 12A13*

And so we arrive, across the woods
of adolescence, at adulthood.

Muddy-shoed. Wounds freshly cut
from the incipient grassy parts.

Blood meeting the new mud,
like skin testing the water's touch:

their hairs standing like Olympic swimmers,
bent with the posture of delight and terror.

if you place a stethoscope inquisitively on the
beating chest of your life, expect to hear a -
plod, plod, plod.

you'd think it to be the footsteps of a
fumbling toddler; fumbling feet
feeling the flat, alien earth.

or the muffled footsteps of a stranger
stumbling into your path, turning your
tables, stumbling into your life.

you could regret that it wasn't your
feet's soundless plodding on the moon,
that there was no greatness in your silence.

while at times you remember
the footsteps of friends converging
into your life - diverging from it.

and then to cease all speculation -
you recognise the footsteps
of god at your doorstep.

i burned the bridges between us,
whittled down this love into dust,
and watched the river weave it away.

i told myself to

build new bridges with the old and broken bricks,
carve and sculpt the dust into someone new,
or wait for the river to return me another lost lover.

or at the least,

leave it there charred and in a thousand pieces,
leave the whittled love as a broken-winged bird,
stop weeping by the waters and feeding it with tears.

and yet you,

you appeared not even as a physical reminder,
not even as a ghost who haunted me, it was  
just a word that remotely resembled your name

and you throw me back to
building bridges.

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

the night we watched two candles burn,
it was moonless and starless and
that accentuated the fires.

i remember you said,
with the breeze combing your hair,
that our love was just like two candles.

i agreed, as it seemed then
the flames of our passion and desire
were similar to the candles - restlessly burning.

we kept silent after, admiring the symbols of our love
both their wax bodies melting in rhythm.
you said, we will be beside each other forever.

and a poetic couple we were, i noted how
the melted wax conjoined the two candles
and you said our love brought light to others.

the flames extinguished simultaneously, shortly after,
and in a unanimous duet, as if pre-planned, we whispered:
'till death do us part'.

last night, it was me with two candles
though, with a gleaming moon and a dozen stars
that stole the attention and outshone the two.

and while the flames still faded simultaneously,
it was extinguished only by the saltiness
of tears belonging to a broken lover

and the mercilessness of your absence.

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.

Affection was her invisible hand gliding
down your back to map the gradient
of your spine. Love was letting
that unseen force replace intimacy.
She loved precisely
where demand met supply.
Razor-thin efficiency.
She reciprocated coffee for coffee,
love for love. No shortage
but no extra either.
She gave unconditionally
but only when all else had remained constant.
(We built everything on assumptions.)
But what was constant was never enough and
She'd explain it
away with your infinite wants and her finite self.

She made all the choices,
administered love like an economist
and made you her next best opportunity
Forgone.

his words at first tongue felt
fell like snowflakes melting

his teeth shuddered choirs
were refracting colours

his page flew
like inked summer birds migrating to

his breaths
his breaths exhaled northern lights

Confessedly, I try to read you
like a poem. The vowels your
lips hug, how your teeth
bite the consonants, the
salivary slips of the tongue:
Flashed. On the surgeon's
table for inspection, diagnosis.
But how your syntax spurts
across, your rhythm irregular
unlike heartbeat. Your stream
of consciousness running,
unceasingly as blood. Your
diction as numb as anaesthetics
(as alarming as a sudden
awakening mid-surgery.)

Even if I could dissect your speech,
your mind remains a mystery.

my maestro, how do you -
with your baton - keep the
pulse of my heart aching
for the broad gestures your
open arms insinuate?

tell me wholly, how you -
with your hands - conjure
in me an anthem con brio,
then throw me subito doloroso
and even so, never losing
your scherzando.

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.

this is us,

sitting in the dusty corners,
sifting through the genres,
avid and voracious readers of
lugubrious paper-backs which
narrate the plots of self-pity and regret.

this is us,

losing our sense of time in there,
like undergrounds creatures fascinated
with the scent and sight of ground,
ignoring the less conspicuous collection
of sanguine and rhythmic biographies.

we are stubborn readers in the library of memories
reading the wrong genres over and over...

sometimes, i sense myself spilling
my youth from a fragile glass jar.

other times, i conclude it's just me storing
up for frantic spending in its decaying days.

but mostly, my duties occupy the space -
this intangible commodity squeezes for place.

such metaphors would have been absurd and
bizzare to the shrieking children of the kampong days

my grandparents talked about: climbing trees that rusted
with rambutans, ankles dipped in mud burgeoning with

self-invented games, a bedlam of clucking chickens fleeing
unsuccessfully, dinner for a hut bursting with extended family.

nothing i can identify with: neither a similar event, nor
a familiar atmosphere of wild abandonment of youth.  

i exist in a time where parents knock on rooms to bring their
students nutritious chicken essence, with a stack of expectations.

what's so good about progress: when our roots are saliva-speak,
when our youth and beyond are spent before it's expiry?

much like acclimatisation, i am ashamed to reveal that,
many times i can feel alive only when i adhere to the routines in

this city of expectations.

January - the calender is flipped to.
with it, an image of red, bloated tomatoes
creeping in pregnant clusters across the page.

my books are sprawled across the desk
like nomads in search of a home.

the earpieces have cords that are entangled and
immersed in its messy and inextricable life.

my phone sits silently and unproductive
depleting its fruitless existence away.

and here too i sit under the whirring fan
watching these objects help tell my story.

even the tomatoes are productive this january.

When Youth’s roots stem with dreams:
Infinite, as the shimmer of the night sky’s stars
Blossoming into megawatts of galaxies,
Megawatts of dreams ,
Carried deftly through lightly perfumed Youth -
Let’s chase them while we can.                                                            

Yet while dreams are carried on this tickling free-willed pollen,
A tiny spore of such fragility,
Even the faintest of wrong winds could
Lose it! Lose it!
Winds of despair;
Of not daring;
Of incapability;
Winds of constriction will change her course!  
With their vicious blast                                                                              
The beauty of dreams fades into that dense air;
That dense air filled with broken dreams,
Losing their journey of being carried,
Being carried across new continents,
Where the glories of dreams roam.

Yet! All it takes is the fiery force of
Unfaltering passion
To plant your tree of life from dreams into reality,
To mould worlds of your visions -
Let’s chase them while we can.

Like the journalists who lived to chase the truth and
And the historians who lived to chase the past -
Let’s chase them while we can.

write himself between the lines
and not at the end of them

forget himself between the writing
and not at the end of them

greet himself between the poems
and not at the end of them

want himself between the shelves
and not at the end of them

put himself between the poets
and not at the end of them

find himself between the covers
and not at the end of them

a poet shouldn't impose himself between,
at the end,

not even at the start

"People are so hard to understand.
They are like earpieces casually stuffed
in the pockets of their private lives.
And when they step out of their stuffy
homes, they demand to have others
locate their origins, their mid-points and
their ends where you stuff your ears in.
Demand that from cords in infinite loop.
Demand that without an instruction manual."
I wanted to interject, but your sentences ran
into each other and morphed into these
pseudo-words, pseudo-rants without ends
to stuff into your ears and listen.
I would have said that people were fine
without beginnings or destinations or
instruction manuals. That behind the
metal prisons of these speakers lay
sounds, to be played into ears and
listened to. Told to.

Existence stretches itself
like a rubber cap
strenuously spanning birth and death
Fitted tightly over the grease
and wheels while it waits
cross-legged, unhurried
(flipping calendars)
for the groan that halts
its throbbing clockwork

Even when Life first has snapped

you probe deeper into the earth
- not to find silver coins or black jewels -
but to find my skeletons, my bones
and it's hinges, it's sponges, it's cavities
which hold my past in it's hollowness.

and because the earth is asset to none,
you may yet uncover the bones of your arms,
with those very wretched arms of yours.

(why for do you dig for ours,
when you'll only find your skulls?)

the July bells ringing at twelve today I hear,
lulling sirens throwing their soft voices,
with much foresight for that moment which arises with a need
to blare and scare the people from their sleep.
they hear these chimes and for them it celebrates –

the start of July where revival rings in, or
the time to align the hands on their clocks to twelve, or
the moment their paychecks come rolling in richly, or
merely a deviance from their rigid routines.

the July bells ringing at twelve today I hear,
and for me this celebrates –
the penning of poetry inspired by such bells.

eclipse of the individual -
kindly, the heavens convey with rain,
and not the sun
to prove myself a shadowless existence.

little child, who is asleep,
whose innocence
is the milky way on his lips:
to whom do you call Mother?

little child, the moon’s crescent
lays like a birthmark on your cheek,
and your single strand of hair
the trail of a meteor’s heat:

why are you crying?

little child, do not cry – go to sleep.
a blue-green pearl sits
where your heart is – and beats:
they will find your Mother.

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.

am i just a rod of rain water?
caressing the details of
a spacious and silent ocean?

am i just a voice in a choir?
as good as having mouth a phrase
mouthed by a hundred other?

am i just a single stroke of paint?
a superfluous, artistic finishing touch
to a masterpiece of colours?  

am i?

can i ever be a single word in poetry?
singular yet serious?
and not:

inconsequential?

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.

squatting between
sunset and sunrise,

not belonging

to the break of day
nor the numbness of night.

(awkwardly mid-day.)

Temporarily removed for submission.

some sit silently.
soaking in the sounds of bells.
acknowledging it.

others, teary-eyed,
watching a bad year subside
into better years.

another, smiling
eyes ablaze with fireworks
of the bright past year.

ev'ryone with pens
and smudgy resolutions,
mapping their future.

buildings shed clothings.
sheets, curtains change like seasons.
posters, promotions.

and it seems:

flipping calendars
unfathomably transform
us happy creatures.

me? if ev'ry day
can be seen as a new year:
oh, happy planet!

to walk across a street and see:
lined golden bulbs with fixing glow,
and flickering flames from waxy tips,
and lying radiance – worthless stones,
and then to find that no one light
is yours to keep nor yours to lose.

to look across a forest hued:
a hundred golden sun-lit leaves,
that scatter themselves on fresh brown earth,
across a palate of flaunting flowers,
and then to find that no one shade
is yours to keep nor yours to lose.

to read a book from end to end:
and taste that rhythm and rhyme and sound,
then tear its form and see its meaning,
then piece it back with admiration,
and then to find that no one word
is yours to keep nor yours to lose.

to meet again with one another:
and see them age with grey and sorrow,
with merely hope to see tomorrow,
the grains of sand in glass they borrow,
and then to find that no one friend
is yours to keep nor yours to lose.

to venture life and only find, that:
nothing
is yours to keep nor yours to lose.

the night sends its stars to watch for us,
assures us with its shimmer and silence;
but tonight it inhales the bonfire's breath,
when our dreams were all too fresh.

I.
her soft footsteps shuffle from their slumber,
awakening the hushed orchestra of:
metal spoons and kettles and tinkling cans,
the jingling of boiling milk, of half-boiled eggs,
the sounds of breakfast.
(the sun is sleeping on its horizon)

II.
her ceaseless footsteps are not weary with night,
on your bed, you hear that decorative tune:
spoons, kettles, cans, stained cups and bowls
washing themselves after dinner.
(the moon is resting on its zenith)

this quiet love.

The soft, sparse sunlight spills through the curtains
and approaches me the glow of flitting fireflies,
fond as a lover's hand running the islands
of your face - the ****** morning it baptised.
How sunlight and skin, intangible and tangible,
dances on each other flirtatiously, tickles.
For a few moments I sleep bound in a curl,
like a child experiencing what joy could be.
But as the minutes trickled by,
the loving caress too trickled into a beating,
beating itself on the chest of mine,
oh, sunlight - you were still gentle this morning.
Alas! - all things are sweet in its mornings,
but time will tell the truth come evening.

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