I have been away for so long! I’ve been busy ever since I started full-time work in 2021. My first few orders of business this weekend will be to update my blog to include SingPoWriMo 2020, 2021 and 2022.
I should also start writing again and try and submit more regularly. I’ve been writing for fun for a few years now ever since I stopped trying to submit to journals.
I dream of a New York apartment. Ceiling-to- floor windows, a torrent of light. I can’t see anything in all this optimism. Can’t make out the shape of my own demise anymore. Can’t think of a better way to die. My body dresses itself and clockworks its way to work and back. 20,000 days to go before a final bed of rest. The future is so bright – I don’t want to open my eyes. Just burn it all. If I can’t see it, I will just have to feel it.
Freewriting Explanation: I use 5 minutes to write completely unprompted and uninterrupted, letting the words lead the way. There is no end purpose to each piece, but rather, the pieces are allowed to develop naturally in their own way. The pieces are then uploaded without edits.
Jericho Brown once said every metaphor is a vehicle and a tenor, bringing you somewhere you did not know to go. Looking out the window down sun-dressed boulevards, the radio a soft purr as the sand comes into view, I find myself out there in the light. Here, I imagine building a home by my hands, plank by lonely plank, each nail finding where they belong in the wood. A life’s purpose realised and realised in a single act. I walk, I don’t own a car. I have little to my name, but my name. Every day I want nothing more than to get down to the work of life. To see the wave crash and settle. To see it to the end.
Freewriting Explanation: I use 5 minutes to write completely unprompted and uninterrupted, letting the words lead the way. There is no end purpose to each piece, but rather, the pieces are allowed to develop naturally in their own way. The pieces are then uploaded without edits.
i don’t want to read anything in the news / i don’t want to care about another crisis is a nearby country / i don’t want to hear about the latest and greatest / i don’t want to be told, wow, we have it good don’t we / i don’t want a sermon on my feed / i don’t want to be fed a sermon / i don’t want to know more about other people anymore / all my dreams are smaller now considering everything that is and will ever be / the news cycle barrels along the path of good intentions / and don’t you feel your face starting to burn / and oh don’t you feel the tip of the flame / the truth is we are already in hell / i don’t want knowledge / it has never brought me anything of joy / laughter, happiness / sure, it has helped me / at times / but often times i find that i smile at the dumbest of things / give me two dots and an underscore / give me chicken crossing road / keep my mind empty / i need no thoughts / o god give me slapstick / give me a pelican trying to eat a capybara / how it will push itself to its very limits to pursue a goal which will serve it no purpose / how it will do so simply because it wants to / unlike us /
Freewriting Explanation: I use 5 minutes to write completely unprompted and uninterrupted, letting the words lead the way. There is no end purpose to each piece, but rather, the pieces are allowed to develop naturally in their own way. The pieces are then uploaded without edits.
I want, and I want. I have learnt of your body, and the way she
co-exists with mine. My tongue, my pesky mind. My over eager
hand, my overthink. Even now I dream of home ownership,
and then some. Maybe marriage? Maybe a distant vision, like a
neighbour’s cat clawing at a window. Or that one time we sat at a drive-through
and a golden retriever sped past us in a sedan. I wonder how they’re doing now, ages later?
Time passes too slowly until I’m with you, then it’s already gone.
We were friends, now we’re in love. Despite the cliches, I will hold
your heart gently within my palms. I will carry you anywhere and everywhere.
Freewriting Explanation: I use 5 minutes to write completely unprompted and uninterrupted, letting the words lead the way. There is no end purpose to each piece, but rather, the pieces are allowed to develop naturally in their own way. The pieces are then uploaded without edits.
So it goes, most of the time; the page turns and withers away. Those dreams I’ve brushed past in my youth – where did they go? Into the drawer of a dusty office, into somebody’s waiting hand. I have not written, truly, in months. Where did I keep the key, where did I fall from, where was the chalk outline of me on the street? You’re living, and all of a sudden, you’re living. I am preparing for my eventual demise, and checking off a list; to find love, find a house, find acceptance. I want to, so badly, take in the world into my bosom … to say, what a wonderful world, what a wonderful, wonderful world … and then I douse my head back into reality and light it all ablaze.
Freewriting Explanation: I use 5 minutes to write completely unprompted and uninterrupted, letting the words lead the way. There is no end purpose to each piece, but rather, the pieces are allowed to develop naturally in their own way. The pieces are then uploaded without edits.
Can’t draw ink from an empty well. Can’t speak when I mean nothing. Don’t, then. Eyes rolling like heads, teeth clenched shut like iron girders, I live through life, distant. The future is already here. She takes up too much space and now I don’t know how to write anymore. Nothing flows when you’ve dug deep enough. It’s time to get your hands around the weeds, pull them by the roots out of your scalp. My job is done only because I never took it up. And now I feel like I am going on a long holiday, headless and fearless, down a short road never to be seen again.
Freewriting Explanation: I use 5 minutes to write completely unprompted and uninterrupted, letting the words lead the way. There is no end purpose to each piece, but rather, the pieces are allowed to develop naturally in their own way. The pieces are then uploaded without edits.
I pen my thoughts about picking up writing, continuing to write from a place of vulnerability, and what ramifications it might have for my work as a writer, as well as its impact on my loved ones and I. I also think about a path forward, although I cannot guarantee that I can take it.
Under the warm pillowy cover of night my hand stirs and reaches for yours.
If we kept sleeping this way, limb to limb, our palms the interchange of our veins,
our quiet thoughts; or the ones that scream at us every day, as we walk
by doing nothing but existing; or those that bark from that endless hallway
of the past, history being a wrong turn; the point where all of us meets –
I could find myself alighting from the train to meet you again. It will
be a crowded station, and our faces bared, in all their audacity and
flush, which is to say that we are simply put, in heaven: you know where
I will be. Even in our dreams, it will be that same marble pillar, a flag
nobody in that sea can see. We will walk there, as we always do,
to feel our hearts’ malfunction; the long intake of air, drawing it
into our lungs – to nest as closely as one can to the heart without harming it.
I carry this thought with my blood. I send it to my palms, and squeeze.
Freewriting Explanation: Every day, Valen shall use 5 minutes to write completely unprompted and uninterrupted, letting the words lead the way. There is no end purpose to each piece, but rather, the pieces are allowed to develop naturally in their own way. The pieces are then uploaded without edits.