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.
For I
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.
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For I.
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.
After “footnotes on falling” by Joshua Ip. Written for the #StayHomeStayLit2020 campaign.
ugly stage 