written for Alt Txt – Experimental Poetry workshop, conducted by Desmond Kon Title taken from Rainer Maria Rilke’s The Sonnets to Orpheus, No.18 14 fixed words (although I guess I should have shifted stanza 1 to make a spine with stanzas 2-4) Should come back and edit this some day
Category: Original
Holes
Holes 1. When the holes started popping up so did the epiphanies. Men and women rushing to the mountain, eager to find where they fit. When it showed up on the telly I wanted to switch it off – but there I was, rewinding and rewinding the footage, trying to see if anyone I knew […]
Fear Of Your Empty Beer Glass
Once, you asked me what I would want for myself; I answered as you would have wanted, i.e. mark of a man, a six-pack, job that pays good money etc. 5Cs and COE, a happy family. Another time you asked me ridiculous koans: what is the sound of two butts farting. If a NSman shits […]
the sharpness of theses at 2am
pause for thought – one mistake begets another. A treatise on compulsive lying: how one wears long sleeves even in summer, how one nods along to the rhythmic ritual of “yes, I am fine.” No. Break the glass – this is not just an emergency this is real life. Real in the sense that there […]
Wish List
First, patience. Second, patience – but to a reasonable degree. Patience, such that I may wait, without an inkling of what you were thinking. Maybe take a few centimetres off me, so the distance between us can shrink, by that inch which seems like a mile. Perhaps, fingers just a centimeter shorter, so that our […]
Merely Players
Paralyzed and emotionally stunted, poet finds solace in unread words. Sometime tell me it’s wrong to be. Mad, about everything and nothing. Sad about something for sure. If God is real, is this ataraxis, or bad writing? Am I a background character on this ugly stage? The man in a tree costume. I feed, off […]
Naturally
in this there is no justice, no law. Here I throw myself against you, oh Wall, oh Mystery. Who am I to say who you are? But I know this: I crave for you the way plants grow towards the sun. Yet I cannot see you. I cannot know you. I have never truly known either. […]
typo
I bought 22 calendars and stacked them, to see how long I could stand those blank squares, like rooms in a HDB; as empty as drywall. Everything, anything could fit- anything could have. But the pages are glued shut now, lost to memory. Will you be with me today next year? I shudder. How many […]
aquarius choking on yin and yang
I sit and patiently receive your curveballs with my ungloved hand. It hurts me as much as herpes. Yes, I let you smother me with this sad wetness. Yet the first drop is never the same as the last drip. Like how one stranger is the same as another yet not the same. How a […]
Words
i. Those fearful,distant words, these hollow,centered wishes; surely in twenty years they’d have expired. But they haven’t. Fossilized, they stay forever: pointed, sharp, piercing, true. These are facts that we cannot change. Bridges we cannot rebuild. Tell me darling how do I tie this rope’s frayed ends into one again? How do I forget the taste […]
ugly stage 