:: Epigrams ::

The new year already feels old, because the old year has left me spent. I woke to the monsoon's raindance, and the last twelve months flashed by like three clipped acts of a film noir - bleak, grim, and lit only by the absence of light. I felt suitably nostalgic and wondered if growing older and growing old is actually one and one the same.

I feel old. The sort of cheerful - almost mindless - gaiety that seems to bubble at the edge of my sisters' laughter will no longer touch me. I'm like a parchment of faded ink; my youthful effervescent has been dried out by the physical and metaphorical deaths dotting the waning year. Age and wisdom are the synonymous epigrams marking this malleable age: I'm older, but still unwise, still uneducated, still resigned to life's whimsical sense of ebb-and-flow.

Happiness is not an option - someone once told me.
And I know. Peace - the less dramatic, the less poetic and the less desired sister of life's various ideals - is. My thoughts, like a fragmented whole, has a mysterious energy of their own today. Disquiet, tickling: what can I offer the new year that I couldn't and didn't for this last one?

***

And so we met again. You were my once-upon-a-time. Now I wish for you to be happy and shine - you might not have been my Orion, but you lit up the way for me in more ways than one. I hope she's a better constellation.

***

Happy new year, as we've been trained to say. Shalom, everyone.

:: Throbbing ::

The contrast was staggering.
The television was on - one of the regional news channels - and snippets of the tragedy streamed into the living room. Dead bodies. Wrecked buildings. Experts. Victims. Politicians. Cut-and-dried footage of touch-and-go news feed: logic in fact and emotion in motion.
But I wasn't in my living room. I was at a friend's annual Christmas get-together. And even as mothers sob on screen for their dead children, even as the botched, swollen bodies flashed real-time via satellite, my reality was so perfectly happy that I felt the bile of repulsion swirling in my insides.
A's father was craving the turkey. Someone - a cousin? - popped another bottle of fizz; chocolates, dried figs, sushi rolls and Christmas song sheets were being passed around.
"Look, a tsunami expert. 40 years and he's finally got a chance to speak!" A rowdy relative, face red with wine, hollered at the television.
Laughter rippled through the group of family and friends; after all, it was a happy occasion. The Christmas tree glittered in a corner, its symbolic presence as fake as its plastic existence. Lovingly wrapped gifts with cutesy little name tags were heaped under the tree. The house smelled of roast and cinnamon. Conversations and red wine flowed. People toasted to health and happiness.
I wasn't sure why I felt so wrong.
Tragedy with no relevance become news. That's just a fact, to which my automated response is a cliched: c'est lat vie. It wasn't anyone's fault that while we were there eating ham with honey sauce there are thousands dying and lost. It wasn't anyone's fault that while we sat in comfort of friends and family, there are thousands who have lost all they have known and loved.
My compassion - for a lack of a better, more accurate word - was as fake as the angel smiling her beatific smile on top of the plastic tree.
How vile, I repeat, we've let ourselves become.

***

And yes. I cringed inwardly as grace was said, as hymns were sang. The glories of the lord indeed. As he watched over this particular circle of believers, 55,000 people perished in what must seem like a deja-vu: the world ending in water.

:: Faded ::

I wish I could be
Dislodged from you
Your history
Your empyrean fiction of fatherhood.

Your pain - a scimitar unsheathed -
Is a weary weapon
Is a treacherous echo
Is a blighting bite of regret.

You wish you could be
Dislodged from us
Our reality
Our feral truth of your faded
Dreams.

Your pain - a gale unleashed -
Is a calamitous wind,
Is a tragic chorus,
Is a crippling cry of regret.

***

I heard myself as I spoke to S - my voice low, laced with a subdued note that perhaps hadn't always been there. My laughter feels strangled. In the rearview mirror, my eyes looked oddly flat. I could throw on a smile like a switch - I know it can dazzle with fluorescent efficiency - but today I am vapid and dead. Still, it's not unhappiness. It's an old disease with new symptoms, and I just need to force it into remission the way I have done, so many times before.

What am I saying? I am a rivulet of verbosity today.

:: The day is fled ::

Thank you - as an expression - is suddenly useless in capturing gratitude. I won't even want to say anymore, for fear of soiling the moment and taking away some of the beauty of being humbled by true friendship. I am in awe of your compassion and your love. I don't care if I'm perfect or not - as long as I remain the way I do in your eyes. And only you would know - your keeping my old works say more than any other present would.

***

Absorption

She is
Rapt with blithe beauty,
A flower-child queen:
Her skin, a mindless honeyed
Absorption
Greet and graze,
Your kisses.

She is
Ardent with old-world glamour,
A jeweled-throned goddess:
Her lips, an artful crimson
Absorption
Greet and graze,
Your kisses.

She is
Gentle with porcelain frailness,
A painted Chinese nymph:
Her fingers, a placid tender
Absorption
Greet and graze,
Your kisses.

She is
Fierce with passion fire,
A marble-cut sculpture:
Her eyes, a haughty potent
Absorption
Greet and graze,
Your kisses.

***

The day is fled, and yet I saw no sun:
And now I live, and now my life is done.

:: The Hour of Lead ::

I went to bed with poetry in my veins, swirling, its potent poison sweetened by the drownsy haze of sleep.

The wayward beauty of Dickinson came to me as I struggled to wake:

After great pain, a formal feeling comes -
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs -
The stiff Heart questions, was it He, that bore,
And Yesterday, or Centuries before?

The Feet, mechanical, go round -
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought -
A Wooden way,
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone -

This is the Hour of Lead -
Remember, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow -
First - Chill - then Stupor - then the letting go.

And I smiled hello to the day, because the written word has an aberrant power over me, and I was intensely happy - child-like, unreasonably happy - because my morning song began with prose and not practice.

***

I stumble to find
The atlas of my own theology,
Even as I mark my days
With a finite eulogy:
Saddled bird, weighed in by
A yellowing piece of fractured sky.

I stumble to hold
The temple of life's gravity,
Even as I bend and bow,
To its chronic brevity:
Ancient oak, caved in by
A yellowing piece of fractured sky.

I stumble to speak
The language of a lasting kind,
Even as I choke and drown,
By its vile and violent mind:
Sulphur earth, corroded by
A yellowing piece of fractured sky.

***

My thoughts are skylight moths
Drawn to a gentle horizon
In the candlemagic halo
Of dusty ceiling cracks.

Little joys
Immortalized in the veil of my wings
Unclipped, I flit and fly
Towards insurgence.

Dreaming free, these skylight moths
They become
Silly and ironic,
Breathing through the rags of fog.

They don't ask to be art
They don't beg for a legacy
They don't cry for gallantry

Skylight moths
Whispering, whimper
Fit for neither
A beggar nor a king
But how they sing.

***

I feel poetry. I am poetry.

***

And so the year fades, unquantifiable in its diaphanous truths. I empty myself of my life and my life remains.

:: Envoi ::

You once held me,
With your
Silver-tongued charm
Your song,
An aria of empty sweetness:
My hand, famished for affection,
Traced the void.
I was never braced,
Despite my nihility,
For betrayal;

In your mirror,
I am a leper
Sores in my blood, ice in my mouth:
Forgotten love-child between my legs.
You saw
You turned
And ran.
Shades of the midnight sun
Grin of a vampire morning
The days turn from raw to red to rancid.

Now I dance alone
Envoi in a vapour
Fade and flare,
A coma in extremis.

My last exhaltation
Before I drown:
A sanitised plea for forgiveness
My failure was my Faith.
I am chafed
By your clockwood goodbyes,

But I am no longer
Held enthralled.

:: Vatic dreams ::

Ash of an earthbound
Firefly;
Grinning, glinting, teeth in her eyes,
Cactus of misery,
A green mirage from a broken oasis.
Skin of a seadeep
Nymph;
Dancing, diving, bells in her laughter,
Sands of validation,
An orange dawn from a hollow gale.
Touch of a skyward
Bird of Prey;
Sifting, shifting, blood in her voice,
Winds of change,
A purple raindance from a dying sky.

***

I am here, in my cubicle, with what I fondly call 'the end of the year' mess. Scattered Christmas cards. A couple of hampers. Dying flowers. Financial spreadsheets. Next year's plans. Opened boxes of candies. Post-it notes.
I am here, in my cubicle, but my heart and mind is far away from the capitalistic pursuit of my business. My spirit is somewhere away - not really far, not entirely distant, but caught in an immaterial gulf of a private dreamscape.
I am here, as I will be here - but still, not quite.

***

I am a blank, an eddy of wind,
The curve of a shadow,
The fingers of a wraith, writing
Hidden notes in dusky sand.
You are plastic, a breath-kissed mist,
A marbled glory of yesterday.
Now we keep our thieving hands,
Eyes cast down,
And try to forget:
The rhythm of a lovenote
Warm behind a lover's neck.
Unless the next time,
An Arabian night of mystical promise,
Where the characters flame to life
With the molten fire of dispassion.

:: Chasm ::

If I had known my grandfather wouldn't be around this year to herald in the next.
If I had known last Christmas would literally be our last.
If I had known forever can be found in one notch of the clock and and an instant can spiral into a blithe obscurity.
If I had known.
What would have changed?

***

I didn't mean for you to ache.

***

And I'm still born ten years too late.

***

On a brighter note, Cem called yesterday. And it was like time had never left us.

:: Dimly ::

Once upon a time, a robot and a cyborg had dinner together after some time away from each other. They went back to the same restaurant they did the first time; they ordered modestly but drank liberally; they talked and laughed and locked fingers; they were friends; they were bionic lovers wired on a cyber-high. Romance was a random bug in their respective programmes - they had been hot-wired to reject romance for rationality, and they were not unhappy doing it. Their metal minds enjoyed the moment of abandonment. Sentimentality was beyond them. There was no future, but there was also no past. It was a perfect binary.

Because I'm not seeking, I will never be lost if I don't find. As the mist leaves no scar, remember?

:: Chariots of chaos ::

India was a shock to my pampered, first-world-country soul. The CNNs and the Wall Street Journals of the world never did fully capture poverty at its most sordid: in its technicolour, day-to-day form. As I watched children roam the dusty, pitiless streets hawking wares for practically nothing, as I saw slum life as a natural part of New Delhi's cityscape, as I witnessed the filth of hand-to-mouth living reflected in the shadowed glories of the Taj, I realise the full extent of how ungrateful I've been.

All that unfortunate wallowing about a broken heart. All that self-doubt and discontentment because of a necessary routine. All that nihilistic misery. All that acidic emptiness. All that, because I've already been fulfilled beyond the wildest dreams of any of the bright-eyed but hollowed-cheek children I've seen.

I almost despise myself for turning these thoughts over as I sit in air-conditioned comfort, sipping a five-dollar cup of coffee. It's the classic form of charity: in thought, and in thought only. How vile we've let ourselves become.

But that aside, India's heritage is a golden thread that has woven itself fiercely and brilliantly into the cultural tapestry of its history, and every where I turn, I saw stories of a cultured people, and centuries of diversity only sharpened the beauty of its chaotic present. Singapore - clinically in order and beautifully systematic - can never touch a nerve or move the eye the way a faded inscription on a 600-year-old tomb can.

Nameste, India. Thank you for showing me how blessed I am.

:: Abrasions ::

Intimacy of strangers: a muffin, slightly over-toasted - 'just the way you like it.'
Distance of familiarity: sms-es so polite they border on being alien.

While friendship is still some time away, charity is a despicable space-filler that leaves me with a sour taste in my mouth. If you wish to fade away, there is nothing to feel bad about.

***

It's the age of cultural cancer, of urban maladies polluted by the want for self-gratification. As people around me continually spin stories of broken hearts, wrecked promises, cheating partners and other dysfunctionalities in their relationships - current, past, imagined, unattainable - I wonder if I could ever know contentment.

We suffer, because we think.

***

Have a Tokyo Long Island Tea for me. Same side of the moon, remember?

***

You: I hope you're feeling better in your corner of the world. Be nice to the boys.

:: Double shots ::

Morning:

I watched Adam make my coffee, quietly skillful, almost abashed.
I leaned over the counter on the pretext of getting a packet of sweetener, and then caught his eye: 'How's your father?' in a whisper.
He darted his eyes around us, and then: 'Not so good.'
'I'm sorry.' And I instantly hated the plastic social-speak we've been weaned on: I'm sorry? That's the closest we come to comfort?
'It's okay,' he said, the shy, coy smile I know so well back in place. I got an extra cookie to go with my poison, but the real treat was his grateful 'thanks for remembering' as I abandoned my humanity for more capitalistic pursuits in my office space upstairs.

Lunch:

Coffee Bean. The lunch crowd jostled; the shrill cries of children, snippets of conversation, the smart clicks of high heels, the clink of forks and knives against plates rose in collective symphony. I ordered my usual, and caught Tony looking pale and unhappy while packing my salad.
'Is she back?' I ventured.
He gave me a poor-man's grin, watery and sad. 'No. I'm trying to...compromise.'
'The baby okay?'
The grin gained a certain paternal strength. 'He's fine. Well, I guess he misses his mother.'
I felt a rock in my stomach; he's not even really a friend, but perhaps a stranger's kindness is easier to bear than familiar counsel.
'Don't worry Jean,' he said, handing me my salad. 'But thank you.'

***

I'm not kind by nature; I'm not one of those selfless saint-like character out of a leather-bound book; in fact, I've been told that I'm exactly the opposite, but yet. I am strangely drawn to those with secret pain in their eyes, because, perhaps, I look in the mirror and see the same in mine.

Perhaps it's all narcissistc. I'm kind because I'm desperate for kindness. It's funny how sordid humanity can be. But if I choose not to over-analyse, not to over-indulge in useless discourse, my double-shot kindness made my coffee a lot more robust than it really was.

:: I wish I could ::

It's easy to be exhausted these days, because my time runs on a linear road to nowhere. Hours and days and weeks collide and crash, surging against demands of inevitable necessities. I turn in essays, prepare proposals, crunch numbers, answer emails, 'do lunches', pack for trips - I squeeze in coffees, dinners, drinks, phone calls - I flit around friends, the family, colleagues, acquaintences - I'm strickened, I realized, with the urban disease of trying to do too much with too little.

I need to make a to-do list for the soul.
I miss my grandfather, and my mother's eyes are beginning to haunt me again, with their tepid sadness and unshed tears.

***

I couldn't reach her, not over the phone; I couldn't counsel, I couldn't soothe, I couldn't find the glue for her broken emotions. I ache for our helplessness; that compassion sometimes is valient but void; that we can never protect and be protected against being hurt.

***

India on Saturday. Cem had written about the Taj Mahal before, and I remember one sentence: Its marbled glory is a song filled with romantic melodies, but its chorus is dead with a history of sordid proverty, the bankruptcy of souls, and the one beggar dying on its jeweled steps.

But because I'm young, and youth is a disease, I still wish to see.

***

As long as we see the same side of the moon, it should be enough.