:: Dissolution ::

And how are you,
My familiar stranger;
I ask with reckless echo.
Curling my congenial tongue
Around stupid pleasantries.
Like a wayward Merry Go Round,
Round and round we go.

And how do you answer,
My familiar stranger;
'Stranger with each day, isn't it'
You laugh like a random eidolon―
It's still strangely beautiful―
It tickles me to think it was once mine,
Now that our past is a dead circuit.

And why do you care,
My familiar stranger;
There is nothing callous about flying free;
My blood has run its course, it's now in
Slumber, my sandman-sleep.
I embrace the sparks of our severed memory,
You are a gem dislodged from my charity.

:: Caricatures ::

I ran into L the other day at the supermarket―the shopping mall equivalent of a church, as I like to say, where all and any are welcomed, and the chances of you running into long-lost friends or an estranged relative are actually higher than seeing your favourite brand of no-fat yogurt restocked.

L and I―we've known each other for a long time now, and it's that sort of friendship that you don't invest too much in. You see each other once in every few months, you text each other once in a while, and you always make a mental note to make the gap between one meeting to the next shorter, but somehow it never happens. And you don't even feel bad about it, because lord knows, you're busy; there's work, there's school, there's the family, and there's always another lunch or dinner or coffee of a higher social value.

She doesn't even know about the breakup, and when the proverbial 'how's Sam?' popped up I wished once again we could subscribe to some sort of Break Up agency, where a media advisory explaining the event in brief strokes can be circulated to your first and second degree friends. That way, you never need to be straddling a basketful of fruits and granola bars at Cold Storage while you rack your brains for a suitably PC reply that tells it as it is without sounding all pity-me.

'Is that why you're going on a diet?' she asked, casting a sympathetic eye at my shopping basket. I glanced at my purchases and muttered something about my unfortunate obsession with fruits and whole-wheat products.

'That's great, it's all very healthy―I need to go on a fucking diet,' she said, tossing back her long streaked hair with practice.

'You?' I was incredulous. L looked like she was starving herself into oblivion. She was a vision of skeletal grace, and her wrists looked like brittle matchsticks.

'Yeah, I eat too much, you know, entertaining my clients and all that. I'm trying out this new diet pill―it's not too bad, except I'm constipated all the time,' she finished matter-of-factly. 'And the other pill I'm taking for my skin is causing me to bloat. It's like I'm fucking pregnant,' she rolled her eyes―kohl-lined and beautifully-lashed with triple-volume action mascara, I was sure―dramatically.

For a while I was speechless: is this the caricature of a modern woman? You're never thin enough, you're never fair enough, you're never good enough to rival the glossy goddesses mocking you from the pages of a magazine with their pert bodies and flawless faces―and you punish yourself for it.

You pump yourself with pills that promise a paradise of feminine perfection. You don't believe that you're ever beautiful enough, so whenever L'oreal tells you that you're worth it, you buy another useless stick of lipstick. There's no dignity in having cellulite or being flat-chested either, so you galvanise the cosmetic industry further by buying creams and bust-enhancement gels and stretch-marks-erasing lotions.

What's happening to us? I remember lunches with L at NYDC where baked rice and cheesy pasta would be followed by coffee and cheesecakes. Dinners were rowdy affairs with the rest of our art-school gang filled with jokes and laughter, as well as copious amounts of greasy fries or local hawker fare that cares about being low GI as much as they do hygiene.

Now I look at her―and in some ways, at myself as well―and I know if we did ever find the time to catch up, we'd most likely 'do a salad'. If we go for coffee, it would be one of those overpriced low-fat no-whip concoctions. We'd play with our food, and push the last bit of carrot cake for the other party to finish.

Daughters of Eve―and of grief. We hugged each other goodbye; she felt like an autumn branch, willow-thin and tragically delicate. Yet as she walked away and I saw the appreciative male glances thrown her way―her black strappy dress was hugging her concave stomach and her fair skin, so cherished in the Oriental consciousness, gleamed with an alluring fraility in the harsh lights of the supermarket―I knew why women like myself could never look in the mirror and be completely happy with our size 8 figures. We are in a society where the idea of beauty was not unlike the supermarket―it's everywhere you go, an agora of mass produced ideologies, packaged with promise and sold in family-sized packs.

With childlike defiance I bought a bar of chocolate to celebrate the inner acceptance of my own flaws. I'll never be a size zero, I'll always have that little extra bit of flesh and I will always, always want that goddamned slice of cheesecake even if I'm mocked to death by stick-thin models flaunting their power in the mass media universe of sex and slavery to a fabled perfection.

:: Salacity ::

8.49 a.m. Shenton Way was already teeming with people―white-collared types with their mechanical walk, suits in their shiny new cars, professionals with their blue-tooth technologies clipped to their ears, sprouting business wisdom as they marched with resolve to their corporate kingdoms.

I felt lost amongst them.

Did I look the part? Maybe. A little less polished, a little less Gucci, a little less wireless―but no one would have thought I was out of place in playground of capitalistic pursuits, because I was carrying my double-espresso along with my document bag (faux leather, but can you really tell these days), striding down Robinson Road in my sharp-looking heels.

Did I sound the part? Maybe. In between SIA building and Robinson Tower I got an early morning call from a German colleague who just touched down from Taipei. Yes Kai, our meeting for tomorrow is confirmed. Yes, we're talking budgets '05―a litte late now don't you think! No, I'm not involved with the Q7 workshop. Yes, let's have a chat about the qDE. Yes, I've arranged for you to meet with our new media agency at 4, and no, I will not join you for that breakfast meeting tomorrow―I've got another one with my PR agency.

Did I―do I―feel the part? In a small, remote way―maybe. I've been doing this for a while now. I'm used to it all―the little nuances in the business, the drip-and-bursts nature of my regional work, the coordination between different companies, agencies, people, agendas―and if practice makes perfect, I'm well on my way.

But do I like the part? Does my feet pound the tarmac with purpose―or lethargy? Do I sound passionate―or just business-like? Do I feel the buzz of real meaning as I walk into a meeting room―or is that buzz merely courtesy of Starbucks' wonderful pick-me-up?

10.14 a.m. I'm in the plush, cosy conference room of my media agency. Some guy―tailored shirt, quirky tie, Armani glasses―is telling us about the Next Big Wave in communications. Ambient marketing, he says. Very effective, very impactful, and extremely economical.

'See this quote here―' he gestured to a nifty slide in a slick powerpoint presentation, '―Ambient marketing is going to be the gem of marketing for the next few years. It will cut through to your consumers because it's the middle ground between choice media and intrusive media. This is quoted by a Jones Harlvet―a mood segmentation specialist,' he beams.

Mood segmentation specialist? I grinned inwardly―wryly, in fact, with a strange sort of disdain at the infinite, but sometimes inane, possibilities of my profession.

10.35 a.m. I want to run. I want to write. I'm thinking of blue eyes, red wine, conversations at Caprice, my book, our book, my mother's graduation.

The day is fled. And I still saw no sun.

:: élan ::

To my Marlboro Man,

I miss you. I miss the way you sit in your favourite chair, your eyes twinkling with amusement as your grandchildren race cars, fight over the remote control and yell out the senseless gems only kids are capable of. I miss how you lean over the parapet wall, dragging on your cigarette as you recount your childhood. I miss your bickering with Po Po. I miss you buying king prawns for Chinese New Year. I miss your affectionate disdain with us. I miss your voice. I miss serving you dinner. I miss you.

***

But I know he lives on. I see him when my uncle smiles. I sense his strength in my mother. I know his humour when my aunt makes me laugh. I remember his influence from his wisdom. I'm reminded of his kindness while chatting with the old neighbours. And my grandmother. She speaks of him as though he's still around. And for her―after 50 years of marriage―he must still be there with her somehow.

When you showed me your wedding photo for the first time―you were a blushing bride, a few months shy of your twentieth birthday, and he was dashing but out-of-place in a Western suit―I remember thinking, I want that too.

Fuck modern romance and all the commercialised claptrap. At the end of the day, do you really want that Prince Charming (read: white-collar worker) on his proverbial white horse (read: a Beemer) to rescue you from your ivory tower (read: HDB) so that you may live happily ever after in his castle (read: landed property―or at least a condo)?

Or could you―despite the hyper-realities of Hollywood streaming into our livingrooms and our consciousness―settle for a steaming cup of black coffee (he got it for you because of your bad knee and you can't make that ten-minute walk to the market anymore) every morning as a silent testament to a love that never knew Pretty Woman?

The luckiest day of my life was the day my grandparents got married. And the best day of my life was when my grandfather―shortly before the morphine haze clouded his mind to pacify his cancer-ridden body―told me he was proud to have me as his grandchild.

***

So you won't be around this Chinese New Year. Don't worry―I'll go to Chinatown to get the king prawns on your behalf. I'll remember not to make the abalone sauce too salty. I'll make sure the kids get their bah kwa. I don't have your voice―I can't shout to round up the whole family for reunion dinner―but you know I'll try.

:: Random ::

都市人，过着都市人的生活，抱着都市人的寂寞。
我们化妆，为了掩盖负累；
我们购物，为了填补空虚；
我们看戏，为了满足幻想；
我们吃着、喝着、拥着都市那虚伪，虚构的热情。
我想换个情人。

***

爱情让人好卑微。
她说：“他和别人睡也罢，反正爱的是我，名正言顺的也是我。”
他说：“她就算永远不属于我，我们至少有缠绵过的回忆。”
她说：“爱不是拥有。”
他说：“爱我，就原谅我。”
还是古人说得好：“天若有情，天亦老。”
我们还是乖乖听话吧。古诗古词， 在我们爱得乱七八糟的现代，何尝不是一种可靠的智慧呢？

***

你。
好久没有接到你的长途电话了。
长途电话 - 那沙沙的杂音，藏着你的亲密，却盖不了你的温柔。
很忙吧。
你的事业心重；一忙起来，就天翻地覆，没完没了。
我们相隔着太多了- 时间、地点、年龄、国籍。
你最爱的那首老歌，不就很完美的帮我们唱着吗 -
相逢，不过恨晚。
希望我们的无名曲，也会有落实的一天。

:: Of Small Things ::

The sky is art today. It's a little bit of Monet, a litte splash of Warhol, a little tinge of Renoir. Hello, cosmic canvas.

My crazy Welshman used to watch the skies all the time―I'd lost count of the times where he'd fade abruptly into his imagination in the middle of a business call. I would pick up the slack in his pause and jabber on about our wonderful corporate guidelines while he stared into the distance, the still blue of the sky an echo of the colbalt mirror in his eyes.

I didn't know what it was that fascinated him. But the boy in him marveled at the colours and the clarity of our universe, while the man in him marveled at the boy who saw all this despite his shirt-and-tie existence. Cem, you crazy old dog―I miss you.

He wrote, today. He's a master of glib intimacy―one of those wordsmiths who could be funny and sentimental, wistful and disingenous all in the same sentence. He used to make my mind spin. I remember the drought after his departure, where I would have thoughts of rapture and destruction, but no one to share them with.

But like he said: Because you know me, you are inside of me forever.

That, I suppose, is a commitment we all should have no problems giving. A commitment of nothing, to nothing―except the memory of moments that have rustled to life and faded with grace. I think of him and I think of an Indian summer, filled with languid passion―one that will eventually mellow into a quiet autumn, sedate with sleep.

***

Special Note of Thanks to T:

First Cut may be the deepest, but melancholy is mostly Just My Imagination. Someday We'll Know why we go through the trials we do, but right now, I'm Bent on being at peace.

A highly original birthday gift. Merci, mon ami.

:: But not quite ::

Scarlet Hotel proved to be a wonderful lover. She's a provocative concoction―attractive in her lazy opulence, and attentive in her glitzy luxury. R and I―vexed by the lull in our respective existence and troubled by our incessant need to run away―found ourselves in room 210 of the boutique hotel, grinning with girlish cheer.

We flicked on the DVD and ate grapes with dark chocolate. We paused SJP and her posse every time a gem came sparkling up in our conversation. We talked and laughed and made plans with hopeful neglect―New York, our book, 1929 and a tea-house date with my mother.

Yes, we have our myriad of responsibilities. Yes, we're chained and bound and gagged by expectations and fears. Yes, we're trying to reconcile the cancerous disease of youth―the malignant tumour rooted in our selfish want for gratification. But because our usual routines have been broken by two days of self-indulgence―good food, great conversation and irreplaceable companionship―I can't help but to bring the wings of fancy out of my thought closet and dust them out with care. I want a change―and like a spoilt child crying wolf―I want it now.

***

But Not Quite

A chasm, but not quite, you said.
A little colder―an emotional frostbite;
A little further―a rift of tears―despite
My best to slash my face with a smile.

You're sad, but not quite, you said.
For my inability―disability to feel;
For my weak, bleak strength in bid to heal
And my light is numbed from a dead circuit.

You're close, but not quite, you said.
I cannot be breached―reached, I'm far;
I have drifted, swept to ashes, my star
Had burnt me, torched me out of graceful orbit.

I'm sorry, but not quite.
I have no anger, nor spite―
I have only the ghost of a previous heart beat
Gently slowing down; no light, nor heat,
To force its blood to glow―I'm low―and dead.

But I smile anyway.

***

Melancholy does not become me. I blame it on the hormonal swing of womanhood. I wish I'm immune to the psychological manifestations of my physical self, but I'm sadly powerless. I have to content myself with the monthly stranger that falls off the edge of reason, and I have to pacify her craving for dark chocolates and freshly-baked bread with a fuck-the-carbs vengeance.

Last night, after the high of my Scarlet weekend, I sank to a peculiar new low. Something had dislodged from me. I felt as though a cosmic explosion had gone off inside; I was a dead galaxy. T's happy smile lost its energy after ten minutes of sitting with me―I couldn't participate and I couldn't care. I just…couldn't.

'Your eyes are dead,' he said with genuine worry.
My smile, as it turns out, was a sleet of plastic glee. A curtain of black depression was draping over me, its musky velvet prison welcomed by my lonely heartbeat. And I am lonely―in the purest sense of the word―lonely not for the absence, but the lost of a presence.

Maybe I'm just playing with words―a dangerous game of linguistic delusion. Perhaps the degrees of differences in using this word or that―this phrase or that―are negligible. They all point to the same end; I'm merely wearing my writer's blindfold as a shield against the obvious.

But darkness is the absence of light. I need to get out of my eclipse―and I will.

:: Ennui ::

I searched, but there is no prose in me today. I'm quiet with dysphoria. I wish I could sit with my feet in a pool, reading La Belle Dame Sans Merci while eating green apples. I would mix cacao-de-creme with apricot brandy and call it my poison du jour. I would be a sun-worshipper and let its rays run their golden fingers through my hair.

I would.

***

Conversations

I told my muse,
Let me write a modern poem today.
Let me tell the world,
Of my dying plant,
Of my ailing father,
Of the smog that shades the sun.

I told my muse,
To join me in my cubicle,
To mingle her wisdom with my small routines.
Let me tell the world,
Of my need to fly,
Of my fear to fall,
Of the curious stranger that stares back in the mirror.

I told my muse,
That I am an empty shell without her light,
That I am lost in hairline cracks of choice.
Let me tell the world,
I want to write and bleed for words,
I want to paint and play for colours,
I want to sing and let my chorus linger.

So maybe this isn't modern poetry―
My muse doesn't want to talk.
Her feet are dangling free,
And her hands are guiding mine.
Maybe we will never win a prize,
My muse and I―
But she makes me smile.
And she makes me write.
And she makes me right.

:: Sojourn ::

She has such a potential for beauty. You can't help but to notice it―the pert, nubile body, the sun-bronzed skin, the soft curve of her lips. But her smile―it doesn't quite reach her eyes. It's trained and exacting, functional and purposeful, and it's operated by a switch. She throws it on, and it hits you with the fluorescent dazzle of insincerity.

She's a well-packaged social product―the big brands, the fancy dinners, the expensive watches, the Moët & Chandon, the haute coutre, the chi-chi gossip. Her secret god is materialism. She's the Madonna of modern money, and she drips gleaming and golden in the promise of her image.

I'm blasé towards her; not cold, not unwelcoming, not disdainful, just indifferent. She can be amusing and fun, although her actions are almost always rehearsed. I see no spontaneity in her. She's generous, but not because of absolute kindness; you sense an instinctive need for her to show. She's moneyed but not mannered; intelligent, but not engaging; friendly, but not intimate―a careful, equated social formula.

For most parts she's got a good heart―she's not malicious. But she's disloyal to true compassion, and I'm not drawn to her, so she remains a named stranger that I work together with. We tread around each other, her girlish giggle sultry with promise, and my laughter cagey with vigilance.

But I am drawn to pain. And today she is a story of pain, carrying an air of quiet torment along with her Hermes bag as she quietly snaked into her cubicle. I sensed it almost immediately―it's almost as though her pain had dissipated into the air particles around her, and she cackles with the effort not to break.

'Are you okay?' I asked, after dropping off a bunch of papers at her desk. The photographs of her kids―two beautiful, vibrant girls―grinned cheerfully back at me.

Her eyes were smeared with sleeplessness. I felt a searing shock of recognition―her pupils were dead. They were dilated with empty pain―and they were―are?―mine.

'Remember what I told you―that marriage is a business plan.' She said, her smile a ghost of lip-glossed perfection. 'Well sometimes you realise―too late―that you've made a wrong business decision. That's all,'

'Wrong decisions can be turned around,' I said gently.

She looked down at her hands―her nails are all chewed-down, and her wedding solitaire was missing from her finger―and then at me again. 'What if it was a bad decision?'

I nodded towards the photographs of her girls and their childish crayon drawings―I love u Mummy―and said, 'But you must think of the investment. And the results,'

She shook her head. 'Remember, Jean. It's all a business plan.'

***

But then this morning I woke up to my mother gently asking my father about his pain. I see the patience in her eyes, and I marvel at the limpid faith of love. I don't have her beauty or her wisdom. But I have her―and for her, marriage is not a business plan. It's a poem inscribed with the infinite aeon of love.

:: Serpent ::

Garden

Serpent―tensed with fork-tongued lust―
Tempting blood.
Hissing dreams of earthly ordeals,
He slithers around your
Marble flesh,
Kissing closed your gaping mouth,
As your breath comes in ragged drafts.

'Please don't,' you say―
They all do.
As you writhe, and twist,
You drown in venom
And mist,
And the Serpent grins
With the knowledge that caused Eve
Her Eden,
And Adam his peace.

:: Running on Faith ::

My dreams must have been raped by Hera's wrath last night, because I woke up feeling like I was dragged by the hair from Dante's fiery pit and flung back into consciousness with my skin half burnt.

My body was screaming with exhaustion. Every joint, every muscle, every nerve―every part of me―was alive and inflamed with fatigue. I was bleeding―Eve's eternal curse, so they say―and I was in pain. I didn't want to wake up―take me back, Morpheus―I didn't want to shave, crimp, preen, contour, brush, and colour myself into the respectable and presentable corporate slut I have now become. I just wanted to fall back into the black hole of sleep, cradled by the eclipse of emotions.

But my alarm jarred unsympathetically into my ear. As I jerked myself awake and my shortsighted world blurred into focus, I felt as though a gun had gone off at the back of my throat, because my tonsils were burning their slow, sickened fever. My breasts ached―a defiant, definitive flag of womanhood.

Call in sick, said my Temptress. But I thought about the lives washed into choiceless nirvana by the tsunami disaster, and every bit of sensibility I had―I have―clicked into place. The cold shower threw my system into shock, and my morning song carried on its exercised tune with methodical efficiency.

There is nothing admirable about perspectives gained through innocence lost. But nature cannot care about its gruesome inflictions―because it takes no credit for its beauty, it can't be blamed for its destruction.

As I flicked on my laptop and allowed the robotic start-up tune herald in yet another day, I almost wish I have the a certain deistic faith, because everytime I was shattered and split at the seams, I find myself wishing for a magical cure-all. But perhaps my bohemian piety and my words are enough. Under the corporate facade, there is a maverick waiting to fly.

Where is my muse today?

***

I felt a tinge of near-religious sentiment as C presented her homemade Bailey's-Oreo cheesecake in girlish flourish and T sheepishly admitted to engineering the purchase of the elusive chocolate-hazelnut cake from Goodwood Park hotel.

All that, just because I turned another year older. I had done nothing; birthdays merit no celebration because they come by no matter what, and I felt almost embarrassed when the chorus of happy birthday rippled through the group gathered around me.

But I was touched. And the strange sentiment became a sacrosanct echo: what life takes away, it will compensate in kind. As our group―a Motley crew of different personalities living out different lives―erupt into giggles and easy companionship over cakes and crass jokes, I was inexplicably warmed by the serendipity of circumstance.

:: Time to wish

And so the clock touched twelve.
'Happy birthday,' I told myself mechanically. My mirrored image―hair wet, eyes swollen with exhaustion and want of sleep―showed nothing different between the passing of age. But my mirrored mind spun, its sundry reflections nimble with the landmark changes of the past year.

My first without my grandfather.
My first without the familiar contentment of a solid relationship.
My first without a cake.

I ached suddenly―melancholy can be emotional cynaide, and I felt the easy pleasures of the last few days slip away. I ached because my memories are still potent and raw, brewing dreams of monoxide-fumes in the recesses of my old injuries.

I don't care for the cake―I don't take pride in the childish ritual of candle-blowing―I don't wish to trouble anyone to cook anything special, to buy me presents, to even remember―but the missing symbols get to me like a knife in a gut.

The fact that my old hero is no longer around to bellow "When are you getting old enough to buy your own cake?".
The fact that the birthday wishes from close friends and family can't really rival that from a lover.
The fact that every year is one year less.

I cried myself into my birthday―not for sadness, not because of self-pity, but because tears have a way of clearing up the suffocating uselessness of bridled emotions. I cried, and then I was bright again with guarded hope.

***

In the morbid wisdom of Sylvia Plath:

I do not want much of a present, anyway, this year.
After all I am only alive by accident.

***

Still, to all those to did try―you know who you are―those who made me laugh, those who made me drink and eat with fitting abandonment, and those who were thoughtful enough to search for gifts just to mark my existence with your beauty, thank you.

:: Anamnesis ::

Shiva

You are Shiva
In a previous plain―
Your many hands poised and keen,
A halo of hungry wisdom,
Gather like harvest rain.

In your temple I fail to fail:
You shock my leaden feet to walk,
And you crack my lips to smile,
A halo of tepid humour,
Brittle love, faith for the frail―

You are Shiva, still.

***

Scenes

Walk with me,
Down the slack-jawed horizon.
The voracious sun is blank but burning,
A mirthless Oracle, timing timbre pulses
To our petty steps.

Watch with me,
Trail the clouds of greedy insurgence.
They are textured like a surgeon's gauze,
Wrapped fresh, grazing ghastly heartbeats
Over our scissored wounds.

Do you feel the cotton wind,
Scratch your face with the nails
Of a harried lover
And yet―you forget―
To bleed.

***

Anamnesis

Your dead-eyed memoir
Sits like a leather-bound carcass,
In your treasure-chest of crime.

Your tongue is a muddled bible
A prodigal pyre burning―
Churning―
Inscribing your scattered, sorry grime.

Read now, the pages
Spins like a ghost-town Ferris Wheel,
In your sad fairground of sin.

Your breath is a final twitch
An vapourous hiss heating―
Beating―
Rewarding your passive, penal win.

Don't you wish for
Anamnesis.

:: Encumbrance ::

Incubus

Doesn't she taste sweet
A doll of rag-stitched beauty―
Drink in her
Paper-cut perfection
See the flutter, your butterfly kisses
Like dead bodies in her eyes.

Drown now,
In her sweat, let the heat of her palm,
Frame and fan
Your languid penitence.

Isn't she splendid
A wailing willing incubus―
Plain and liquored dry.
Unravel the clutter, your fallen grace
Like sour bile in her mouth.

Drown now,
In her grasp, let her etherized passion,
Cling and crash
Your venal epic.

Shouldn't she beg,
Banshee-love, ravaged princess―
Lay to waste her pledge.
Plundered power, your raspy breaths
Like lurid cheer in her hair.

Drown now,
In her tears, let the quiver of her lip,
Rive and rip,
Your callow hymn.

Let her be
Your incubus.

***

《1930上海篇 》

原来你的夜上海，
是我情人的眼泪。
因为得不到你的爱，
所以等着你回来。
恨不相逢未嫁时，
于是在不眠的秋夜，
嚷着你听到的歌声。
我是天涯歌女，
为了奇异的爱情，
泪似满天星。
给我一个吻，
请你今宵多珍重。

:: Floodgate ::

I can't seem to keep my poetry at bay. They just come, words of colour and candor, pushing through my routines like wildflung poppy seeds, flourishing with boisterious abandonment.

Maybe T is right―the physical death of my relationship has woken up a certain muse, a rebellious, rhapsodical inspiration, and I'm being swept along through this vigourous floodgate. I rhyme without reason, and I write verses that are beyond my own comprehension. What do they mean―what am I saying―who am I saying them to―I don't know. I only know my mind has never felt more alive, more reckless, and less willing to be chained to my financial spreadsheets and press releases.

This world of mine, of ours―it's erratic and exotic, a marvel of tactile fallacies and veritable truths, and I never seem to embrace this knowledge as much in moments of my practiced stupor than I do during my fits of writing, where I become riotous and feral, a scribe unleashed.


***

Careless Dialogue

Would she knock, before she enters
Our careless dialogue―
Would she pause,
With remorse,
Or would she choose,
To lose,
The kiss of frost in your eyes,
The touch of truth in much-awaited lies?
Her heart (my heart) is virgin flesh,
Love-torn, pain-worn:
Like springtide magic,
But surly and tragic,
The echo of a knock
That would shock
Us out of our
Careless dialogue.

***

Dancing

Like the apprentice to a
Deranged alchemist,
You fuse together, dreams of
Copper-plated importance;
You turn rusty steel into angel dust,
So that you may dance,
With wings of hope
Welded to your bended back.

Like windpipe tune of a
Bleak-eyed charmer,
You exhale calmly, dreams of
Silver-shrouded mystery;
You turn bleating beats into moral feast,
So that you may dance,
With wings of hope
Cleaved into your bitter feet.

Like the autumn of a
Deadworld season,
You sweep with grandeur, dreams of
Golden-hued mortality,
So that you may dance,
With wings of hope
Impaled on your chiselled cheek.

***

老歌总是纠着我那忆动的心：

不管明天 到明天要想送
恋着今宵 把今宵多珍重
我俩临别依依 怨太阳快升东
我俩临别依依 要再见在梦中 ...

:: Delirium ::

Need

My need to run is a sardonic gospel,
Signed with black-bloodied ink,
Indignant lines of crippled
Hieroglyphics.

The fever of grander, greener promises
Kindle and ferment within―
I become a watchful, vagrant eye,
Blinking blind.

I remember the warcry of fellow rebels
Did they fall and fail―
Did their visions waste―
Or did they dream their dreams alive?

What am I―now―and what are you
Fetid prisoners of our own fallacies.
My need to run is a spine-splintering disease,
Left to dry in midnight sun.

:: Close of Day ::

I watched him today with intimate detachment, and I realised he's become an old man. And my heart fell off the edge of gravity. Old age should burn and rave at close of day―but this particular one has no rage, no will, and no light.

***

A Daughter's Discord

Old age sees with time-worn eyes
Burning with a pale pallid fire,
Craddling the grave of its own
Sullen philosophy.
I watch you shuffle
Your feet,
Dragging your moody footfall,
In bid to live, and in time to death.

You are disinclined, now;
And you drink of life like a bottle of
Cheap absinthe.
Today you tell me your aches, your pains, your
Glorious fall to ruin;
Tonight you sleep and you toss to an oblivious
Void, where I cannot reach, or breach:

You say, you can do no more
And you implore
For me, for them, to atone for
The passing of your time with our lucid abandon.

Flintlocked anger, like a cyclotron of truth
Dawns on me like a violet storm;
I struggle to stay afloat, even as you
Singe me with the same fire that has turned you
Rancid.

***

My girls. You've taught me beauty and the faith of friendship. I look to you all for these golden moments of laughter and familiar meaning. I understand it now―the chasm is me, it has always been me―it's just another shining example of my putrid selfishness. You can't imagine how much I miss laughing the way I did last night―without guile, without thought, and without the sour aftertaste of sadness. Thank you.

***

No one is looking; they love butterflies, and I am a moth drawn to pale fire.

:: Flightless ::

My boredom is becoming choleric. I'm a plethora of discordant poetry, but it doesn't soothe, doesn't gratify, doesn't dull me into peace. My dissatisfaction is a poker-faced ellipsis. I feel dead. My cubicle is a Venus deathtrap, chafing, sucking; I'm pushed into a well-paying necrosis. A noble death, because of my various responsibilities? Or a knowing euthanasia, a gamble that will eventually bankrupt my passion for writing?

***

Wings

I am a low-flung sparrow,
Wings skimming ground:
My song is clipped and sallow,
My tune, a blood-butchered sound.

My sky has been swallowed,
Cloudburst and stardust wane;
My flight is closely followed,
My spirit deftly slain.

I am a blind-eyed eagle,
Wings scrapping rock:
My screech a mocking giggle,
My strength, a whip of lightning shock.

My sky has been muted,
Cloudburst and stardust wane:
My flight is unjustly disputed,
My spirit deftly slain.

I am a bowl-legged crow,
Wings skidding friction:
My instinct is splintered, slow,
My candor is plastic fiction.

My sky has been halted,
Cloudburst and stardust wane:
My flight is fiercely assaulted,
My spirit deftly slain.

***

Opened Skin

I scratch my skin open
For you.
We watch the crimsom tide,
Seep like voices in an agora
Into a rust-coloured cresendo.

You tear your skin open
For her.
We watch the scarlet fire,
Surge like soldiers in a war,
Into a death-fractured anthem.

We split our skin open
For us.
We watch the carmine poison,
Sink like meteors in a cosmic coma,
Into a torch-bright refrain.

***

I feel the need to apologise - for my weak, pretentious poetry, and my heinous indifference at my protected routines. This is my Icarus complex. This is my desire to scorch off a piece of the sun, my voracity to wax my wings for the surrender of a piece of the sky - my sky! - but this will also be my undoing, my eulogy, my categorical plunge into sea.

Nature is unkind, and nature has no regard for the immortal longings of the grinning fools licking dust off the feet of languid gods.

:: Suffer the Little Children ::

Their bright, blithe smiles betrayed a bleak future. I will not show the Taj Mahal. I will not show my kitschy finds at tourist shopping spots. I will not show how we managed to capture our expensive, German-made car in the sunset glory across the bank from the Taj.

I will show their childish cheer, I will show how their innocence is untainted despite ragged clothes and unkempt nails, and I will show that humanity is a language easily mastered, as long as you care to speak it.

I said this before, but I say it again: nameste, India.

:: Sullen Art ::

Winded by exhaustion and an abeyant inertia, I slept with disquiet. I dreamt troubled dreams and tossed to the shadows and slugs welded deep in my subsconsious. I woke up tensed. My head has been pounding with a bloodlust intensity since morning, and I'm restless for peace.

All these noises. When did they start pouring in with such infernal ardor? The physical - voices and beeps, clicks and taps, the swish of a mop, an embarrassed cough, the drumming of impatient fingers, a sigh, the screech of tyres, the turn of a heel, the gas-hiss of a lighter, the spit of a printer, the rustle of papers, all blending into an unending orchestra of my daily routines. The impalpable - the memory of a phrase, questions, obligations, responsiblilites, the desire to disappear, the fear of fear, internal debate, odes of the past, whispers from the future, all surging into a nexus fraught with tension. All these noises; I feel like I'm being sucked dry.

***

A Plagiarist's Song

They say,
Light breaks where no sun shines:
They call their chorus,
An alicante lullaby.
They say,
Do not go gentle into the good night:
They call their paean,
The shield of Achilles.
They say,
My life has stood a loaded gun:
They call their prose,
A sort of a song.

They are my languid lovers,
Clad in leather-bound jackets, their wisdom stitched with gold:
I am melted wax in their fickle, quixotic hold.

***

Today I can do nothing justice. I am grey and listless.

:: Kairotic ::

Us

We wear our concave Stomachs
with such pride:
Daughters of Eve in size zero glory,
Hollowing out our minds
Following blind,
The gods of gloss and quick weight-loss.

We wear our polished Faces
with such pride:
Modern women in compact dust,
Filling in a glowing grace,
Killing pace,
The beauty of lines and nature's shine.

We wear our hideous Fears,
With such pride:
Tremulous girls in women's skin,
Trashing out our empty souls,
Crashing control,
The freedom of form, to not conform -

We are beautifully masked:
Staged and caged,
Within the velvet curtains of our modern misery.

***

At seventeen, my poetic wisdom bled itself into these watery, wary lines:

Loneliness is a corrosive, gnawing at my soul,
It drips and burns like acid, a fanged and vicious ghoul.
I hold your hand and still feel lost,
(a life our reckless love has cost!)
Loneliness is a corrosive, flaming at my face,
It skins and tears like poison, killing me in grace.

My mother found the poem, and I wonder if the shadowed look in her eyes meant that she has read between the lines and has seived - like the poet that she is - out the truth hidden weakly in my adolescent metaphors. I'm sorry. Both to my mother, and as one who could have been one.

My 23rd birthday looms ahead, a clown-faced reminder of my insignificant existence. Life doesn't begged to be lived. It merely aims to end. Humanity, tucked betweeen nature's stubborn narrative and its own bigoted needs, will amble along this dilemma until the echo of our private swan songs disappear in a fairy-swirl of dust.

:: Distance ::

Because we dance,
With such delicious innuendo;
Because we laugh,
With such dope-happy cheer;
Because we love,
With such distant honesty,
That you become
A dreamscape mystery
Caped and skinned,
Cloaked and masked,
Beneath me.

***

As I told R: They have adopted the souls of star-crossed lovers for their private story, and in this epistle they will live forever.

***

You will return to our first-world reality, scarred by your memories and the images no ice-cold beer can wipe away. You'll remember, and you'll be shocked by the electric displacement of your urban commitments and responsibilites against the stark loss of Aceh. But you were there, and you saw - even as you are cursed with the bleakness of the disaster, you're blessed with the blood of truth, a death that I could wish a thousand times from my staid corporate cubicle, but would never hope to find.

:: Stealing Beauty ::

My sister drew her lithe, dancer's body up to her full height and stood beside me in front of the mirror.
"I really look like you," she mused, tilting her head at an angle, looking at her, at us, with a curious detachment.
I ran a brush through her hair, feeling the kinks that have knotted their way into her almost-straight locks, and I smiled at our reflection. She grinned back at me - on reflex - and I felt a surge of emotions: love, protectiveness, envy, fear.

Look like me, but don't be like me. Share my toothy smile, but not the plastic candor underneath. Share the same long-legged stride, but walk with the grace that I could never master. Share the way my eyes crinkle when I laugh, but not how my mind sinks into dark injuries. Share all the good things that I can show you, and be better than all the bad things that I have unwittingly adopted. Because your innocence is your power.

And so we stood together and smiled the identical, bright-eyed smile that make us sisters. And in a cruel moment of self-torment: if I had you, would you look like us too?

***

Boredom at work is beating down on me like a merciless sun. I can't run away. I'm being scorched, and I'm slowly drying up.

:: Epitaph ::

My adolescence, as it turns out, was really nothing more than two large boxes of papers and three bags of oversized, out-of-fashion clothes.

"All yours. See what you want to do with it," my mother said, in a rare moment of paternal instruction, pointing to the debris of my almost-forgotten youth.

I spent an afternoon going through dog-earned worksheets and faded art pieces; I found harried notes, tired scribbles, earnest journals, the odd short story borne out my adolescent creativity, as well as quirky, pseudo-sentimental quotes I lifted off dated copies of Readers' Digest.

That sort of youth - my coursely educated, culturally-bankrupt pre-adult years - burned with a strange fire. It was as if I had mixed my various ambitions, ideals, wayward philosophies and a girlish want for love and validation into a crucible, hoping to create a mythical potion that would ward off pain, anger, misfortune and failure for when adulthood - a milestone that never was - would magically begin. I never did succeed, of course. But because I longed to try, I thrived with a certain electric energy, cackling with my adolescent efforts to win over the world.

Ten years of dreams in two huge boxes, and I spent one afternoon tearing them all up. I ripped away worksheets that had once tormented my schooling years; I destroyed the art pieces that I once bled my time for. I crushed up notes and random scribblings into paper balls; I packed half-used journals and exercise-books for the recycling bin.

And as I grimly tied up the last trash bag, ready to send the wreckage of that awkward, but genuine, age to its death, I struggled to think of a suitable epitaph for its passing. We have all written lines for the anthem of our doomed youth in our own ways; the immortality of childish recklessness didn't stop us from fearing its inevitable death. The lusty chorus of this anthem will follow us for a long time yet, and its melody will continue to haunt us with fresh nostalgia and honest regret each time we pack up another bagful shredded dream.

Apologies to Dickinson, but her lines came quicker than mine:

Because I could not stop for death -
He kindly stopped for me -
The Carriage held but just Ourselves -
And Immortality.

:: Tailspin ::

Boredom cracks
Like a skin-split kiss of blood
Spitting venom.
I feel the chains of old, cutting into bone;
The tedium tick of the eyeless clock
Mocking, rocking to an infinite sentence,
Judged by nothing, yet locked at will.
I feel the strangled choke
Of waiting, baiting, endlessly:
The bane of my wellfed existence
Sucking dry,
My light.

:: Edge of Infinity ::

And so it goes again. Father Time throws on a switch and the new year clicks into place. Like children playing Blindman's Bluff we are stumbling - arms outstretched - onto the edge of infinity, laughing nervously as we try not to trip, to fall, to fail. I welcome my year-end nostalgia, but I embrace the stirring beat of (dare I say it) hope as 2005 dawns with the untouched perfection of a newborn.

Mine would have been six.

But the time for real regrets has passed; the ensuing years of remorse are really nothing more than deafening reverberations, bore of guilt and self-infliction. I cannot undo. I can only make peace. I'm not any wiser, but I'm not blind to the circumspect that life is more or less a choice of choice. C'est la vie, I say again, but not with the same gray nihilism that I once wore like a second skin of little meaning.

***

Sunday afternoon. The rain was raging, a cloudburst of mirthless strength. But I was warmed by my mother's laughter, sounding through the house, and the chatter of my sisters as they got their books ready for the new school year.

My father sat quietly reading, and I felt a monsterous pang as he gingerly picked up my sister's secondary-one Chinese textbook and muttered, almost to himself, "I used to teach this." He caught me staring at him - my face must have been an opened book of shadows and sadness - and he promptly dropped the book, returning to the safe, sullen world of his newspaper.

I looked away as well: my father's wasted talent gnaws at me like acid, and it's a pain I can't talk to anyone about. I'm not ashamed of his choice. I'm only distressed because he could have been so much more, if he had been one of those people who can see victory in failure, instead of the mere triumphant of safety.

***

I passed from one year to the next in wakeful stupor, with laughter, and with an immense gratitude for what life didn't deny me. I couldn't greet 2005 without a certain pang of loss, but I knew that despite all of its disenchantments, life is still brisk with the canticle of possible joys. It's a dissonant knowledge that comforts, even if I know there will be days when my own demons will spit on it and call it false. For now, it's there, it's blithe and brilliant, and it's enough.