On National Day, 2009

August is the crudest month,
festooning lamp-posts with dead banners,
dulling memory and desire, stirring
tired people 
HEART TO HEART 
HAND IN HAND 
REACHING OUT 
heart in hand 
hand in mouth;
collective delusion.
April kept us warm - sweltering -
running for the blessed air-con,
defying nature 
with a little touch of Siberia.

*

Subtexts keep us alive,
help us remember who we are -
This is home, truly 
(kid you not)
Where I know I 
(am legally bound to) be;
Where my dreams wait for me 
(in my bunk after I'm back from outfield)
Where the river always flows 
(damn RCOs give you crotch-rot).

But there are many amnesiacs
in Singapore. Where there's money,
it pays to forget.

*

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT
Got Girl Got Boy, Stop Fucking.
Tie Your Tubes, Then Carry On.
Don't Tie Your Tubes, We Need Your Babies.
Gays: Don't Fuck, We Only Want Your Money.

no self-contradiction at all.

*

I heard two housewives chatting -
Did you know, my last maid cheat my money
when she go to the market
so I send her back - Aiyah that's nothing; 
I caught my last maid talking
to another one from her homeland, 
so I dun let her go to market anymore,
Budden one day dunno why she fall down
while cleaning the windows! Aiyoh, bopian,
get another one lor. Lucky thing
corona say accident.

*

Does your heart bleed too?
Or are you one of those who,
after dining at Ministry of Food,
clubbing at Ministry of Sound,
wrinkle your noses at the Banglas
on the bus from the Ministry of Smell;
they who built your flats, your offices,
your lifts that stop on every floor
on the sweat of their broken backs
in the hope of buying a better life
one-tenth as good as your own?
Did you forget their humanity?
Did you stop to count the cost
of broken lives, O Singapore?

No, careless sentimentality costs money;
self-doubt is a loss-making business.
Didn't you learn that in your management course?

No, I studied arts, 
the best way to disappoint my parents.

*

I see flags hanging along corridors,
under windowsills, twisted into
vague memories of themselves by the wind.
Don't they look like bedsheets? -
red blood, five white dots and a smear of man-seed
from the few times the newlywed couple
tried to make love for the greater good,
the survival of the motherland,
the smear when he didn't know how to do it.

In sex-ed the motherland only taught him not to have sex;
presumably divine inspiration 
or porn would take care of the rest.

*

And under the grey fog of a Sumatran haze,
A crowd flowed by the Singapore River, so many;
I had not thought money had undone so many.
Unreal City, dry-eyed in the air-con
trooping out for lunch and a coffee
one desperate hour, one desperate scramble
past the quaint-hatted Japanese tourists
posing with the quaint-hatted bronze statues
of bronzed rickshaw-pullers, coolies,
now long dead; a grotesque spectacle 
proudly brought to you by the STB, 
in collaboration with the EDB.

*

You never give me your money,
You only give me your funny poems.

*

Who will sing of you, O Singapore?
Who will tell the stories of the land,
the million useless things -
the old Tembusu on the grounds 
of the shadowed yellow house at the junction -
when the few scattered survivors from old Singapore
are gone? Who will hear the echoes 
of the past in the names 
of places that all look the same?
Singapore you killed Calliope
and the clay of your soil 
and the bricks of your flats 
are red with her blood
and the blood of the people you forgot.

*

The URA's motto: Leave No Headstone Unturned.
I still remember the serene peace
of Bidadari, the scented breeze 
under the age-old trees;
it was the breath of a place 
that knew its time had come.

*

Singapore I waited in the corner
of the Japanese tourists' photographs, 
daring your river to swallow me whole
and make me forget. 

But no Lethean waters came to meet me,
only the still waters that one man's vision calmed,
and people dead to me flowing past me
on their way to oblivion and yesterday;
they know where they're going.
They wear the same quiet optimism -
a death-mask.

And when they die, they leave behind
nothing. No memories, no whiff of regret,
no sadly-missed sweet breath,
just a chequebook and a jar of ashes,
stuffed into a maze of urns stretching
up and away as far as the eye can see.
When they die, who will sing of their stories?

*

Sweet river run softly,
there is no one left to listen.

-----

This poem was 2 days in the gestation, 8th and 9th August 2009. I'm of course greatly indebted to T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, Allen Ginsberg's America, and indeed the entire canon of Greek and other classic literature. You may of course hear echoes of many other works in it. Thanks also to Zhaohan for looking at an early draft, and Cheng for a very encouraging review. Adam I wish you could've read it in the process, but oh well.

America, by Allen Ginsberg

A sound recording of Allen Ginsberg reading a draft of his poem "America" in 1956.

Walking Away

It is eighteen years ago, almost to the day- 
A sunny day with the leaves just turning, 
The touch-lines new-ruled - since I watched you play 
Your first game of fotball, then, like a satellite 
Wrenched from its orbit, go drifting away 

Behind a scatter of boys. I can see 
You walking away from me towards the school 
with the pathos of a half-fledged thing set free 
Into a wilderness, the gait of one 
Who finds no path where the path should be. 

That hesitant figure, eddying away 
Like a winged seed loosened from its parent stem, 
Has something I never quite grasp to convey 
About nature's give-and-take - the small, the scorching 
Ordeals which fire one's irresolute clay. 

I had worse partings, but none that so 
Gnaws at my mind still. Perhaps it is roughly 
Saying what God alone could perfectly show- 
How selfhood begins with a walking away,
And love is proved in the letting go.

- Cecil Day-Lewis

Amoretti - Sonnet XXX

My love is like to ice, and I to fire;
how comes it then that this her cold so great
is not dissolv'd through my so hot desire,
but harder grows the more I her entreat?

Or how comes it that my exceeding heat
is not delay'd by her heart frozen cold:
but that I burn much more in boiling sweat,
and feel my flames augmented manifold?

What more miraculous thing may be told
that fire which all things melts, should harden ice:
and ice which is congeal'd with senseless cold,

should kindle fire by wonderful device.
Such is the power of love in gentle mind,
that it can alter all the course of kind.

Edmund Spenser

words of advice

Two poems here that I thought lots of you out there might like. The first poem's achieved a sort of shiny oracular halo of fame, and I just found the second poem today - it might be useful for a sense of perspective haha. Enjoy!

Desiderata by Max Ehrmann

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible, without surrender,
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even to the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons;
they are vexatious to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain or bitter,
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs,
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals,
and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love,
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment,
it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be.
And whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life,
keep peace in your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.

Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

and Deteriorata by Tony Hendra

You are a fluke of the universe.
You have no right to be here.
Deteriorata. Deteriorata.

Go placidly amidst the noise and waste, and remember what comfort there may be in owning a piece thereof. Avoid quiet and passive persons, unless you are in need of sleep. Rotate your tires. Speak glowingly of those greater than yourself; and heed well their advice, even though they be turkeys. Know what to kiss - and when. Consider that two wrongs never make a right, but that three do. Wherever possible, put people on hold. Be comforted, that in the face of all irridity and disillusionment, and despite the changing fortunes of time, there is always a big future in computer maintenance.

You are a fluke of the universe.
You have no right to be here.
Whether you can hear it or not,
The universe is laughing behind your back.

Remember the Pueblo. Strive at all times to bend, fold, spindle, and mutilate. Know yourself. If you need help, call the FBI. Exercise caution in your daily affairs, especially with those persons closest to you... That lemon on your left, for instance. Be assured that a walk through the seas of most souls would scarcely get your feet wet. Fall not in love, therefore, it will stick to your face. Gracefully surrender the things of youth: the birds, clean air, tuna, Taiwan - and let not the sands of time get in your lunch. Hire people with hooks. For a good time, call 606-4311, ask for Ken. Take heart in the deepening gloom that your dog is finally getting enough cheese. And reflect that whatever misfortune may be your lot, it could only be worse in Milwaukee.

You are a fluke of the universe.
You have no right to be here.
Whether you can hear it or not,
The universe is laughing behind your back.

Therefore, make peace with your god, whatever you perceive him to be: hairy thunderer or cosmic muffin. With all its hopes, dreams, promises, and urban renewal, the world continues to deteriorate. GIVE UP!

You are a fluke of the universe.
You have no right to be here.
Whether you can hear it or not,
The universe is laughing behind your back.

I have dreamed of you so much

I have dreamed of you so much that you are no longer real.
Is there still time for me to reach your breathing body, to kiss your mouth and make
your dear voice come alive again?

I have dreamed of you so much that my arms, grown used to being crossed on my 
chest as I hugged your shadow, would perhaps not bend to the shape of your body.
For faced with the real form of what has haunted me and governed me for so many 
days and years, I would surely become a shadow.

O scales of feeling.

I have dreamed of you so much that surely there is no more time for me to wake up. 
I sleep on my feet prey to all the forms of life and love, and you, the only one who 
counts for me today, I can no more touch your face and lips than touch the lips and 
face of some passerby.

I have dreamed of you so much, have walked so much, talked so much, slept so much 
with your phantom, that perhaps the only thing left for me is to become a phantom 
among phantoms, a shadow a hundred times more shadow than the shadow that
moves and goes on moving, brightly, over the sundial of your life.

- Robert Desnos

Saw this in The Guardian's Books Blog here. (Yes I do go read those things -.- gawd... I just wasn't made for these times.)

There's a thing about poetry that seems to reach an arm into the deepest recesses of your soul and drags something of it into the light of day, to be examined, exulted, execrated as the case might be. It's like putting your beating heart and trembling brain under the microscope (to say nothing of your ethereal soul). This is one of those poems that particularly struck me; it's why I'm still into poetry.

I actually think that's not a very good translation of the original poem in French; but since I can't read French I'm afraid that'll have to do for now. Here's the original (source here)

J’ai tant rêvé de toi
J’ai tant rêvé de toi que tu perds ta réalité.

Est-il encore temps d’atteindre ce corps vivant
et de baiser sur cette bouche la naissance
de la voix qui m’est chère?

J’ai tant rêvé de toi que mes bras habitués en étreignant ton ombre
à se croiser sur ma poitrine ne se plieraient pas
au contour de ton corps, peut-être.

Et que, devant l’apparence réelle de ce qui me hante
et me gouverne depuis des jours et des années
je deviendrais une ombre sans doute,

Ô balances sentimentales.

J’ai tant rêvé de toi qu’il n'est plus temps sans doute que je m’éveille.
Je dors debout, le corps exposé à toutes les apparences de la vie
et de l’amour et toi, la seule qui compte aujourd'hui pour moi,
je pourrais moins toucher ton front et tes lèvres que les premières lèvres
et le premier front venu.

J’ai tant rêvé de toi, tant marché, parlé, couché avec ton fantôme
qu’il ne me reste plus peut-être, et pourtant,
qu’a être fantôme parmi les fantômes et plus ombre cent fois
que l’ombre qui se promène et se promènera allègrement
sur le cadran solaire de ta vie.

I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you - Nobody - Too?
Then there's a pair of us?
Don't tell! they'd advertise - you know!

How dreary - to be - Somebody!
How public - like a Frog -
To tell one's name - the livelong June -
To an admiring Bog!

- Emily Dickinson

This is a little gem, and having come across it I just had to post it. I love the tone; at once bold, forthright, yet timid, shy, even confidential - "Don't tell!", "How dreary!" - it's beautiful. I have no idea whether it was purposely crafted or just spontaneous but it certainly looks like one burst of inspiration.

Larkin & Betjeman

As you can tell, I'm fuck-bored. So here are two poems, one slightly more serious and the other, wickedly funny. Best read out.

Best Society
When I was a child, I thought,
Casually, that solitude
Never needed to be sought.
Something everybody had,
Like nakedness, it lay at hand,
Not specially right or specially wrong,
A plentiful and obvious thing
Not at all hard to understand.

Then, after twenty, it became
At once more difficult to get
And more desired - though all the same
More undesirable; for what
You are alone has, to achieve
The rank of fact, to be expressed
In terms of others, or it's just
A compensating make-believe.

Much better stay in company!
To love you must have someone else,
Giving requires a legatee,
Good neighbours need whole parishfuls
Of folk to do it on - in short,
Our virtues are all social; if,
Deprived of solitude, you chafe,
It's clear you're not the virtuous sort.

Viciously, then, I lock my door.
The gas-fire breathes. The wind outside
Ushers in evening rain. Once more
Uncontradicting solitude
Supports me on its giant palm;
And like a sea-anemone
Or simple snail, there cautiously
Unfolds, emerges, what I am.

- Philip Larkin

-----

The Olympic Girl
The sort of girl I like to see
Smiles down from her great height at me.
She stands in strong, athletic pose
And wrinkles her retroussé nose.
Is it distaste that makes her frown,
So furious and freckled, down
On an unhealthy worm like me?
Or am I what she likes to see?
I do not know, though much I care,
xxxxxxxx.....would I were
(Forgive me, shade of Rupert Brooke)
An object fit to claim her look.
Oh! would I were her racket press'd
With hard excitement to her breast
And swished into the sunlit air
Arm-high above her tousled hair,
And banged against the bounding ball
"Oh! Plung!" my tauten'd strings would call,
"Oh! Plung! my darling, break my strings
For you I will do brilliant things."
And when the match is over, I
Would flop beside you, hear you sigh;
And then with what supreme caress,
You'd tuck me up into my press.
Fair tigress of the tennis courts,
So short in sleeve and strong in shorts,
Little, alas, to you I mean,
For I am bald and old and green.

- John Betjeman

Sometimes it Happens

And sometimes it happens that you are friends and then
You are not friends,
And friendship has passed.
And whole days are lost and among them
A fountain empties itself.

And sometimes it happens that you are loved and then
You are not loved,
And love is past.
And whole days are lost and among them
A fountain empties itself into the grass.

And sometimes you want to speak to her and then
You do not want to speak,
Then the opportunity has passed.
Your dreams flare up, they suddenly vanish.

And also it happens that there is nowhere to go and then
There is somewhere to go,
Then you have bypassed.
And the years flare up and are gone,
Quicker than a minute.

So you have nothing.
You wonder if these things matter and then
As soon you begin to wonder if these things matter
They cease to matter,
And caring is past.
And a fountain empties itself into the grass.

- Brian Patten

2 poems and a ppp

whoops! just shamelessly whored your humble narrator's blog by dropping the link in on peck's/lip's tagboard =)

so now. 2 funky and nice poems and then a ppp and i should go sleep.

-----

Flowers (by Wendy Cope)
Some men never think of it.
You did. You'd come along
And say you'd nearly brought me flowers
But something had gone wrong.

The shop was closed. Or you had doubts -
The sort that minds like ours
Dream up incessantly. You thought
I might not want your flowers.

It made me smile and hug you then.
Now I can only smile.
But, look, the flowers you nearly brought
Have lasted all this while.

[what a way to treat a gf lol]

-----

Piss Flower (by Jo Shapcott)
I can't pretend to a golden parabola,
or to the downing of many pints
for making magnificent water.

I can't begin to write my name, no
not even my pet name, in the snow: except in pointless unreadable script.

But I can print a stream of bubbles
into water with a velocity
you'd have to call aesthetic.

I can shoot down a jet stream
so intense my body rises
a full forty feet and floats

on a bubble stem of grace
for just a few seconds
up there in the urban air.

[i think that's a brilliant evocation. considering the subject, too. i'd always thought there was something aesthetic about piss...]

-----

For more, visit the Poetry Archive: http://www.poetryarchive.org/
If you have the time go find "You're Beautiful" by Simon Armitage.

-----

- dear cambridge examiners
plz plz give me a set of poems i can relate to
not some crap about bullfrogs or thistles
i got an A the last time, but my powers are crescent, like Pompey's
and therefore wax and wane
and if you give me a screwed-up PC i can't score
plz plz plz give me straightforward questions on A&C and GX
preferably an easy passage too for A&C, just in case
and not a question on dramatic effect because i'll have no clue what's expected
things just have to go reasonably well for this paper
and i should be home and dry
kthxbye -

The Day I Got My Finger Stuck Up My Nose

When I got my finger stuck up my nose
I went to a doctor, who said,
"Nothing like this has happened before,
We will have to chop off your head."

"It's only my finger stuck up my nose,
It's only my finger!" I said.
"I see what it is," the doctor replied,
"But we'll still have to chop off your head."

He went to the cabinet and took out an axe.
I watched with considerable dread.
"But it's only my finger stuck up my nose.
It's only a finger!" I said.

"Perhaps we can yank it out with a hook
Tied to some surgical thread.
Maybe we can try that," he replied
"Rather than chop off your head."

"I'm never going to pick it again.
I've now learned my lesson," I said.
"I won't stick my finger up my nose -
I'll stick it in my ear instead."

- Brian Patten

The School for Scandal

A school for Scandal! tell me, I beseech you,
Needs there a school this modish art to teach you?
No need of lessons now, the knowing think;
We might as well be taught to eat and drink.
Caused by a dearth of scandal, should the vapours
Distress our fair ones--let them read the papers;
Their powerful mixtures such disorders hit;
Crave what you will--there's quantum sufficit.

- Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Resume

Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.

Dorothy Parker

Down With Fanatics!

If I had my way with violent men
I'd simmer them in oil,
I'd fill a pot with bitumen
And bring them to the boil.
I execrate the terrorist
And those who harbour him,
And if I weren't a moralist
I'd tear them limb from limb.

Fanatics are an evil breed
Whom decent men should shun;
I'd like to flog them till they bleed,
Yes, every mother's son,
I'd like to tie them to a board
And let them taste the cat,
While giving praise, oh thank the Lord,
That I am not like that.

For we should love the human kind,
As Jesus taught us to,
And those who don't should be struck blind
And beaten black and blue;
I'd like to roast them in a grill
And listen to them shriek,
Then break them on the wheel until
They turned the other cheek.

- Roger Woddis

Abou Ben Adhem

Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
An Angel writing in a book of gold:

Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And to the Presence in the room he said,
"What writest thou?" The Vision raised its head,
And with a look made of all sweet accord
Answered, "The names of those who love the Lord."

"And is mine one?" said Abou. "Nay, not so,"
Replied the Angel. Abou spoke more low,
But cheerily still; and said, "I pray thee, then,
Write me as one who loves his fellow men."

The Angel wrote, and vanished. The next night
It came again with a great wakening light,
And showed the names whom love of God had blessed,
And, lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest!

- James Leigh Hunt