The field outside my house is home to a flock of pigeons.
The field outside my house feels the shiver of the train a hundred metres below its feet.
The field outside my house has metal bones.
The field outside my house is wilting from a lack of rain.
The field outside my house hosts amateur football games on weekends.
The field outside my house is hemmed in on all four sides.
The field outside my house dreams of bigger things.

The field outside my house plans to move to the city and become a shopping mall.
The field outside my house can almost feel the feet of the masses pattering.
The field outside my house realises its just the pigeons again.

The field outside my house has few worldly possessions.
The field outside my house hasn’t had flowers for over a year.
The field outside my house doesn’t even have a tree.
The field outside my house is probably more comfortable than other fields.
The field outside my house says that cannot be possible, it’s so small and uneven.
The field outside my house is just fishing for compliments.
The field outside my house can do great things just by being there.

The field outside my house wishes it were a mansion, or at least a semi-d.
The field outside my house wants to be gilded and adorned with the money of a powerful family.
The field outside my house has a well-worn path that people walk on to get to the bus stop.
The field outside my house would prefer it to be concreted over for convenience’s sake.
The field outside my house anticipates the dew before it sleeps.

The field outside my house believes in the one true God.
The field outside my house knows it is made of dust, after all.
The field outside my house probably doesn’t want to be a church though.
The field outside my house needs its pigeons more than they need it.
The field outside my house set up a revenue sharing agreement with them ages ago.
The field outside my house insisted on droppings of a certain nutritional quality.

The field outside my house thinks irrigation is unnatural.
The field outside my house wonders when it can cause rain to fall on command.
The field outside my house decides that to be a tropical jungle is what’s best.
The field outside my house prefers to have many children.
The field outside my house is having unnatural thoughts again.
The field outside my house wants to make friends with other empty plots of land.

The field outside my house is living in quiet desperation.
The field outside my house waits for a miracle.
The field outside my house just wants to get back to its roots.

It was a blistering African afternoon, the freewheeling sky
Brilliant duck-egg blue, chilly, crystal cut.
I was there when he blacked out.
It was my fist that dealt a trained jab to the
Back of his skull, my eyes watching his eyes roll up
Back into his head. I looked on as he spun like the sky.
When the parachute finally opened it was too late
To do anything about the spreading crimson
On the snowy mustache. The man was nobody, but now
His body would be a hero.

It was an anxious, sweaty night in the hospital
As they waited for her dialysis to end. I stepped in halfway
Through and though clouded by age and pain
I thought her eyes still saw me. Like a thief I stole,
Unplugging her tubes and waiting for the cold electronic
Green of the flatline. Matter-of-factly it cried out for her, chirping
Its warning to her kin. They rushed in but though I
Was there they saw me not at all. The yellow air squirmed
As they prayed for her soul.

It was a dull and cold Canadian winter
Grey as the hairs left on his head. He lay cracked and
Spent on the adjustable bed, silently punishing everyone
Who looked upon his form. When we were done
Visiting I stayed behind alone to do
What had started it all.
I took his pillow fluffed with care by my aunt
And placed it almost reverently on his twisted face
Until he was somewhere else.
By the time the first wail began I was well
On my way back home, determined but failing to forget.

(Rest in peace, Warrant Tan.
Rest in peace, Mrs. Sng.
Rest in peace, Yeye.)

The water is warm, inviting me in
As it surely has done to a shockingly large
Stick insect, thrashing about at the
Granite edge like I must have been
When I was just a boy.
I remember, as the ripples tickle
My toes how my family used to go
Swimming. My mother would resign
Herself to the comfort of the deck chair
And I, tentative but eager
Would venture into the alien
Blueness with my father.
As I finish my tenth lap and am
Basking in the sunlight I recall how
My father taught me to swim.
I would ride on him to the deep
End, that adult place, full of mystery.
He would slip away all of a sudden,
Leaving me frightened and flailing, too breathless
Even to cry. My father had let me drown.
As I finish my twentieth lap I
Realise the insect is gone,
Fished up by some Indian worker.
And I think how, even though he
Came back before I slid under,
How I never looked at him
The same way again.

The stars were twinkling,
Hidden above a smoky
Tokyo dead-of-night.

A lamp post sprouted,
Steel flower by asphalt stream -
Watching cars sail past.

Its light flickered once,
Twisted against filament,
Trapped in glassy shell.

(Whispering prayer,
Incandescence overflows
And finally breaks loose.)

Grey shards scattered, blown.
Freedom soared into purple
Harajuku sky.

In the harsh darkness,
No-one looked up to see the
New constellation.

One
The air is thick with sweat and morbid anticipation.
So begins a love-hate tango with the forces of nature (Please oh God let it
rain, no, no, can’t have that oh, too much wind…)
as preparations for the jump grind into motion.
I sit, cold concrete floor cramping my legs and half dream,
mumbling drunkedly, yet spring to life in Pavlovian response to
barked out orders: Fit Up! (Good, sky is clear, oh shit oh shit…)
And soon enough we are old-men-bent, waddling like
turkeys under the crushing weight of our chutes towards uncertainty.

Two
I read somewhere that Chinook Indians are its namesake, but
there is nothing noble or stealthy about this machinated monstrosity
hunkering down from the sky, asserting its place in our
world with its size and gaping maw. Whining and roaring like some
of us are in our hearts it tries its best to stop us.
Obedient, self-denying soldiers that we are let its voice drown our screams.
The wind blasts the ground from under our feet (we push on)
and the blades burn in our ears (we push on) and dust blinds us
(we push on) and our hearts beat in our brains (we push… in)

Three
I am alone in the red and metal, jutting edges and warning signs,
spitting in the logic of the men that surround me, pressed in at every
corner and lost as I am within myself. Seeing nothing, feeling
nothing and certainly hearing nothing I wonder how I can possibly sense
the jumpmaster’s angled arms as he calls: Stand Up! Hook Up! rightleftright-
-rightleftright helmet capewell chest strap reserve snap ripcord leg strap backtie
static line clear hooked up rightleftrightleftrightleft GO rightleft GO rightleft
GO rightleft and I’m standing at the abyss no I don’t want to die and suddenly:
A calm washes over, clear and bright as arctic air and I whisper Thank You God

ONETHOUSANDTWOTHOUSANDTHREETHOUSAND
Check. A bubble of freedom surrounds me and I am deaf not because there
is too much but because there is nothing but sun and sky. Impossible
blasphemy for Man to fly yet, yet! Here I am. I turn, angling gracefully,
turkey turned osprey, growing in my gut the feeling of kept promises.
This is the feeling of being alive and treasuring it,
triumphant in it, I gaze down. Pure elation turns quickly to mixed
dread as the ground rushes to hold me and I prepare
automatically, reflexively, angling my feet in
invitation to the concrete.

Two Hundred
The number of feet of sky between me and ground that passes in an
instant. WAM and I am lying, stunned but stable, once more a mere
mortal looking up at a fading dream. And in the seconds that pass
before I pick myself and my parachute up and run to
safety I think: that must be what dying feels like. Being alive -
that is walking head down day-to-day, sleeping, muttering,
doing without questioning. And I know deep within myself that despite
what I think or feel, I do not fear death. When it’s my turn to leave
the Chinook of life I will jump – and fly, forever.

She cried out to me
Once in a dream, wrapped up
In grey mists and fumes
Of the twilight underground
Behind my eyes.

Her white satin dress
Was ragged and worn, her
Face pale and hopeful
Like a midnight Cinderella
Eternal.

She was just too far
Away for me to hear
Her, voice perfume on
Velvet starlit sky, lulling
Me to slumber.

Her silver crown I
Chased for hours like a
Yellow lovesick man,
Until eyesight faltered and
Breath stirred – awake.

my fervent prayer that time slows to a crawl
in this window of opportunity
is like drying sweat in the heat of the sun.

serendipity, life at its crossroads,
poetic incoherence and that damnable thing
(self-indulgence) tell me this:

oh you poor romantically inclined sod it is
most unfair for you to be caught
rock-and-hard-placelike, rigid as if dead

in this Alcatraz of the mind.
of course, by the time i conclude with a
literary analysis of that moment

my time would have passed.

Flitting from endless
rows of neat lamp posts
To disparate shadows,
i wander
like a dying star in a fading
galaxy slowly spinning
out
of control. Glancing at
each suggestion of
fairy dust, its glitter
–as it always does-
reminds me of
the candle she places
at the open window still.
She is probably
sleeping on the sofa, hands and
hair astray, faded dress crumpled and sad,
and yet.

i walk on, trying to find
belonging in the
wilderness and its
golden promises.
For all that she can be
is too small for my soul,
and all that it is
far too big for my heart -
i believe in everything
but my own redemption.
Always
i will search
without finding, see without
learning, cry and rage
without growing.

The candle
will burn down someday…

Copulation is blood and
Barbed wire, and you
Love it.
Sick.
You sniff it
Hungrily. You want
To eat it, and feel
The hooks tear your
Intestines on the
Way down.

Your body will bloom.
Your nails will be thorns
Clutching your throat.
You will become
A rose.
Sick.
I will not smell,
Or even look, lest my
Mind is fooled
By your
Beauty.

O how the heavens cried out in alarm
When it fell! Mother Sun reached out her hands to grasp it,
Rays futilely reflecting off
Its gleaming body, now slowly drying.

Father Moon hid his face in grief,
Refusing to come out of the sky.
It had its father’s figure, quick and crescent, and
Its hide was taken from both – Fire and Silver.

Now it laid wasted, its gaping
Mouth and surprised stare vacantly questioning:
How men called it the symbol of wealth, and how now
The flies worshipped it, kissing its cold body

Goodbye.
The next day Sun and Moon took it
From the hard earth and buried it in
The Sky, returning it home at last.

1. What is this thing which invokes emotion, passion, thought?
Nothingness open for discussion and critique
Something no textbook can teach, nobody can learn
Without supernatural effort
What comes so easily as if it were meant for them
To set themselves apart from others?
Some can score, some can preach
Some can draw, some can teach
Some can win, some can fight
But the one thing I can do is write
Call it mere arranging of words and thoughts
Or bullshit if you will
“No future in that”, “You can write, can you sell?”
Yet I do it still

2. It is not as easy as being well read
Not as easy as being a bleeding heart
My marks cannot and will not be explained
How are ideas graded and compartmentalised?
Textbook $10, guidebook $5.50, pencil $2, paper 5¢
But emotions wild are worthless to some
And priceless to others who get them:
The people who live by the pen
The dangerous men
Who affect our feelings greater than “happy” or “sad”
I am but a pretender to their throne
Yet I do it still

3. Precious few people have read what I wrote and
What they have seen is not good enough
My age forbids me experience in life
My hand it croaks at the slightest unease
My mind it blocks as and when it pleases
My ideas are stolen from others more worthy
If those people who honour me with praise read closer
They would see in my words shallowness
Emptiness
Technical whiz-bang with no heart
I plead guilty.
I am but a specialist in a world of polymaths
I am nothing to shout about, but don’t write me off:
I do it still

4. The language has defined me, no need to remind me
The game has started and this is my trump
I have nothing to lose and the whole world to gain
And no one can fault me for trying
It’s not how you fall but how you get up
And “stolen ideas” is high class for “learning”
If I died and ten years from now
You try to remember: who was he?
Two simple things – I wrote and I tried
And if for that I bleed and I die
I will fall happy
‘Cuz I have a way and I have a will
I do it still

Slouching by the roadside, half-forgotten by
the man who sells beer and snacks, mere distractions
to the beautiful game on the idiot box
the stool: worn and grimy and rough like the hands
of the late night foreign labourers who sit here fridays and
pine for home; red and faded as if hundreds of chinese new years
past compressed themselves into this one night; touched
the bodies of the countless faces in the crowd like
the whores who sometimes take a breather here, sticky
and sick of the smoky air. This crack here the passion of the
s-league fans when the home team wins; this stain
there the tears of the lonely alcoholic locked out
of home again; this scratch the intent of the corner
gangsters with their petty disputes and broken beer bottles.
Each cockroach, each odour, each stale cigarette butt tells
a maybe insignificant story, but the stool knows each one.
No big wonder therefore when the man takes it in
after all, dragging it (the pain of his divorce echoing
in the sound of the road on its legs) into his coffeeshop and
pulling the shutters down. Because this stool, dirty, spoiled,
worthless, is his most precious possession in the end.

it sits, self content in wobbling.
packets of potato chips opened and strewn, chicken buckets, ice-cream tubs,
crinkly sweet wrappers, muck and filth of consumerist society: surround the
fortune god of a man stuffed into the couch like parodies of offerings.
the drooling, dribbling, chewing, spitting, chewing, licking, chewing…
sausage-fingers reaching and squirming for the next sweet fat helping.
globs of sediment deposited at corner of leering mouth. never satisfied, eyes
always on the bright glare of the fantasy-box he, it, opens another box of chocolates and
yanks off another chicken wing and slurps another litre of ambrosia, figuratively
crying: take me to heaven! away from this hell of softness, pulsating flesh, squelching
gut and wrenching hunger, fat and excess and the inescapability of it all. and heaven
doesn’t listen; or maybe it does, letting the creature slobber and stuff and consume
itself to a certain, squishy death.

on the wall who’s the
fairest of them all? and thro
ugh the white cloud of her mind sh
e heard the mirror’s call “co
me take a look at me and see” the mir
ror softly spoke but when she did to her surp
rise the magic mirror br
ok
e
ker-piang…

City

A concrete jungle:
Great trunks of polished metal
Soaking up the sun

Forest

Men of green and brown –
Tall and silent; still and grave
Arms spread in prayer

Welcome to my lesson

I’ll teach you all I can

Until you know the complex root

Of X square sin cos tan

When you’re done with matrices

I’ll divide you ’til you cry

I’ll make you eat your indices

Go forth and multiply!

a m cube times X square b

Your answer is a line

How did you get .61c?

Your guess is good as mine

The lowest common multiple

Of theta delta phi

Is quickly found with the integral

Of 67 pi

Dare to redifferentiate

The midpoint of the curve

And if you can’t disintegrate

Then factorise with verve!

To find your feasibility

Look sharp! Combine! Permute!

Calculate the probability

That Ali will eat fruit!

And if you do not understand

I have a plan for you

I’ll make you come next Saturday

For lesson number 2!

Caught in the branches
Of a slowly dying oak
She cries out for help

]]> http://vituperation.wordpress.com/2006/08/01/luna/feed/ 0 mercurial http://vituperation.wordpress.com/2006/08/01/golden-arches/ http://vituperation.wordpress.com/2006/08/01/golden-arches/#comments Tue, 01 Aug 2006 15:26:18 +0000 hg https://vituperation.wordpress.com/2006/08/01/golden-arches/ ]]>

lights flicker like a seizure, antiseptic table-tops
welded to the floor. efficient countertops
and programmed-to-be-polite staff.
bright colours, but the poisonous
neon bright of advertising.
and the food – plastic
as the chairs, dear
and addictive
as sin.

no.

people don’t
come here for the
morgue ambience or the
zombie food or the fake smiles
of the assistant manager. weeds in
Chernobyl, amazingly, make their own life
in a place where it surely cannot exist. people
sit on the hard bubble plastic and munch on refined
cardboard and enjoy themselves. they grow together here,
laughing and talking, careless, reveling in the world. they subvert
the utilitarian: mixing frankensauce and making smiley faces with the
deep fried fries. they laugh, they sing, they celebrate. funding this dead monster
they know is harmless. nothing can stop them, change them; life always finds a way.

Night-time comes – the world is quiet.
Moon is hidden; stars, retired.
Stale air smothered stoic earth,
Spent clouds dead from giving birth.
The shrieking wind has lost her voice,
Her futile tears still sour and moist.

Wolves lament from rocky crag,
Desperate sparrows gone half mad
With terror flee from tangled trees;
Black leaves mouth their longing pleas.
Crickets singing hollow love songs
Seem to cry “What’s wrong? What’s wrong?”

The hoarse breeze moans her weak reply:
Earth, stars, sky, life, all wait to die.
The last of thunder rumbles down
To sleep in Heaven from where t’was thrown.
And once more silence reigns supreme
Through this dark night – made but a dream.

i love how
you draw me in, slide me around
lift me up high, drag me aground

i know now
i’m less than naught, a pawn in your game
proof that you’re hot, a boost to your fame

lay me low,
mess with my mind, tear out my heart
keep the suspense, rip me apart

take it slow:
make your next move, dance your own jive
kiss me awake, kill me alive.

aren’t we already living in a consciousness of make-believe, where
reality twists in on itself, where we only think
we are living because they say we are: burn the books and you alter
history. can you say the tree fell when no-one heard it?
preach your ideas and change the future, just like the butterfly
flap flaps his wings and the tornado down south.
how many thousands upon thousands of people have thought to think
(imagining themselves uniquely philosophical) why does my life
seem so fake, this can’t be all there is? no need for a revolution in cyberpunk
sci-fi with an exciting soundtrack to tell them, oh dear me
no. red pill, blue pill, no pill, both – hallucinogen and anaesthetic are
one and the same. what then is truth, you who dream
a butterfly or the butterfly who dreams a you? and what do you do when
the illusion is better than reality – you watch the butterfly
flutter flutter its chaos theory in your sleep.

Forever,
The last raindrop stays.

Seas to skies,
Eternal life
In constant flux.

The pond, the storm,
Our life and our death,
Ceaselessly permeating
All our aspects.

Rise and fall and
The cause of such -
From each tear to
All the oceans
Equal.

The last raindrop is also
The very first, raining
On the tree that
Grew in Eden,
And on the abyss
At the end of all.

Watching all forever
With never-seeing
Eyes, shapeless bodies
In infinite forms,
Waves and cries and
Squirms and sucks,
Its nature to be strange.

]]> http://vituperation.wordpress.com/2006/08/01/aqua/feed/ 0 mercurial http://vituperation.wordpress.com/2006/08/01/a-love-poem-in-7-elements/ http://vituperation.wordpress.com/2006/08/01/a-love-poem-in-7-elements/#comments Tue, 01 Aug 2006 06:01:53 +0000 hg https://vituperation.wordpress.com/2006/08/01/a-love-poem-in-7-elements/ ]]>

1. Fire
I burn, I rule
touch me and you’ll catch me
flashy, hot
yeah

2. Air
I soar, I fill
you with my very being
together we’ll fly
to the moon

3. Life
I grow, I live
acorn to oak, the spark
that starts out small
don’t write me off

4. Water
I flow, I crash
just as easily
I’m duality: the pond
and the storm

5. Earth
I ground, I stay
built on firm foundations
I will never
leave you

6. Metal
I hope I shine
useless until you
forge me, polish me
only then can I be precious

7. Void
I need, I ache
for you, for I am
nothing
nothing without you

Inspect.
Sallow crescent-moon amazingly
Hermetically sealed
Protecting tender tissue within

Peel.
Many layers later you will find
With no great surprise perhaps
The flesh fair pale pallid

Discuss.
Years ago you think perhaps
Bananas were yellow in and out
Were they sweeter without a

Doubt.
Evolution is a way of this
World – who are we to say
What should or should not be?

They hovered, with super-advanced
translation devices at the ready, descending
upon the first Ah Lian they detected.

(English is the language
of business in this land.)

(We come in peace.)

“Eschews, I going pak tor, got
ploblem go Twerist Bod comprain hor!”

(That did not turn out well.
Try the language of the majority.)

(Wo men yao he
ren lei gou tong.)

“Ai yah, siam lah!”

(This is abysmal. We should have
used the national language first.)

(Awak faham saya kah?)

“Er… Apa?”

They left for
Malaysia instead.

wake up: 5.30 a.m.
get home: 10 p.m.
sleep: 12 a.m.
computer: 2h/day
TV: 2h/day
both: 2.5 h total
(i believe you’d like
to have a sense of
control over me
but you don’t
realise)
heart: no curfew