Happiness

is a box of wife cake brought by hand by a distant friend from Hong Kong smashed to pieces then a walk in the rain behind a boy sing-mumbling off-key on his way home and the sprinkling drizzle coming out of the blackness golden confettis in the lamp light

secret of stars

There are days of drudgery dragging on by foot minute by minute.
then there are nights like this
when my hands turn paper

past the Bart station
at the intersection of the lights
there the 280 stretches on endlessly into the night
wave after wave of lights gleaming red then gold
like a tide

the cafe semi-dark, lit by garden spotlights and the word cafe ruby red
the seats in shadows of quietude, of conversations now calmed to a silence that radiates
past the bend
for an instance
no cars came
only the sudden unfolding of stars, a studded veil of heaven's morse code in diamond light
there was nothing to decipher
only this inexplicable beauty and the trembling of my heart

I picked out the brightest star through the vein of winter twigs on the brink of life
and thought of the world as bursting with secrets
how I wished you happiness at that moment.
right then it was not a shame to think of you

and this quiet night throbing with promises. the knowledge came with such clarity
my heart shuddered,
that happiness, is a moment of darkness
behind which the meaning of stars is suddenly revealed
in all
its inexplicable glory.

no ode

Why am I so lonely for companionship that I will look up random strangers and envy them?

Sometimes, there are voids inside that even the best stories, no matter how beautiful the language, just won't fill.

When I was young. I thought

This feeling will go away when I find someone. Besides you don't care when you are young

all of life's possibility stretches out endlessly.

But now. Even the best of words won't console me,

Nor the moon. Nor the night. Nor the distant sound of laughter

This cold night.

February

It's almost Valentine's Day
have I ever told you, every year
it makes me want to puke?
the grotesque hearts pasted on every restaurant window
and the rotting roses black along the edge with their ugly thorns
clawing out every vase
I wish worms would eat them all. I do.

People walking around parade the girl or guy on their arm
each proclaiming in fanciful gestures
eat this: loneliness. Eat this.

It is not
that I don't believe in love
worth celebrating.

It is just
that if hearts could be won by
dying flowers cut at the waist
and chocolate hearts hollow in the center
then
I don't know what is what.

Only this.
Loneliness is a dark long corridor
and it is too deep and too black
for red tinsel hearts to shine through
It is a long walk down
a long walk
Narrow--like the infinite gap between bodies in heat.

Now walk in a single file
to the silence that burns like anger in the depth of your being
and turn to smile at the boy next to you
kiss his hand
and tell him you love him.

Yes, I have grown old

yes, I have grown old
always without knowledge
I watch a child friend of mine turn woman today
and am reminded
that my own stillness is but a relation
to the speed of the world external
from which I had quietly slipped myself
like an envelope
like new skin,

and the ghost of my younger confidence
is a whisper in the wind--
what I hear against the last drops of rain tonight
rapping softly on the window
trying to get back in.

The moon gapes like a wound tonight, a gash
in the sky
it is the fog drawing its silver screen around shadows of trees
it is all effects, but I thought
again
of you. And how it was all effect; but the moon, it still gaps
like a wound.

Your Big Day

Today, as I laid in bed, watching the dusky blue, the last of the day
seep through the black of the curtains, illuminating the world with its dim mysterious rays, I wondered
Has it been ten years? Since we made up guessing games
who will be the first? we asked.
and ten years hence, some of us had moved, some passed on, some no longer close friends in the truest sense
has time been kind to us all?
Have we found ourselves, are we proud of our callings?
I told you I cried when I saw your email. I was not exaggerating.
Yes, I did cry.
So, you will be the first, to walk the aisle.
Life is full of mysteries, and I guess its equation will always be one more of questions than of answers
But, the question we threw into the future ten years ago, today, has revealed its answer
Is that what life is? This sowing of a seed, a question into the future?
Will what we have buried with our hearts one day, twenty years down the road bear fruit?
I hope so, my dear friend, I hope so.
And as I watch the dusk blue deepen, and the world transit from a dull day into a brilliant night,
I think, so this is time's gentle and subtle movement across our lives
I hope whatever the future hold for you will be as brilliant
and I will memorize this shade of blue
no, it is not a color of sadness, or the forlorn,
it is the color of questions answered and promises fulfilled, it is a mild hope of foolish girls that had been blessed
I will memorize this shade of blue
and I will bury this trembling wish I have for you in this fragile hour of the day
watch it wash into the dark of a new night
bury it deep
before I turn on the lights.

someone else's sad lines

Tonight I can write the saddest lines
the words
are not mine
how they caress this still night
equally cold, and, hollow
of the stars, the white moon
and treetops
We, of that time, are no longer the same.
these words are not mine
it is my disease
to crave that which does not belong to me
so that even my sadness
I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
even my sadness
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
I borrow
someone else's
Tonight I can write the saddest lines
it is better that you are someone else's .
Sadness,
when it's mine like all these words I have
ring false
I am not someone
who can write sad lines
I can only taste tears
The same night whitening the same trees.
Ah. yes. I taste tears.

Grinding

dark dark the night outside, through the window, my face in the light reflected to the runaway sound of the train
and I think
what is love really, other than a compromise, made
out of fear of loneliness. It is not what is hoped for, no roots deep in some life force promised once in poems that I believed in.
It is merely this:
age and society, and bad romance movies
they tell me it is the way to happiness, to fulfilment, and where the soul resides, it will conquer all things: fear, even death
but it is a lie, of course, it is a poor consolation to our true destinies.
What love really is, is this: A vow made in some secret part of the heart, like the old woman in the old story who would one day turn a metal rod into a needle. You grind day after day after day
moment after moment of work
then one day, you wake up to the face of a stranger beside you, and you think, I have loved with the bones of my hand.
This is love. It is a work I have chosen to do day after day. It is the happiness grasped at and pieced together. Stuck together in notebooks or keepsake boxes. I have snatched these moments of light against the darkness. That's when I kiss you again and again, and you wake up and smile at me, and I wonder again, how short these true moments are. And how long those other moments at the mill, praying for the day after a hundred years, the old woman finally holds a needle up to the light.

later

It was around this time of the year, (wasn't it?) When I made a fool of myself.
I was a fool. To think... oh well what does it matter anyway.
It will not be the first or the last anyway. And you.
I will not be the first or the last either. Just one of those in the middle
forgotten quite easily soon enough. Only,
I take a long time in forgetting.
I will though. Sooner or
later, I say,
always later. Always.

Tonight

Same old bus ride
through the dark
this cold night
even the lights seem distant and I can't find the right words
but I thought i needed to do something different
take a new route tonight and call it an adventure
but I didn't
did the same thing over
and over
again
I got home and closed the door to mild night air and the jaded moon tired like street lamps
I now know what age is:
it is this lack of adventures, not the desire of,
but the will
to see it through,
And god,
I feel so old tonight.

bloodydon't

I don't have a knack for poetry.
Words so easily turned bad--like milk, like poems, like milk
garbledtonguetwistedkneeyessiree
See what I mean?
How to take that seriously?
Told to extract meaning and clarity
from abstract
is a poetic command, very zen like
but terrible, unless you're Neruda, but even then
he never did have a sense of humor
knowwhatimeanknowwhatimean?
Yes. That's my point.
Poems---ah. What was I trying to say? not out of anger, or say, a desire for beauty
words turned into art, uneasily--like this, like poems, like that.
There really is no art there. Or there is. Truth be told
I just don't--bloody don't--have a knack for poetry.

October

Thunder-- drums in the distant
billowing curtains
a mosquito buzzing
lazy Sunday

Music Box Monologue

I got you Christmas present early. He says.
Don't cry over any broken music box anymore ok?
This one. It is unbreakable. You're going to need an axe for this one.

Cold weather

makes me think of you
and how
I should have followed you home--
let you ravage me,
because
I would rather have been cheap
than incomplete.

Broken hands

I am not destined for beautiful things
no
I break them
lose them
with my clumsy hands
clumsy heart

I am careless with fragile things
dropping
breaking

I tried once
it was a music box
on three golden legs
with gilded edges
the pink and cream profile of an English girl with blind marble eyes
I had begged again and again
for my mother to buy
she told me no
I will break it
she said, like it was a fact written in stars
I wouldn't
I wouldn't
I wouldn't

I hid it, in a place no one would find
I look at it every night
afraid for its beauty
and my cursed hands
I would not touch it
so it is nestled
under my mattress
close to my sleeping heart
I said goodbye every day before school
aching fearing
and rushed home to check on it
but my mother was right
no matter how I tried
I came home one day to find it broken in two

The mattress was clean with new sheets
my music box came apart into two
Who did it? Who did it?
I asked over and over
no one answered but blank stares

I kept the broken remains
until all that was left was the metal mechanism that played the tune
a reminder
of twisted hands

I have never believed that I can hold on to anything beautiful after
including you

Sometimes, I think
you are simply too beautiful for me
too beautiful
for broken hands

fist

The heart
is a stubborn organ
keeping its beat
day after day
after day
For what?

Ondaatje calls it the organ of fire
But it is one of stone
It has no pride
or too much
it keeps secrets tucked away the brain has forgotten

It is mined with spider webs
glisten
only in the morning light
the moths of our fancy
caught fast
throbbing, throbbing

It makes no sounds
excrete no waste
gathering everything like a waste house

And in sadness,
it only makes a single sound

It beats stubborn
clinging
to fond memories
and foolish hopes

They call it a fist


The heart
is a stubborn organ.

this hour

I
revel in this thick hour of the night
when the world like ink
dips in silence
in a well of possibilities
when the lighted window shines
like a soul exposed
and I
think
of your darkness
and wonder
how are you swimming in this witching hour
between sheets, or pages
are you traveling on dark roads
headlights turned inwards
into the heart
and I write
because that is the only place I still find you
and because
I learnt to love this minute space in between hour hands
when all is silent and
still
when even the heart shudders in the emptiness
waiting
for a sound
I think of buffalos I never saw
and the words I never said
then this silence
heavy like a blanket
so still, my heart aches.

Geography

I am certain
you never think of me
as I do you

Perhaps for you, it is a matter of geography.

How many fishes are there in the sea?
And how wide the ocean?

The letter you will not read

Last night, I laid in bed, retracing my steps
decision to decision, to find out how I got where I am
I went as far back as my memory would let me:
if I never met you at the bookstore
and you weren't standing there holding the same book as me,
then,
where would I be?

Even when I was at a young age, I have believed that I have been cursed with the opposite sex,
every boy I ever cared for, always disappeared without goodbyes,
so that I have learnt that it is a way of life,
that I will not get what I want,
that longing does not materialize
and cruelty is the only way to save myself from being broken
but,
you are the exception.

I've never told you about this tree, back in Singapore
before my move across the ocean
it stood lonely on an empty field,
one day struck black by lighting,
became a burnt stump in a black hole,
but it came back, I watched it,
day after day, green taking over black,
suddenly one day, there were three trees.

Last night, when I brawled,
like I regularly do,
even my sister, who I've come to believe is my soul mate,
was on the verge of frustration,
you said: calm down,
and I did.

I've never thanked you, I doubt I ever will,
not like this at least,
and you will not read this, even though it is public,
laid out naked for all to see,
that's just your way, I guess,
of a kind of trust, or oblivion,
I don't know which.

But,
you are the exception.

I'll always remember the boomerang you told me about.
because you are the boy who came back for me
again and again,
even when I turned away from the wind
thinking
I have thrown it as far as I could
but there you are again,
an exception.