Given that I hold no music in my palms.
No bells in my throat. Given that in my ears
the dust whirls, like footsteps, or flapping.
A beating air, a medium
that crumples the waves of sound
and all I hear are stones at the bottom of the well.
If I am a musical box
you want to wind into tinkling
If I angle my body next to your ear
stretch my strings and firm my fingers
If as the bumps ride past
all I sing are hooves, coronets of dust clouds—
Your averted eyes will be as nails
clutching my drum skin.
I would rather give way than resist.
Capture a round burst of air as I leave the ring,
my elastic melding, thinning, capturing colour,
rejecting colour, the air would be brutal to my skin,
I would contain the shape of the universe
before I make one last sound.
It would be like taking the first step
back into the sea.

Today I will pick a dish
less bright, not the crimson
of strawberries— all feeling crushed
in that heart-shaped fruit, consumed
within a bite. Today
I will fill my basket with cauliflowers,
these quiet clouds which landed and grew.
At home I will boil them, watch them rise,
bloom, their pale green baubles
little pearls amidst the bubbling.
I will serve them with oyster sauce.
After all the intensity of crimson,
this is my serving of flowers: a much
sought for quietness, a space to breathe,
my stalks of apology brushing past your tongue.

I actually have this television-born oh-so-melodramatic notion in my head: grab any chance to go overseas, leave this place, begin again completely, fully, erase. It'll be another form of escapism but it'll be quite welcome; the influx of new experiences will preoccupy my mind so fully that I won't be able to think of anything much else. Not to mention, a whole new culture, people with a foreign set of ideas, and potentially cute, sensitive, arty guys (lol). Sorry that was my chick lit self peeping out of my repressed id.

On the other hand there is everything I'll leave behind, and a whole new climate to get used to. All these comforts I take for granted-- laundry, food and people almost always around me to rant to and distract myself with when I'm frustrated with studying. There is the fear for safety (outside is a dangerous! dangerous! place!) and the fear of a much more liberal mindset (I just keep thinking they all don't mind having sex on first dates, dammit). And considering my pickiness when it comes to food, my intolerance to smoke and my not-so-good resistance to cold weather (not only the fact that it's cold, but also-- my skin starts peeling horribly! what is pimple and thus worry-free here turns out to be a nightmare in drier climates)-- let's just say that i have this bad suspicion that only singapore will suit me.

Having said that the dreamer side immediately tells me YOU'RE JUST AFRAID TO STEP OUT OF YOUR COMFORT ZONE and thus by reverse psychology I want to prove it wrong even more.  

Your name is hard to speak, a stone
against my lips. I drop it expecting
to see ripples, a splash. Saying your name
is like lying — I say it
keeping my face still, my eyes
open, looking
and not looking
into whoever's eyes. I expect the light
on my face to shift, exposing eddies,
allowing whoever
to discern its weight on my lips.

inspired by the burglary of gan's house, and rather too amused to be sufficiently sympathetic



Hardly armed with sacks,
Highly doubtful
About those red suits—
Pretty sure they didn't have
Beards. There wasn't
A chimney, but
Heck— tradition is tradition! So
They grabbed their chisels
Brandished their hammers
Swivelled their levers
Gave the roof tiles a good hard
Whack
Off with the tiling! Down with the plaster! And
Took off with the money—

Oh well, these are changing times.

I talk to you like you are dead,
dearest. For me
you have been dead a long time since.
How regularly I visit your grave,
dusting a space for me to sit.
It is quiet here. Not even you
are speaking. It has been a while
since you’ve allowed me to sit beside you, like that,
no fear in the air. I will let my voice fly.
I will inch closer, until my breasts
are almost flat against your stone.
Let me tune you here. Your silence
will be my music.

At the end of the day I return to thoughts of you.
No matter what I try
you remain part of my solitude, tucked in a craving
I cannot satisfy. I miss you. Pride
does not make me full; you have become
a symbol of hunger for me.
I trace my restlessness to you.
There are so many expectations of mine
you cannot fulfil, so
I stay away, hoping that time
would wear away these tired wishes.
We exist on two different planes:
physically, I have left;
emotionally, you are far away.

The operation is complete; I have just been given
a new, mechanical, soundless
heart. It runs on
batteries. I can still
think, therefore
I still am, but
it feels like
I am not warm,
or human,
any more.
I see
my maroon heart 
on a platter, my maroon
still heart
with part of my artilleries
still attached
my frail, slowing heart
oh my heart

They have slowly removed you, that is true
you have been ailing for some months now
so much, that it seemed 
I could feel the strain
of every life-giving push you gave

Now that they have finally
placed blade to vein
disengaged you,
now that the operation is complete
you will never rest in my body again
your weight
against my lungs
my ribs

I run on a mechanical heart now
I run on batteries

My heart, my heart
how cleanly they've cut
how cold you are now, in my hands
chilling to the touch

I wanted to build you a castle
so much, so much,
wanted to build you 
so much

LEMME TRY SOME FREE ASSOCIATION TONIGHT

TONIGHT
how dull
comb
my god
like a bull
sombre slumber sleepy supper

guess i'm not very good with the free association. i just want to say WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
and also IT'S QUITE BORING NOW

one people one nation one singapore!

porcupine! pokey 

today i was reading my psycho book and it was quite funny because they were doing intros on famous people's lives. so i was just reading through and for two of them i went WHOA at the first few sentences before i saw the next one. one of them was john stuart mill and i went WOW when they said he could read plato in original greek when he was three. straight after that they said, "He suffered a bout of depression when he was twenty" 

anyway i want my books from foyle wheeee i wonder if they'll ever really arrive in the mail! or like lit up disappear with no trace whatsoever. and i really cannot distinguish between leon and greg. i think the one in rj now is leon right??? since greg is apparently in hci??? or is it the other way round??? haha but damn funny leon wrote a poem on winter which won! WINTER! in case you didn't catch that lemme write it again: WINTER! 

talking about leon/greg i had a dream with the rj one inside as the rebellious j1 along with the other j1 humanz people. it involved me getting onto a flying machine and not knowing how to control it and weaving in between cars and motorbikes narrowly avoiding getting hit. after that i realized i was supposed to stick my foot out to brake it. you know, like one of those little thingums you put your toddler in to train them how to walk. also rj had a lift like the one in the great glass elevator (the story after charlie and the chocolate factory) and i was wondering if the staff room was on the twentieth floor. 

TEH WORLD IS UNFAIR 

my comb says hello

actually i'm wondering why just because photoelectric effect is instantaneous means light exhibits particle nature. okay i get the transfer all the energy part but it's like one electron is emitted per x number of photons! unless they mean like one electron per photon but the other x-1 photons hit unlucky electrons which refuse to get out of the metal. okay i think that's what they mean. 

yoggi doesn't think "space between tip and atoms" sounds poetic. does anyone possibly have the same opinion as me?

another funny thing that happened today: my mum was telling me about this quarrel in my grandma's house. the origins of the quarrel went like this: 
my jiu jiu decided to be a good father and caught two fishies back home thinking to cook fish porridge for his little kids. (aww!)
however when he decided to go kill the fishies he found them gone!
where were they!

THE CULPRIT: 
my benevolent grandmother who was feeling very holy that day and decided to let them go, according to the little spy that was my 8 year old cousin. my grandmother's account was that "they were dead already so i threw them away"

THERE'S DIVINITY THAT SHAPES OUR ENDS, ROUGH HEW THEM HOW WE WILL. Those fishies were like hamlet discovering the Letter for Execution. THEY DID MAKETH LOVE TO HIS EMPLOYMENT

google chrome is so pretty now! everyone should go get one!

and i want a gary forecasting stone too :D




but i guess the physics gary is good enough. 

I am so thin I imagine I can see my
bone through my translucent skin 
or, one day, should I slip and
cut myself my brown skin will
split and I will be dabbing blood off
a white joint. It is my
wrist that worries me the most, the
tense ball between palm and arm
where the skin seems bare
-ly stretched over
like drums, calf skin pulsating
I remember cupping wax apples, planting my nails
inside the waxy flesh
White birds flew across the red 
when I removed them
Birds, or boomerangs
spilling, spilling, out of their red painted skin
Bones spilling, spilling
out of their brown skin gowns

A little girl had been staring at the balloon seller for half an hour. Occupied with doing his business it had been twenty minutes before he saw her, and ten minutes as he observed her from the corner of his eye, pretending not to have noticed. Finally at the end of the ten minutes he gave up his pretence, crouched down and handed her a red balloon.

The girl was fascinated with the tug of the string as her fingers clutched on. It reminded her of the two plastic cups that she and her brother would connect with a white nylon thread, and then they would hide at the furthest corners of the house until the string couldn't be stretched any longer. "Can you hear me?" she whispered into the cup, and pressed her ear to its mouth to listen for a reply. She remembered the low vibration tickling her ear canal and the crinkling of the plastic as she pressed her cup closer. She wondered if someone was trying to tell her something through the balloon too.

"Stay here and don't touch anything alright, I'll be back in a jiffy." The balloon seller left his captive herd of balloons straining against the metal grip of his stall and ran off to the toilet. The girl looked up at the sun struggling through the trembling crowd of colours. Wondered what the sky was trying to say. Gingerly she took a balloon, a light blue one this time, merged it with the red one, and this time the tug was stronger, as if gaining strength. Took another one. She was fixated with how the balloons bobbled sideways, bumped into each other and sprang apart. "Do you hear me?" she whispered into her clenched fist and took a fourth one. A fifth. When the balloon seller came back he saw the girl with her feet off the ground. "Let go, let go!" he screamed, but the girl looked only at her colourful jellyfish drifting, colliding, moving apart.

At twelve we learnt 
the round shapes of cups, learnt 
that the soft, swelling buds of our breasts 
must be protected. It just so happened 
one day our chests grew slightly tender, couldn't
be pushed in like buttons anymore. 
At first we wore singlets beneath
to cover these uneven cones, which then
evolved to tighten around our torsos
(like one of those plastic loops 
that can only be made smaller, or 
a hangman's noose with an adjustable knot.) 
We had to get used to stiff wires 
snaking their way under this new weight, cotton paddings 
which grew deformed with washing.
Sometimes it was hard to tell
if these bras were made to fit our breasts,
or the other way round. Later
as we grew accustomed to them, our eyes 
were helplessly drawn to those who kept theirs free,
their up-and-down swinging giving us shame.

Okay so my entire future hangs in some fragile sarong pressed in between parallel universes and I probably have the power to cross universes if i choose certain steps. which is an oxymoron because it means that the parallel universes would choose the options that I didn't choose. Ie if ordinary I choose ordinary option A, i would stay safely in universe A, and if there is a chance to cross to universe B, i would choose option B and end up in universe B but actually i'm still in universe A and the I in universe B would choose option A OKAY NEVERMIND

( What follows is what i term Conversations With Myself (yes i actually say it aloud) )

There comes a point in time where one is forced to think of rather metaphysical concepts and dwell in philosophical musings, come out of your body to look at your earthly existential self blahblah okay let's get to the points partly born out of lit revision

John Dryden commented that Donne ‘perplexes the minds of the fair sex with nice speculations of philosophy, when he should engage their hearts, and entertain them with the softness of love.’