the semicolon;

when love arrives

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 08:27:17 GMT

Makes me feel like writing again, and reading it out.

Sleep is a spider that spins thick threads

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 15:51:37 GMT

in response to the tragedy of the death of two brothers, 7 and 13, upon getting hit by a cement truck

That dream again, of a severed head—
My child. And the other, flung
Like a boomerang, a puppet, dark lead.

Sleep is a spider that spins thick threads,
Weaves around me, though to Day I clung,
That dream again, of a severed head,

Afloat in my womb, nine months bred.
Out of my uterus it was wrung
Like a boomerang, a puppet, dark lead,

Thirteen years in an arc back to the dead.
Other nights I see my body strung
In that dream, again, of a severed head

Attached to a bar, feet made to tread
Endless corridors, cry thrown from lungs
Like a boomerang, a puppet—dark lead

Limbs—by mocking Fate led.
Who would know my tied tongue,
That again dream, of severed head
Like a boomerang, a puppet, dark lead.

Aubade

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 13:21:10 GMT

I am fascinated with your legs
especially in relation to mine—
are you sure they belong to you?
These two pairs are in such a tangle
I find myself hunting for knees
between and beneath thighs.
Have you seen my left foot, darling?
I am not sure where that spasm
was from, after I ran my toes down
someone's sole. You know, darling,
one simply cannot function without legs
and I do need mine to get off the bed,
go for lessons and whatnot.
You'll help me look? Oh darling,
you are such a saint.
I love you so much. Let me roll over
and give you a kiss—
oh no. It seems now I need help
to find my arms as well;
a torso has gotten in the way.

Morning rituals

Sun, 18 Nov 2012 23:30:07 GMT

In the dim of the morning
my roommate stands in front
of the full-length mirror

I wish I could draw my eyes
the way she can

But I am always late for class
the back of my hair
flattened from my bed

Artistic expression

Sun, 18 Nov 2012 23:23:21 GMT

It is like
a dotted line
I tell my hand
which wields
an eyeliner

But it is
an artist
it tells me

which must
break out of
boundaries

Laurel and Front

Sun, 18 Nov 2012 23:10:04 GMT

A woman stands on the corner
of Laurel and Front

Her ear a bobbing volleyball
as she examines the inside
of her takeout box,

Gives the flap a last lick
before dropping it in the bin.

The carpet has been stealing

Sun, 18 Nov 2012 23:05:00 GMT

How many hairpins have dropped
on the grey carpet

Today I picked up yet another
gleaming too much
to camouflage

After the fog

Thu, 01 Nov 2012 20:26:47 GMT

The sun with its smoke of light
steaming through the leaves:

a cloud of tea
suffusing into the air.

Nightlife

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 09:00:51 GMT

The city has made itself
its own night sky: each streetlamp
another star, so that
the stars themselves
(unused to seeing their reflections)
have hidden behind
the city's bright curtains,
and only the brave ones
dare peer at the winding cars,
coming back with gossip
on which meteors are returning
from a night
at whose houses.

The end of summer

Mon, 01 Oct 2012 08:55:06 GMT

Down here the sea has draped itself over
its little bed of sand, stretching
like a lazy cat. Shoes in hand, we wade slowly
across, ankles streaming whisker trails,
mini gods treading on water. I raise my camera for pictures

and the next moment the tide swells in, arching its back
as if awakened. "Hurry!" my friend hollers
from the opposite bank, "Don't let the sea take you!"
so I lift my knees up high like an Olympic hurdler,
slamming seawater on my dress as I slap
clumsily across. The water recedes, and I emerge
on the other side, safe
and shaking with laughter.

The heart is struck dumb by the force of reason

Sat, 08 Sep 2012 15:04:24 GMT

The heart is struck dumb by the force of reason.
I feel its muscles contract to a halt.
The arteries strain taut from its sudden motion
And adjacent cells hurl into each other, stalled.
At first an uproar of noise, the impact, the crash –
Damages inspected, compensation sought –
Then, without agreement, all indignation stops,
All movement holds in the resulting hush.
Swollen with blood, the heart stains stark
And gives, dyeing the ribs first pink then red:
Soon all are afloat in this crimson suspension.
I suffer this flood with its slow expansion –
At my lips it finds my speech ready, laid,
And me, feet bared, head bowed to the atrium dark.

2. Losing a language

Wed, 29 Aug 2012 09:11:06 GMT

Isn't the most sensitive point of this mourning the fact that I must lose a language—the amorous language?
—A Lover's Discourse; Roland Barthes

Day 7
It is peak hour on a train, and I am body-to-body
with a boy, looks about nineteen. It's not so bad after all,
I muse, as we sway against the train's motion, skin and cloth
sticking and unsticking in an erotic to-and-fro, like
bodies of land testing our movement,
drawing pictures on faces of sleeping seismic sensors.
I forbid this boy from becoming you, write a poem
about the physical experience, throw it away.
I read my old poems, found the word that poem couldn't remember:
tingle.

Month 3
I have 1000+ entries in my feed unread, but
life is so busy, you know? Who has time for stanzas,
personal anecdotes? Tonight I feel particularly free though,
so I check it out, but the first three posts have my head
swimming with words like loss and longing and
"love we must part"ings and by then I have another
three tabs open and nine more by bedtime,
I blame the internet's distractions.

Month 5
I woke up—perturbed, there was—
an intruder—bearing harm, but—
familiar—I knew his face, intimately.
The assault was—too strong, or—
there was no resistance—I submitted—
to his mouth—surrendered—
to his desire—and mine—

After that I sought to describe the experience:
habit directed my feet to its pedals. Instinct led my hands
to the twin rubber grips. Guilt came like gravity,
declared the impossibility of touch-memory,
but a sense of fatality swept my bike
past the yawning pavements—my body moved
on its own accord.
I finished my day satisfied with my assessment.

We think of solutions to my problem with departures

Sun, 26 Aug 2012 15:23:07 GMT

I hate it when people leave, on any medium: text, voice, presence. It's not that I need someone around all the time, but the act itself - not even the implications, that you are not here - leaves me slightly blue. Why create opportunities for this to happen then? If I never start conversations, they can't be ended, and I never have to bear each separation afresh. But that's a ridiculous proposal, and both of us know it; stop giving ridiculous proposals.

We'll have to think of other solutions around this. It's such a burden, your sensitivity; you throw up your hands. I realise this, of course, and I keep it to myself as much as possible, a private burden to bear, a crucifix under a shirt. I'm not asking for pity here, nor a situation that neither of us exits. Or am I asking for one where only I can bid au revoir? I consider this. Not that, either - if anything, I hate it more when I go off first. There is no way out of this; I am meant for suffering.

I am meant - intended - a means, and suffering is the end, or a god where I am the offering. Can this be meaning, just as how religion is some people's meaning in life, and financial success others'? I suppose it isn't exactly an encouraging higher purpose. I have strength for the next day, because all of this will culminate in a grander plan of suffering. This isn't masochism, because there is no pleasure in this pain I refer to. We're too used to cost-benefit analysis; we can't imagine a grander plan that does not yield overall positive results. But to think about it! Every moment I suffer, I make progress towards a total sum of suffering. Progress, a positive word!

What shall I ask for, to alleviate my suffering? Stay a little longer, maybe; stretch your limits. Sacrifice. And then this pinch turns to giggly joy: I stole a few minutes from nothing. It'll be like the world collapsing, but you have the superpower to conjure a bubble around us. We're still going to be decimated once your spell is exhausted, but these few minutes! I will snog you senseless. That was out of place, but nobody cares when the world is ending.

Wed, 01 Aug 2012 19:58:04 GMT

IT IS NOT ENOUGH TO BE BUSY

Today I did a solitary little jaunt around Orchard Road, because I happened to be in that area, and while it was not life-changing-- it's rare that one just does whatever she wants because the rest of her day is luxuriously free. It's a liberating feeling. Explored Tanglin mall properly, walked right down the road to Orchard, through Ion, Wisma and Taka all the way to Orchard Central and back to Somerset 313. Along the way went in any building that caught my fancy, like this two-storey building with low ceilings, hollow wooden steps and a security guard who asked if he could help in the usual suspicious way. Bought a dress at H&M because it had birds on it, lulz. Tried on sunglasses and hipster glasses for the millionth time just for the chance that there will be a pair that won't look ridiculous on me, but nope, still holding on to that hope. Walked back and forth trying to decide what to eat, finally settled on smoked salmon crepes from Marché and felt utterly decadent. Along the way, thought how lovely but how distracting company would be-- the perfect solution would be if you could walk by yourself, spot something, make company appear, share that brief moment before rinsing and repeating. Or both of you can just happen to be in that same transcendental mood.

And in that moment, I swear we were infinite.

Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain

Wed, 01 Aug 2012 19:31:50 GMT

How do I remember this feeling of having watched something that takes your heart in so completely, how you can smile so hard and tear up at the same time? How do I remember something so sincere it makes you want to give yourself to it? Like how when you meet someone so warm and genuine you find yourself wanting to give this back, in your own form, because of that gratefulness bubbling within you.

All the french movies I've watched are so incredible; they remind me how absolutely magical life can be, because it's so easy to forget that when you settle complacently into it. Jeux d'enfants, La vie en rose, and now Amélie. If only I can hold on to this feeling, create things which inspire this so it spreads to everyone, even for just a while; make the world momentarily beautiful.

AND PERHAPS WE CAN BE MORE THAN OURSELVES

Sat, 28 Jul 2012 14:45:46 GMT

I found my heart coming back to me these few days, making its trembling presence known first through my mind -- "do you like knowing about people more, or knowing people themselves?"-- then through my skin, my stilted speech.

I tremble; they're gonna eat me alive, alive

A Saturday night, after the play. We entered the cafe somewhat awkwardly, uncertain about these new settings. Ordered a tea and a flat white before heading to the biggest seating space we could see: a cream couch, well broken-in. It was easy to see the charm of the place as we sunk in: the spacious interior, moderately lit; magazines, draped here and there; a couple of people unabashedly immersed in the constructed universe of their books; the low hum of chatter, occasionally spiking with laughter. The mint inside my tea started making its magic, a light radiance seeping outwards.

A Saturday night, and no performances? In the haze of our conversation I thought that.

Someone soon went up, testing the chords of his guitar. "The next song's going to be funny; it was when I first liked a girl, at the age of fifteen." His words mashed over each other, but it wasn't important what he was singing, but that a human voice filled the room, and all these people intently listening as he offered to us-- mostly anonymous-- moments from his life. The lights were by then mostly off, and a few milky light bulbs strung their glow across the place. People strolled in from time to time, some leaning against the wall, some scanning the room until they spotted a wooden chair, or someone they knew; went up to them and kissed their cheeks before walking over to empty seats. A trend of outfits: boys in huge black-framed glasses, slim shorts that ended above their knees, and loafers which showed off bare ankles, built calves. The routine was familiar: a prelude, the song, the appreciative applause.

When we emerged from the cafe a light rain was falling; the wall took its chance to don on a diffused orange dress.

That we can be more than ourselves: that is worth living for.

1. My heart sleeps without waking

Wed, 23 May 2012 13:11:30 GMT

My heart sleeps without waking in the arms of sadness.
--from La Vie En Rose

Life goes on. May is the month of heat and thunderstorms.
I bring Edith to the zoo but all the animals were hiding in the shade.
Half an hour in we sat dumbly in front of the penguins,
envying their wallpaper Arctic.
Edith understands, makes few demands. When we get home I prepare dinner,
she washes up. As usual I cook too much, or eat too little.
The gods have left too much hair in their bathroom drain; no air
comes through to us. Back in my room my fingers fidget
across the keyboard, as if I could propel a breeze with that.
I talk to old friends, make new ones. My words sink down like dregs.
At night I loosen the curtains, crank the fan to a higher speed.
As I drift off the sky crunches into rain.
Dimly I feel the wind beating against the windows, curtains
flung across rattling grills. My heart
sleeps without waking.
I have dreams of you. In the morning
I rise for work, leave quietly my sleeping heart.

This probably isn't that good an idea at least in the short run

Sat, 19 May 2012 17:06:57 GMT

-takes a deep breath-

I have decided! To! Take on yet another project, as if I'm not already feeling guilty enough of neglecting five hundred other projects that I somehow have taken on due to some masochistic desire.

{Take the 100 Things challenge!}

In keeping with the general spirit I use this blog in, I'm going to do 100 creations inspired by some work or other. Okay who's kidding who, those creations are going to be mostly writing. And "some work or other" can come from anywhere-- a line from a song, poem or movie, Wikipedia entry, comic, whatever. Point is it must be inspired by something that can be reproduced.

Let's hope this gives my dying writing spirit some boost. (I'm kidding about dying, don't cry)

Two ends

Sun, 13 May 2012 18:16:20 GMT

Finally I feel calmer, restored to the night which has snatched back its coolness from the oppressive summer heat. Just a couple of hours ago a girl was shouting in the neighbouring void deck, line after line stacking upon the last all collapsing into a muddle of anguish and accusation. Shut up, I say, although at this distance nobody is going to hear it, which is why I get to say it out loud. Or if I am hidden behind my room wall, directing an irritated voice down: "Stop smoking!" The real-life equivalent of anonymity.

Hello. What if I am Olivia, surname undecided, preparing for a date two hours later. He's a mechanic, has a tendency to get caught up describing his pliers, wrench and the sixteen different types of screws he carries around with him in his toolbox. "This one, " he takes one out, "see, has two ends, like it doesn't know where to start and stop; you screw an end in here," he takes a knob, grooves already made, "the other side, in the anchor; you never see it again. Its entire body, snug between two objects. Not like this," he takes out a drywall screw, "insists on being the third party in a threesome, wall, object, and then its head, but it's good for separating."

Today he will not bring his toolbox along, because he will have time to go home from work, shower off the grease, perhaps spray some cologne. He will feel a little exposed, no tools to bring out, put in my hand, trace their angular bones while lightly touching my skin. He will wonder what to discuss if not structure, joints and swiveling pivots. What can penetrate to the heart if not the material that makes things tick? Certainly not what I do, me with my advice on insurance, my light-footed dance of to-and-fro as I decide how much to push according to income and risk, balancing compliments with a sprinkling of what-ifs, the more they can be praised the more they stand to lose. My job counts on probabilities and our unique ability to project onto the future; his job, on touch and sight, and the ability to project beyond the outer covering into the dark space of gear and pendulum.

I guess I will offer him the medium-risk policy; the chances of him being swallowed up by a machine he just gave life to are, after all, not that low.

I tried hard not to breathe

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 07:33:54 GMT

I dreamt of you last night, or what housed you,
a lilac grey coffin a beach away from the sea.
"It's fine there," my father hollered, as I looked,
saw an end of it emerging from the sand like a head
bursting from the waves, or the blunt end of a pole
punctuating skin from within. "It isn't!" I screamed,
for how can this be fine, why the sand was breaking across its insistent hull,
anyone could see its naked head. Why were you not buried deep enough?
Why are you even buried in the sand? We each
stood at a corner, bent, brushed the sand away, on the count of three
heaved, and I was right under, its weight
beating up and down with every step, my head
stretched under its macabre pulse. While we walked inland
I tried to recall who it was, inside, I tried hard
not to breathe, even though it had been months, remembering what my mother said
about the stench in graveyards, wafting across pews
as Christians prayed and prayed. As we arrived
at a ready-made hole I saw my mother, my sister
walking beside, not under, I looked &
only my father and I were lifting, but when we drove it down
I saw that I was wrong, my father was only ahead, directing—
I emerged from under, I sobbed great breaths:
"Why did you let go? Why did you let me carry it alone?"

After I woke I realised it was my other grandfather
who had died, and he was cremated, and I never saw
his coffin, or his body.

I want to live on this Earth as long as it feeds me this

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 07:57:43 GMT

Literary analysis is at its most breathtaking in moments such as Shoshana Felman's Turning the Screw of Interpretation-- I must admit that I am entirely bowled over, and I bow down to the goddess that is Felman. Many times I look up from the text just to exclaim in a certain sort of rapture, this is it, a finger on the point, the complete intersection of understanding and truth, that little clink, yes I sound quite insane here (MADNESS), taken over by the text but it is just so good. You know how in J2 we saw this essay by a certain Jensen, and at the end of it, the marker writes "THANK YOU for the essay"? It's that sort of feeling.

It's easily available online, but I think to get that feeling you need to have read 1. Henry James' The Turn of the Screw (duh), 2. Edgar Allan Poe's The Purloined Letter, 3. Jacques Lacan's Seminar on the Purloined Letter and 4. some of Freud's theories on transference, repetition, the uncanny and the unconscious, although this isn't as important. Primarily 3, because it is quite a frustratingly dense text, so Felman's analysis provides that oh gosh this is what is glorious about living feeling by illustrating what she gets out of Lacan.

[I have down just three out of the many parts that have me enraptured, but because they are built up by the whole essay, this is really a spoiler that might reduce the gorgeous effect of this essay.]

Written not only for the very personified image of power, but also for their own censorship and their own prohibition, the letters addressed to the Master are in fact, at the same time, requests for love and demands for attention. ...The letters to the Master can convey, indeed, nothing but silence. Their message is not only erased; it consists of its own erasure... the fire inside the story turns out to be, precisely, what annihilates the inside of the letter; what materially destroys the very "nothing" which constitutes its content. ...the fire is the story's center only insofar as it eliminates the center.
To see... is therefore paradoxically not only to perceive, but also not to perceive: to actively determine an area as invisible, as excluded from perception, as external by definition to visibility. To see is to draw a limit beyond which vision becomes barred. The rigid closure of the violent embrace implied by the act (by the "grasp") of understanding is linked, indeed, to the violence required to impose a limit, beyond which one's eyes must close. For it is not the closing of one's eyes which determines the invisible as its empirical result; it is rather the invisible (the repressed) which predetermines the closing of one's eyes... it is precisely the imposition of a limit... which hence makes possible the illusion of total mastery over meaning as a whole. ...her grasp of the ship's helm is in reality the grasp but of a fetish... The screw, however, by the very gesture of its tightening, while seemingly filling the hole, in reality only makes it deeper.
But in contrast to the classical mystery novel plot, this crime is also not committed until the end: paradoxically enough, the process of detection here precedes the committing of the crime. As a reader, the governess plays the role of the detective: from the outset she tries to detect, by means of logical inferences and decisive "proofs," both the nature of the crime and the identity of the criminal... Ironically enough, however, not knowing what the crime really consists of, the governess-detective finally ends up committing it herself. ...Incarnated in the governess, the detective and the criminal both are but dramatizations of the condition of the reader. ...For if it is by the very act of forcing her suspect to confess that the governess ends up committing the crime she is investigating, it is nothing other than the very process of detection which constitutes the crime.

There is so much recursion, so much turning into oneself here, the Scheme part (strengthened by the very little I have read of Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid) of my soul is utterly bewitched. SO IN LOVE. (The blindness of love-- it is because you are so certain, so clear, of your feelings, simply by the intensity of them, that you shut possibilities out, and that is what constitutes the blindness inherent in love.)

tick tock goes the clock

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 16:03:14 GMT

Some things I am conscious of, in my poetry, like my liking of metaphors of water, liquid, or celestial objects like the moon; some things I find out along the way, with the help of other people.

Today/yesterday it is this: the motif of time. It's quite funny because it's so true, I am obsessed about the passage of time, neurotic, even. It's not something unique to me, but I find it quite exciting to see something I don't consciously put in pop out as a recurring theme? And that's one of the cool things about creating, these moments when you realise that something about yourself has been revealed without your design.

Lady Chatterley's Lover; D.H. Lawrence

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 14:55:35 GMT

Glancing at my collection; look what I've found.

Mellor's letter:

That's why I don't like to start thinking of you actually. It only tortures me, and does you no good. I don't want you to be away from me. But if I start fretting, it wastes something. Patience, always patience. This is my fortieth winter. And I can't help all winters that have been. But this winter I'll stick to my pentecost flame, and have some peace. And I won't let the breath of people blow it out. I believe in a higher mystery, that doesn't even let the crocus be blown out. And if you're in a Scotland and I'm in the Midlands, and I can't put my arms round you, and wrap my legs round you, yet I've got something of you. My soul softly flaps in the pentecost flame with you, like the peace of fucking. We fucked a flame into being. Even the flowers are fucked into being, between sun and earth. But it's a delicate thing, and takes patience and the long pause.

So I love chastity now, because it is the peace that comes of fucking. I love being chaste now. I love it as snowdrops love the snow. I love this chastity, which is the pause and peace of our fucking, between us now like a snowdrop of forked white fire. And when the real spring comes, when the drawing together comes, then we can fuck the little flame brilliant and yellow, brilliant. But not now, not yet! Now is the time to be chaste, it is so good to be chase, like a river of cool water in my soul. I love the chastity now that flows between us. It is like fresh water nad rain. How can men want wearisomely to philander. What a misery to be like Don Juan, and impotent ever to fuck oneself into peace, and the little flame alight, impotent and unable to be chaste in the cool between-whiles, as by a river.

Well, so many words, because I can't touch you. If I could sleep with my arm round you, the ink could stay in the bottle. We could be chaste together just as we can fuck together. But we have to be separate for a while, and I suppose it is really the wiser way. If only one were sure.

Never mind, never mind we won't get worked up. We'll really trust in the little flame, and in the unnamed god that shields it from being blow out. There's so much of you here with me, really -- that it's a pity you aren't all here.

obsessiveness like a runaway train

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 14:44:55 GMT

Who has not felt, in the first madness of sorrow, an unreasoning rage against the mute propriety of chairs and tables, the stiff squareness of Turkey carpets, the unbending obstinacy of the outward apparatus of existence? We want to root up gigantic trees in a primeval forest, and to tear their huge branches asunder in our convulsive grasp; and the utmost that we can do for the relief of our passion is to knock over an easy chair, or smash a few shillings'-worth of Mr. Copeland's manufacture.

--Lady Audley's Secret, Mary Elizabeth Braddon

---

Scheherazade; Richard Siken

Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake
and dress them in warm clothes again.
How it was late, and no one could sleep, the horses running
until they forgot they are horses.
It’s not like a tree where the roots have to end somewhere,
it’s more like a song on a policeman’s radio,
how we rolled up the carpet so we would dance, and the days
were bright red, and every time we kissed there was another apple
to slice into pieces.
Look at the light through the windowpane. That means it’s noon, that means
We’re inconsolable.
Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.
These, our bodies, possessed by light.
Tell me we’ll never get used to it.

Poem in the voice of your excess time

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 09:29:55 GMT

in response to 'Falling Star' by Romare Bearden, and the prompt of writing in the voice of something belonging to the character

Once you kept flowers, gave vases to them, forgot
vases stayed long after flowers died. When the house was new
you were happy to be guided by lamps, feigning forgetfulness

around the furniture you arranged. You forgot
me. Thought that once given, I
would never return.

But I did, drop by torrent. At first
in minutes: the peak hour traffic, the extended
appointments. I hid in your dinners, slowed,

had to be heated. You tended to your flowers,
gave them sun. Hours: the calls
at the restaurants, apologetic, you telling the waiter

you would have the set meal for one.
The candles burned. I came back,
put them out, kissed your eyelids; you rose from sleep,

eyes stinging, listening to the darkness
of the house. I pooled in your pots,
drowned your flowers. You threw them away.

I made my home in your ransacked laundry. You tried
to dry me bare, but the creases
would not allow. I surged, took over

your house. At first
you struggled, made phone calls: The number you just dialled
is currently unavailable. I rained my hands over your body,

tried to soothe. Ran your watercolour dress. Why resist,
sweetheart? Take me back, what he doesn't want. You sobbed,
felt me clogging your lungs. You stopped lighting

the candles. Of course. Saw me in every pocket,
thought me a fly when you poured yourself a drink.
I am the drink. Now it is night.

Give yourself to me. Now your body
a meandering shadow, earrings
glinting the moon's light.