A Culture

While innocence of peacefulness
Ran by in its wide carriage
Holding a chaotic past
Bearing witness to scraping of streets
With drunken feet
Passing deep thirsty girls by
Soothing their lady loneliness
(Perhaps each claiming a place for herself
At the booth of single darkness)
Against their lovers’ man hands
Both speaking spirit breath
Into each other’s heaven-reached faces

Whence they drowned their tongues
And bit into hip-hop firmament
Where coloured spotlights fought the night
And Him on the spinning pedestal
Who foddered music to their arms and feet

Whence they milked paper sticks
And blew ashen shots
Under blue lights
And their speak floated
Through the intercourse of other smoggy speeches

There, they came
From a jungle cleft
In a flood covered in youth skin
Of opened mouths and oblivion
Pining for the next story
To be spit into their longing ears

The Dilemma

The mystery sank deep
Into the veins
Of my double-beat heart
Rolling out my exhausted tongue
Like a one-week old worn out party blower

I put my knees down
Rested my head
Against the shoulder of the Holy Ghost
While desperation waded in my breath

I flipped the Bible with a flippant hand
Found Jeremiah in a well
Charmed and confused
With two minds
I tossed a mental coin

What secret loomed
Hid as doom within a day
And I returned
Back to the head hung mire
To start and start again

The Joke Of Vanity

Oh, my eyes
Pricked
By early poison-hours
Overflowing with sleeplessness
Made to watch themselves

And what I discovered
Unrecognizable
A pinch in the cheeks
A blasphemous wink
Pulling last night’s face strings
Like a rein on time

Mutinous legs –
No mistakes
About their unerring loyalty –
Only just
What a time they chose
To make a brake
On what I would hold proud
Its sprouts
If only they did

Then there is the mid-range
Cursed and outdated
Skirted and menacing
Melted through the fleshpots
Throwing back the heavies…

Then I remember the joy!

Pride

I was born today yet again
Feeding my red nakedness
To rainbow-eyed music heads
Bobbing to pseudo beatnik beats
Carrying curly smiles

I feigned wisdom through a cunning mouth
That invented existing rhymes
And sang flowered songs
In a hungry flavoured voice

So they came
The twisted claps and lauding lips
I saw the invisible rising of hips
And the encouraging aroma of darkness-drips
I stood and smelt my incensed pride

So I let my happiness climb
Through the evening of brand new handshakes
My name hanging starry bright
A legend in my head

And when the curtains dropped
The feet, they walked away
With them, each held the peal
That faded like a sunset
Leaving my smile to face the black felt of night

Over the Malayan tracks at Upper Bukit Timah

6.25pm

I chased the sunset
To the rain-drained train tracks
Browned with age
And blossomed with wisdom
Old gravel stones
Grey and touched by the moods of nature
Spilled each side
Guarding, loyal and silent
Yellow beaked mynahs in a pair
Lost in play in the brittle bush
While scouting for the evening’s wormly meal
And the trees, wild and wizened
Holding proud their callused leaves
Bending forward
To touch the transient wind
And as the bald blue sky
Turns magic orange over the Malayan Railway tracks
Nothing dies…
The murmur of the rubbered wheels on the roads
Continues speaking of a different story
With a louder language
Coloured with impatience
Covered with feeble excitement

6.58pm

Haiku of Loneliness

Softly like cotton
All the humid and damp air
Touches his wet face

A happy gold smile
Shows up permanently pure
Looking at road kill

Pink and beautiful
A dress in all its splendour
On a lonely man

Good conversations
Walking slowly side by side
With no one at all

(Original poem without sticking to the Haiku metre)

Softly like cotton
The humid air
Touches his face

A happy smile
Shows up
Looking at road kill

Pink and beautiful
A dress
On a man

Friendly conversations
Walking side by side
With nobody

Everytime I Think Of You

Everytime I think of you
I get chills abound shooting through
Building up a grand jubilance
Common of a lover's heart

Everytime I think of you
Your sound my ears receive its dew
I pull away the wistful smiles
And write the miles of poetry

Everytime I think of you
My purposed days seem more than true
Silent but keen I mere exist
To lead the days hitherto

Everytime I think of you
Harp strings play and violins too
And the rain of roses render rich
My heart's hearty heart a little bloom

Everytime I think of you
My laughter grows for only you
And when worlds divide and souls depart
I’ll be sure to hold you closer to my heart

At the corner Coffeeshop at Kerbau Road

3.10pm
At lengths, the peaceful streets
Guilty with afternoon heat
And sudden-filled
Of jasmine wafts and incense
And lunch-time curry
Over the corner of Kerbau Road
The smell of tired bodies
And milling Indian men
With thrust chests
Enter a blue and white shophouse door
The gaudy sounds of flute
And tabla and Bollywood women
From a faraway music player
Decorates the quiet
And all at once:
An engine is brought to life
Another is killed
A new breeze released
And a rag-and-bone man
Points his finger to an oblivious passer-by
And all at once a new moment arrives
And leaves the previous behind
3.45pm

Bring Back My Beginning

Under spleen, when it all sprouted
In bloodied words in place of punches I cowered
Vulgarized. A pen I madly splurged
When the blazes I felt in swells of welts
I felt

Bring back my beginning I cry after
From the boughs and other wood things
The autumn words fell as I caught in frenzy
In crazy: the genius I crazed

Where Dylan scored and courted brilliance
Through flummery sweetness
With only the quill of his dangling wit
I shivered in honey quivers, vicariously

And I say all of the wind on which he wrote
He wrote a spell in riot I couldn’t quell
And gorged myself with solitude
As I passed my pen across with the raw

Bring back the beginning of outbursts
The life of swirls in thirsty whirls
Twirling ink and rhythm and rhyme together
Mashing sounds and meshing music words

Days when I stripped and careless cared
To bare the rare for all to stare
About the lines how coarse yet fragrant
They whipped the storm from my belly up

And in the weakened nights with swaying eyes
I pushed out words, I merely sang a monologue
And from the royal sights I cried in tears
That wrote out blessings with a kill

Bring back my beginning I cry after
The root of my ever-y
The source of the solace I sought
That granted petaled promises painted in smiles

And from bloodied words they came
Now they go, clean as can be
Shaven from meaning, droughted feelings
Dead as the grated sound of the barren silence boring in