In a multi-dimensional universe, where the choices we make create the space-time reality we occupy (established in respect of the deterministic laws and relationships that govern it), art tunnels a wormhole. Art ties a topographic knot into the continuum, allowing us a mediated portal to a different world. For a few brief, illusory moments in time, art sheds light and creates space for a deeper truth to emerge, one which might ruffle the fabric of space-time in strange and incongruous ways.

Non-sands and breeze-blocks

The sands of time make a heavy trove
a chest unlocks and heaves
a sigh -

I see you
in the glimpses between 
in sunlight and blue skies
in white sand and surf
in counting knots
in sweet abandon
in memory and music

I close my eyes, or leave them open
it matters, not
as it dissolves today and ten years ago - 
I edit my life 
in a blink.

I am happy 
and thoughts of you
in breezeblocks
are best left unaltered;
would that they could be washed away
by the tide of time
and the keeping of a life
much richer for having had you in it
but all the more so for not; 

Cognitive dissonance swells 
memory cements
as life informs wisdom
and impulse slips by
a chest unlocks and heaves
a sigh.

Whatever will be will be

Do you want to be a dancer
It means travel
It means loneliness
It means poverty
It means toil
It means sweet passion for perfection
for expression
for a voice that can be felt more powerfully than words
It means doubt
It means conviction
It means love
You should only be a dancer
if you cannot be anything but.

Do you want to be a doctor
It means hard work
It means fighting
against systems that don't really work
for people who don't always help themselves
losing battles
but giving hope
It means stability
It means reliability
It means respect
It means empathy
It means sorrow
It means love
You should only be a doctor
if you cannot be anything but.

I can say now that I've travelled the world
I've lived a double life
I cannot be anything but.

I will be what I will be
but only as much as it matters
for what matters most.

You can only love

for you cannot do anything but

to find what matters most

is not what you love

but whom.

A mac between two windows

Restored when you revisit -
refreshed the pane stares back at you.

Through the looking glass
what once felt a bittersweet torture -
the years apart -
has become
a lopsided work of art.

Letting go of what you love is hard but sometimes necessary

Lying in the dark
I can't sleep caffeinated
Reminder to self

Fragile on the bow

As the rain pours down
And the moon waxes and wanes
A blossom falling

Saudade

I wouldn’t;
but the coincidence of dates and glimpses
dislodge the scrapbook box of
memories
scattered
seeing the pieces of you
hearing
the pieces of us
as one snap shot
topples deck after deck -

watch us listen
to the cinematic
orchestra to
build a home in
our dialogue of paired response in
laughing at who's line is it anyway, or in
watching movies
wrapped up warm in the blankets of each other arms
in the cinema
in the opera house
in the bed
I; snuggled under the tent of your yellow T-shirt of a big bird in a small cage
you; too snug in a pair of green checkered shorts

haunted now these
spaces these
places these
windows these
views these
pictures
of a startled naked man with a fat cat
of a tiny ship in a massive storm
of cleats soaked through with your dried sweat
of a broken shower head with a water fount for two
of a little red Subaru holding hands between gear shifts as we feel the engine purr
of our Field of Giggles - I giggled whilst you dribbled and we played bunnyhop football
of a pair of badminton racket covers by a Bruce Lee statue
of a backpack of apples 'cause we filled it till we spilled it.

Out of the woodwork they came; I was numb
yet surprised to find
that the pieces of a mending wall
were made to be re-broken
and sadomasochistic vindication
by their penetration.

Nothing remains of us now
but fading sepia
and the elegiac -algia of knowing
there is nothing left -
but the time I lose
as I pick up
haphazard
higgledy piggledy
the memories amassed
a mess of them
hastily - oh that I could throw them out!
as time runs on
leaving me




momentarily
scattered.

Locus of agency

So tired of fighting;
don't know what it is I'm fighting for -
ours is but to do and die,
ours is not to reason why,
but even soldiers pretend
that they know enemy from friend.
Do the job at hand -
it's worth two in the bush.

Why second guess?
Why doubt?
Keep convictions strong.
Keep grit stronger.

Keep telling myself I've so much left to offer - 

Davy says that I look stronger.

But trying is trying; the silent wait for sweet release keeps getting longer,
and I wait with onerous hunger.

Perhaps impatience will be the final winner;
I drink my final draught and wait to pull the trigger.

Gmt

Em  G  C7 Cdim7

Em
I'm standing by
G/D                    (D)
as my breath hots up
Bm
on a cold glass pane
                                          C
and it's only a matter of time.

I watch airplanes land
and carousels fill
with no bags that belong to you
but it's only a matter of time.

Bm/E (Em7)                        G/E
It's like the fast-forward scenes
Bm/D                      G/D
in a time-lapse movie
G/C                          C7/C
watching seedlings grow
     Bm Bm/D                 D
or stars chart the night sky.

Nothing seems to happen
watching life pass by
for somebody else like me
and it's only a matter of time.

in homage to Phillip Glass' Metamorphosis One

breath/life/willy nilly

breathe in to inhale

quince scent in the unwashed sheets 

wrinkled of you still

an empty bed is

harder than your shoes to fill

an empty heart, harder still

breathe out to compose

and create composure still

rememb’ring not love

broken composure

lost in the passage of time

not love, but self will

Lost for words

post modern 

we can't say what we want to 

directly anymore

avoid cliche

we fill our lines 

with meaningful 

meaninglessness

favor irony 

to avoid sounding trite

words are just words 

all they are is hollow 

black and white

i project what meaning i want 

imbue these screens with hue

visible only through my tinted lenses 

nowadays

we can't say what we want to 

directly anymore

i write these words

and hear them ring inside my head

to potential music space

an emptiness i can't efface

we can't go it alone

we can't go it alone 

we can't go it alone

we can't go it alone

we build up to a rhythmic drum

that no one else can hear

could we ever;

we can't say what we want to 

directly anymore

If I could write a dictionary

Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree

[Ezra Pound, "ABC of Reading"]

---

Poetry [n]:
from Gk poein "to make/form"

Any practical attempt to parse language and create meaning, or form, in the most economical way.

I can't get to

stillness ascends while I
descend into restlessness
darkness slips into darkness
I cannot get away
I croon I cry I rock myself
I count time
lonelier hours I have never spent
than watching the promise of you slip away
a false reckoning
I'm spent
awake as we separate
like ripples on a black shore
restless
restless
darkness
slips into darkness
drifting
you slip away
into another yesterday

you slip

you
you
you

---

On insomnia. In homage to Reckoner, by Radiohead, and to be read with it.

Sometimes I cannot help but wonder whether gay (or bisexual) poets exist precisely to echo - no, to iterate - the inexpressible sentiments of tenderhearted women. This particular one, by Walt Whitman, seems to capture the frail uncertainty of our human convictions and our understanding of the world, and contrast that to the unthinking certainty of flesh and of the senses. 

the undergraduate

a poem for two

for memories' sake inhale

sweet quince and milk chocolate 

roughly, stubbled cheek on mine

the nighttime effervesces 

an aged, brittle me-ss morphs into you-ngness

a fearful asymmetry
burning bright 

it heats the night

a fine balance

to enwrap ourselves as one

only with one eye on the door

one ear on the driveway 

adrenalin pumping 

surreptitiousness 

into pleasure - 

making
half-smiles

and muffled noises

redouble 

inward esctasy.

I was young once

you are young now 

is what my hands tell me

they go places long forgotten 

have I never loved before?

they never knew my hands before

they just needed feather dustin'

faded jeans and young hands

loosen old knots and loosed love

while time ticks on

embers die off

leaving the unbearable cold deadweight of duty

a whiff of quince and 

the scent of Cacharel

has a hot headiness of its own

to be enjoyed
only with another eye on the door

another ear on the driveway

adrenalin pumping 

blood rushing

into pleasure - 

making
half-smiles

and muffled noises

redouble

unforgotten

Bite the dust

The ghosts of him haunt every corner -
her wistful longing hunger
knawing through,
attempting to ignore this still -
they drift past, they pass through
she feels the icy chill; she trudges
on as the frost sets in on branches while
higher still, the infernal sun drenches
the world with vibrant ultraviolet oncogenic colours,
its tearing heat
welling up
torrid and torrential raining sun
sweltering down,
it does not warm
her beading brow,
or light her shaded eyes. Still
she cracks her pained face into a painted smile,
a paragon of politesse,
she remarks on the weather, and continues
her marathon through ice and fire,
as the ghosts of him around her loiter.

Song of solitude

(A crooner)

Those that I have loved
have never loved me back -
If you love me, let me go,
they say. In old romantic movies
people always come back 
in the end. Out in real life
no one ever comes back.

Silence never leaves me
Solitude's breath is ever on my neck
Smiles and laughter deceive me
into thinking there is nothing that I lack.

Thousand Islands

So I sit in swells of solitude
as the current says goodbye.
each of us marooned 
in our own lot 
in a Thousand Islands -
in constructs of wood,
encased in stone,
or seated bopping up and down
on a dinghy, one of many
festooning the shore.

Those that I have loved
have never loved me back
in quite the same way.
Better to have lost in love
than never to have loved at all
they say, but they don't say
both leave you, leave you lonely.

Silence never leaves me
Solitude's breath is ever on my neck
Smiles and laughter deceive me not -
for the something that I lack.

A car so dear

To own a car in Singapore
would be so very fine.
For to get across this fair Isle
is a marathon in time.

The public transport fare's so dear,

the ERP's sublime.

To know that while you're stuck in traffic
you were trying to avoid,

at least you wouldn't have to pay
the peak-hour rate

(now it's all the time)
of stalling in the cab
(you called? that's an extra $5) - 

lao ban, it's only double the old price.

To refrain from texting on commute,
while waiting in the jam,
to know that you're not on a train
(where you'd bestandingsquashedoneithersidebreathing
someone else's carbon-dioxide)
or a bus at going-home time.

To own a car in Singapore - 

A! Fine it seems to me!

The public transport fare's so dear,

the COE's sublime.

To pay an extra $100k,
what a boon it must be,
to rent a car priced a tenth of that -
ten years? Why, it's only half your salary.

Paper/cuts\

Where the wor/l\d/s
daggered, jagge(re)d edges gently cut -
sublime douleur exquis!
        Perhaps too close to the bone.

S/witch worlds for word/s erration
The pain on
        pane of\f/
                     Frostian glass\flash of light pierced up- /
                  on the darkened ash-filled fireplace re-
       flecks off/on\ the burnt-out soul.

---

As I trudged home today, I noticed the bark moulting from the trees.  The smooth white veneer above was tearing away, strip by strip, to reveal the jagged, browned unevenness below.   Thus laid bare, the trees seemed wearied with the pain of growth.

I don't know, but it seems to me that growing up feels so much like giving up on your dreams.  It seems like the more you learn, the more you lose.  And I feel as though I've lost so much of my life that the rest of it barely seems worth fighting for.

Fed up of the endless feeling of angst, of frust.  Fed up of seeing the hopelessness and the helplessness of life - the fallen, sinful nature of man, magnified in chains of action and reactions - reflected images disrupt on shards of glass.  Full up on being fed up.

Mis-Sings

All the missing pieces
are marked by empty time.
And empty kinds of places
make for empty frame of mind.

My mind is full of fullness -
of time and times gone by
lacing all the streets I wandered
with laughter and with love.

An isle of memories remains -
a-head I wonder on
the streets that have been laundered
dry of memorabilia.

This place is waiting to be filled,
I know this in my head.
But in the streets of far away,
my heart is dis-placed instead.
And empty kinds of places
make for empty frame of mind.