You and I, on a Saturday Night.

For T, on occasion of our 26th month (even if it’s almost a week late).
I love you!

YOU AND I, ON A SATURDAY NIGHT

You and I, on a Saturday night,
Clothed in the coverings of darkness
Under the blanket of the heavens,
Lying down on our vast green bed.
We’re holding hands, feeling
The coursing of our blood through
The network of our fingers.

We’re looking up at the night sky.
You point out the constellations:
There’s Scorpio, and Leo,
Mars, and a passing aeroplane.
You smile, and the yellow flares
Of the street lights grow weak
Against the radiance of your love.

The stars in their various constellations
Try to spell out your name — they try
And fail, and depict the gods instead;
The sea labours constantly to whisper
In your ear the steady rhythm
Of your luxurious slow breath,
While the grass tickles your cheek,
Enviously mimicking the caresses
Of my hair against your face.

They try, but they cannot touch you.
You are mine, even if only then –
With the cold night unable to profane
The warmth of your skin on mine
As we lay there, side by side,
Two bodies joined by the unearthly
Pulsating passion in our fingertips.

What a sight it was to behold: you
Suspended on a bed of grass,
With stardust powdering your face,
The dew gently kissing your hair,
And the tender love in your eyes.
It was then that, amidst the silence
Of the world holding its breath, I heard
Time stop in its relentless tracks
To heave us a jealous sigh.

An eulogy for the voiceless.

This is my eulogy, in remembrance of someone I knew; of someone I recently lost. I knew her only too well to have forgotten; I knew her only too well to have let her go.

But I had to.

 

She was a bird with her wings clipped — a captive bird, told to sing until her throat gave way; told to sing her life away. Her value lay in the songs she could sing to please those who held her captive.

All day long she tried to fly, thinking that she still could. How is a bird to forget how to fly; to stop dreaming of the skies where she once belonged, which she longed someday to touch? How is a bird to ground herself for life, singing like a broken recorder when her heart is not there?

They didn’t want her to fly, yet they expected her to. They wanted to watch her flap those mutilated stumps in her dreams of flying. And when she fell, time and time again, as a crumpled, exhausted, grounded heap, they clucked their tongues and accused her of not trying. They accused her of not pleasing them. They stopped feeding her.

She gave up. She stopped trying to fly, and focused, instead, on singing because that was the one last thing that she could do, even if it were not out of her own accord. Day in and out, she sang her life away, perched, lifelessly and hopelessly, on the ground. She sang at request; she sang even when they did not ask for it. She sang and she sang and she sang, without stopping to rest, to sleep, to eat. She sang the way they wanted her to, and I could only watch her, my hands no longer my own.

 

One day, she finally died. Some say it was exhaustion that killed her; some say her time was up. But I know what it was that did it, as I watched them tip the cage over and unceremoniously slide her into the trash can, along with all other household waste. I know what it is that killed her.

She sang her heart away. In the end, her body was merely an empty feathered vessel without that pumping muscle that gave her life. Sorrow had eaten it up, decayed it, and used it to feed her with the energy to continue singing.

 

And so, she is gone. Forever. They have replaced her with another, who I hope is not like her. Already, the cage has been filled with song, her silence fading away like morning dew. She was just another one of them; another one of the unfortunate ones passing through life, leaving no imprint behind.

She was one of the voiceless who will not be remembered. And this is my eulogy that will not be read.

Providence

It is officially over, and it’s time to close the chapter and move on to new places I yet not know. My time here is up, but I will ever thank God for the best time of my life.

PROVIDENCE

And so it ends:
As the orchestra struggles onwards
To the climax, and with a huge sigh
Of relief, tenderly transits into
The resolution; As the excitement
Gives way to the sweet nostalgia
Of a good year — this is the way
I remember you. This is the way

I will not forget you, as the last
Triumphant chord rings through
The cavern of my hall, and the
Applause sounds, celebratory
At first, then fades to an awkward
Realisation that all has ended.
Still, the symphony lingers on
As a faint echo — faint, but
Nevertheless still alive — resounding,
Enclosed within the limits of my
Memory; the last vestiges of
The transient music that has passed
Like the very breath from my lips.

It is time to stand and face
The standing ovation; it is time
To graciously bow and exit
Stage right, holding my head high
And with a smile on my face.
It is time to go backstage, and there
I will remain. The show must go on,
The cycle is complete. It is time
To ride the wings of providence
On to new stages; new symphonies –
Onwards to new dreams.

Inferno

Stomach was exceptionally bad today. Then again, this cranky stomach of mine should have long ago figured as my muse. I mean… since it’s here to stay, like a rather unpleasant tenant, I might as well learn to make the most of it.

INFERNO 

First tremors, almost unnoticed,
But felt, nonetheless; First
Warnings of the greater turmoil
Which awaits the unsuspecting.

First shocks, as the pressure
Builds, and the temperature
Rises, along with the excess
Gas and that loathsome vile
Liquid that bubbles and burns
Like a cauldron full of scalding
Sick acid gurgling.

The heat is rising, up
Through the chamber, up
Through the vents, up –
Bloop, bloop, bloop,
Go the tiny eruptions
Foretelling the big nasty
Belch that is to come.

Captivity

It’s been a long time coming, but here I am.

Poem is a month overdue, but it doesn’t matter anymore. Just thought I’d write anyway to celebrate my newfound freedom.

 

CAPTIVITY

All day long I sang
Sweetly, in the cage
In which you kept me –
Like a caged canary, I
Sang the melodies you
Taught me to sing. Maybe
You never thought that I
Would sing only for you, but I
Had to; at thoughts of you
Involuntarily they bubbled
Out of my throat. I could only
Sing them for you; could only
Cry in pain at the author
Of my captivity.

Sometimes, you would come
To me, sit by my cage
With an apple in hand, and look
At me with pity in your eyes –
Pity, and disgust, at my
Captivity. You think I chose
To be here, to relish the fortress
Of sorrow in which I was chained.
You thought wrong, and all
Thoughts of you disgust me.
I would have given the world
To peck out those eyes
Of yours and teach you to see
That if not for you, I would not be
In captivity.

They say not to bite the hand that
Feeds you, but I beg to differ
When all you fed me was
Bits of my own heart. There.
I bit you, real hard, and you,
In turn, took the liberty
To condescend on my
Savagery. Never mind
What you think. You are free
To think whatever you want of me
And of your holier-than-thou
Snobbery. I will never be
Like you, and I’m sure I never
Want to be, so I’ve stopped trying.
To hell with you. The cage
Is no more, the door being found.
From now on, I am free to be
Who I am, and who I want to be,
Away from you and
Your unfeeling captivity.

Reluctantly, I Turned from Death’s Wooden Door

My second attempt at a villanelle.

Reluctantly, I Turned from Death’s Wooden Door

Reluctantly, I turned from death’s wooden door,
Convicted to leave; willing to start afresh,
Only to realise that I was no more.

In heartbreak and tears, rage, anger, and furore
Spent, thus died the energy for remembrance -
So I wearily turned from death’s wooden door.

Yet, I found myself an apple without core
As some part of me remains buried with you.
Just as you left me, I made myself no more.

You have become a type of legend or lore;
Historical tragedy in human form -
Despite my leaving you at death’s wooden door.

Now in your memory, lost forevermore,
Am I to endlessly re-enact my loss.
You live in my poetry, mine own no more.

Through the pages of my tender self you tore;
Reborn I may now be, but not as before.
As long as you rest behind death’s wooden door,
She necessarily (oh woe!) is no more.

Stasis 2

I refer you to the stub I filed on the first of December, 2009 – Stasis.

After watching Sherlock – The Reichenbach Fall tonight, I was overcome with melancholy (credits to Moffat and Gatiss for breaking my tender fangirly heart with such a beautifully painful end to the second season). And we all know melancholy never bodes well for me. That, and the fact that I am up to my neck with a new cocktail of drugs for my recent sinus infection and the return (with a vengeance) of my chronic gastric pain, almost certainly equates to a mental turmoil that needs be released into poetry a la bloodletting.

It got me thinking back on these couple of years, and evaluating my progression out of the past and into the future. This new poem is the result of such soul-searching. I took a stub and expanded it in similar fashion to Blowing Bubbles, but this one had more autonomy in rebirthing itself into something quite different.

As a disclaimer (for all those who might read negatively into this, if I have readers at all), I am okay. I wrote this not in a spirit of regression into a past that has no future, but an acknowledgement of the fact that I will never truly be free of what I try to escape via burial.

Credits go to Manda for the fabric image.

—————————————

STASIS

I buried you
Deep within the flesh of the earth
Dug out with my own bloodied hands;
Watched the clay bleed under my tears
As I resigned myself to the you-shaped
Wound to decay out of sight.

I buried all memorabilia
Deep within the recesses of my mind,
In a coffin fashioned from scrap
Pieces of empty cardboard husks,
And left it to yellow and perish
At the persistence of time and mould.

I heaped the dirt of each new day
Over the ruins of a time long past;
Flooded the earth with each teardrop
And prayed not for the dove
But the halcyon’s visitation to calm,
Mirror-like, the scourge of my soul.

I grew flowers -
Entire new hopeful civilisations
As I learned to write new paths
On the clay canvas; painted over
The red scar with fresh green facades
Of smiling grass and fallen leaves, but alas

The earth that I have lovingly cultivated has caved in
Under its own weight, revealing the large
Gaping hole
In which your flesh once occupied – now it is no more
Than a harmless skeleton of a prior existence. Yet
You continue to haunt me, a ghost of a memory,
Perfect and transcendent, untouchable by time,
And I am caught in this constant re-enactment
Of history; the story of you and me that I have covered
With the dust of lies and deceit.

It is I
Who has been buried under the illusion of convalescence,
Shamelessly trying to bleach the stain of your glorified image
From the unworthy fabric of my memory. But
I made the mistake of interring you within my flesh,
Realising only too late that, until its destruction,
There the silence of your absence shall forever remain
As the reminder of my mortal pain
And, as we are bound by four walls and a key-less door,
So am I jailed in the coffin of dusty memories,
Condemned to repeat, endlessly, this journeying
Between past woe and present day,
With no compass but the reflection
Of my own tragedy
In the mirror of my writing.

——————————————–

God, I think I talk to myself too much.

Random musing

Hur hur hur. Whoever thought that my poetry blog would be my guilty indulgence when I should be studying for my Language and Gender paper which happens later at 5. *insert me gusta meme*

That said, I’m terribly glad that this final exam of my penultimate semester as an undergraduate is going to be over soon! I really need to stop throwing highly over-used keywords (e.g. “identity”, “hegemonic discourse”, “marked/unmarked”, “signified/signifier”, “heteronormativity” etc.) around (no thanks to this module). It will all end (and begin) with the half-read Jane Eyre that my man will be delivering to me after my exam!

Hopefully poetry-composition will follow.

I Used To Cry Myself To Sleep At Night

I finally had the inspiration to try writing a villanelle! And whoa it wasn’t easy at all! Forgive me if it sounds a little simplistic. It’s my first attempt after all!

Here goes!

I USED TO CRY MYSELF TO SLEEP AT NIGHT

I used to cry myself to sleep at night
Thinking that the whole world was against me.
I didn’t know Jesus Christ holds me tight.

I used to despair of that endless fight
That happened between my loved ones and I -
It made me cry myself to sleep at night.

Each day I cursed my unfortunate plight;
Every night I cried to a starless sky,
Forgetting that Jesus Christ holds me tight.

I had exhausted all of my might
But nothing I did seemed to change my fate;
Nothing but cry myself to sleep at night.

But now I stand, my future burning bright -
I still trip and stumble along the way
But safe with Jesus Christ who holds me tight.

His yoke is easy and His burden light
With song in my heart and dance in my steps.
I used to cry myself to sleep at night
But now I know Jesus Christ holds me tight.

Blowing Bubbles

Remember the two little stubs that I filed under my post ‘Unfinished Business’?

I was re-reading my old poems tonight while showing them off to two friends when I rediscovered those two stubs. And an idea hit me for expanding the second one.

Someday, perhaps,
I will understand the beauty
Of just sitting back
And watching
Life fly by,
Riding the winds of providence.

And now here is the full finished masterpiece:

BLOWING BUBBLES

For Debbie, HY, Emmy and Terence

The hopes and dreams
That burst like bubbles
That little children blow
At whim – without thought,
Without consideration
For the harsh realities that follow
When the bubbles burst
And all is returned to void.

The hearts and souls
That we break like glass
That we blow like bubbles
But shatters when it hits
The hard floors, fists and walls
That we build to keep out
The shards that go flying
When our hearts start breaking.

The thoughts and words
That slip through our lives
Like sand through our fingers;
Sandcastles in pools of bubbles
As the waves of time erase
All that’s insignificant
In our quest for the things
That never mattered as much.

The lives that we lead
That were not desired
Now  make us delighted
Like children blowing bubbles.
And someday, perhaps,
I will understand the beauty
Of watching life fly by
Riding the winds of providence.