Bloody hell why should such beauty of a garden be
Oozing peace in photos but punishingly perspiring in the flesh
Trickling pearls of salt to water the gasping ground only for the
Assault to be gutted by the first sight of black swans too unbothered
Nauseatingly precious their necks curled like questions only to be
Impaled on the afternoon's rotisserie slowly baking their already
Charred feathers while they ponder the fatalism of

Gracefully decaying in this tiny miserable pond every inhale
Anointed by the vinegary tang of pores fermenting in human brine
Resting never arrives in the steady percussion of shutters and shrieks
Delighting of course in the gourmet offerings of half-chewed bread as the days
Ease into weeks into months into years into feathers falling into nothing
Nestling into the idea that today might be the day to
Serenely uncurl the question of how these slow-marinated people taste

we gathered to make art we
think but all we do is pure expression
unbridled by word banks only limited by
self imposed rules slowly shattered by every
brush stroke as we are our worst enemies
busy unlearning the laws of reality in awe of
feral paint unraveling on canvas deliberately
trying to see beauty when it’s already
all around us but they are just less pretty
because they are not birthed from
our existence

every freakin' day people point at me to remind me i'm really
old, so old my age is now a game of wild guesses
two hundred, five hundred
there's always a kid who barks one million
but the kicker is this one tour guide who reveals i'm one-fifty
with such confidence it rattles the oldest leaf
off my two-hundred-year-old branch
and when it lands on his head, he just thinks
the universe is telling him he's right

i'm so old but they refuse to let me die
they strap me into steel braces like a patient
who never asked for surgery
as if some tragedy would befall this land
if i go. and the root of all this fuss?
they stuck my face on five dollars once
and now i'm too expensive to die

all because some artist saw lottery numbers in my bark,
placed a five-dollar bet and won first prize.
he got a car. i'm still here

i had friends once, before they dotted us across the island.
i hope they were lucky enough to just fall
two hundred years watching swan lake and nothing's changed
same fights, same tears, same joggers outrunning nothing
kids used to climb me, couples leaned into my trunk like i was theirs
now i'm on crutches and nobody touches what might break.

the age game though. i'd be lying if i said i don't listen.

I was walking fast
Overtaking everyone
Blocked by slow coaches
I swerved but some sweaty guy
Suddenly grazed my arm! Ew!

can be read from bottom to top

screamed the school cheer at the top of our lungs
just a choir girl borrowing glory in a kingdom of track and field
my eyes were set on triple science the top-most rungs
physics, chemistry, biology was the hill, leaving my pen concealed

loud with a chosen few, being unseen was my rule
exiled to the back row, gladly, a willing renegade
fifty cent ice cream from trespassing a primary school
3am alarms to cram while feeling like a god self-made

wearing soiled shoes on a monday trying to impress
boarding the latest bus trying to beat the clock
jamming to the cranberries' zombie feeling badass
who is michael anyway why is he learning to rock

can be read from bottom to top

last time we were a fine city
pure intention
too archaic we progress faster with
the whip
returned our trays
kept our durians off the train
binned our litter in the trash
over time we forget why we
acted this way as prosperity grew
we still did
not for prosperity but
conscience
we walked a stranger's wallet to the station
happiness was not the reward but
the reason for the walk
derobotize
our love for this land
as happiness too dissolves like me for
i am ashes now scattered and free

(now read from bottom to top)

i can feel the earth crack as trapped
remnants of the dead self escape through each
fissure without saying goodbye, just like how
insignificant my last day was, just quietly shutting
down, just like how my grandma left, quietly shutting
down, and hopefully that's how my end will unfold until
i'm done with all there is to be done even though these days
flashes of statements, not ideas tell me I'm already done which
strangely made me look forward to the final act but then claude
tells me i'm not done yet. why build something that goes away but
my little niece shows me how fun it is to destroy what was painstakingly
built because something new will always emerge. so exorcise
all stubborn demons of pride, doubt and fear.
keep my head low do the work. savor the journey ignore the destination
because time passes by anyway why not spend on real hard work
plant the seeds everyday lay the bricks everyday don't chase
the transient likes, for only the best emerges after decades of quiet
work and even if the best is still germinating the endless days of toil
will humble me about life before i finally declare that i'm really done.

Practice smiling before entering
I need to look less like a bitch

Unbitch I must do so quickly
Before they project their shadows on my face

Shadows are serpents they love coiling on this face
This face would run this country on a man!

On a woman this face would haunt the land
Cheeks lifted, eyes softened here I go

Cheeks aching, eyes still tame I'm here now
Entering a room of rehearsed smiles

The smiles stay rehearsed ice not thawed
The groups stay impenetrable to my farce

The groups, the impenetrable farce so I should
Practice smiling more before entering

Write like no one’s reading but
you know your soul is judging the
very words that came into

existence

due to your total abandonment of
propriety and poise
as if words should be

guarded

with max security as they will
burn down this city of standing and order
once unleashed
but only the

shameless

will turn their face away from the
judgement because all there is
left
when a person turns to
dust
would be words that will last

(should they be found)

The couch looks inviting the bed
feels warm but you must not squander
the promise of the day because your
dead grandmothers would have
used the day to

tend to the plants
read a book
write a letter
make a kueh
feed a stray
sew a blouse
cook up a storm so

do not just think tomorrow you will do better
as yesterday's tomorrow is already here so don't
slot time into 24-hour buckets
blindly following the sun like sheeple
not every tomorrow holds great promise
yours might decide to not show up

Go boldly unroot yourself from the
mishmash of half-baked ideas and self-proclaimed
profound notions just kill them all. you will leave behind
nothing but ash anyway so go

make something stupid
something insane
something ugly enough to survive
something that will become a cautionary tale

something that will stir your grandmas in their graves

Air is electrified
by you defiantly
showing off
the clash of spaces
squeezing
their life out but

you know
nothing is worse than the

perpetual
standoff so you rather
freeze in
perilous stalemate to
torment poets
drowning in the wordless
ineffable soup
of demons making themselves known

i can't
help myself because getting

swallowed by you
makes a ghost weep
makes a spirit quiver
makes a robot bleed

so
please
lovingly
devastingly achingly
electrify me into
a welcomed death

Why are we dressed up
or pretending to dress up
as if we are dying to impress
when all we want
is to look the part

Why are we trying
or pretending to try
to fix a broken projector
when all we want
is for the meeting to end

Why are we reading
or pretending to read
from a single projected screen
when each of us
has one glowing in our laps

Why do we look interested
or pretend to be interested
in something half-muttered by the boss
when all we can think of
is that viral TikTok ramen recipe

What we hoped for
really, earnestly hoped for
to attend meetings in our pjs
to host a discussion with bad breath
to drown the suckers out with Spotify

And boy did we get our wishes
Two magical buttons - mute and camera off
Now I chop onions between presentations
Unmuting in time just to say the obvious
while plating the viral TikTok ramen
as the boss rambles on and on

type a
striver
best class
uniform pride
look sharp
rank above the rest
going places
future scorching bright

till
it burns the wick
mind rebels
spirit goes wayward
grades skyfall
ego in the tomb

Languishing

emerging leader
corporate climber
title chaser
money grabber
deadline beater
kpi exceeder
throat cutter
empire grower
next in succession

till
renouncing the crown
dropping the troops
exiled in silence
four walls of misery
churning meaningless gibberish
flushed like 1-ply stained toilet paper
down pipes of mediocrity and waste

Languishing

Years and decades of long nights pleasantly
Engulfed by your wretched beats my old friend
Hello old friend

A temptress you are - whispering the forbidden euphonies
Seducing the hell out of my feelings
Enthroning me as the master of the coolly-detached My crippling heart skipping beats to the metronome of your whims
Whatever oozes out might not be mine

But I survived the long dark nights
Because you made just being a fascination Hail to your power and I want this power
Till the day I am nothing but somebody's old friend

Flowers open, get their awws, go brown.
A canvas drinks color, gets its hmms, then cracks.
A dish is cooked, gets its slurps, gets passed.
A song is written, gets hummed, gets forgotten.

So what happens to this poem?

The Mona Lisa, you'd say. That one lasts.
She hangs behind glass, getting hmms in every language, though even the wood beneath her face dries and splits a little more each year.
That's a masterpiece — though everyone has a masterpiece, and everyone is hoping theirs is the one thing that doesn't go.

I remember Mona but I can't remember where my keys are.
The keys are still somewhere.
But are they there if I can't remember them?

So what happens to this poem?
Who cares about this poem.
Another woman indulging herself the way dead poets did.
I typed it. You're reading it
off a screen that will one day go dark.

You won't remember this poem.
But I'll remember the love in it for a while,
until I go, and the memory goes too.

Some guy called Newton figured out
that energy can't be made or unmade,
it just turns into something else.

So maybe the love I put in here
turns into something else when I'm done.
Maybe a flower.
Which opens.
Then goes brown.

Then goes.

the void seduces
full of promises
the ash grey will be warm
the black will feel inviting
its air will wire me
straight to the source

i still feel the buzz
twenty years on
it lives
the life of a ghost
waiting to live again

---

hello emptiness

you seem smaller
are you tired
from counting the days
to seeing me once more?

---

boundless darkness
entombing the sprawling
grey brushstrokes etched
like veins on this terrain
suddenly
becoming

i am here standing
feet touching the
warm ash
grey

sparse but bursting
horizon broke loose
timeless pathless
the plenteous stillness

i am finally here

a familiar figure
far ahead
wearing the hoodie
i used to own

she’s here
for how long?
is she feeling
what i feel

my steps hastened
strangely
the space collapsed
into a pinhole
as she fades away

and stopped

and grew

and finally
she is closer now
or perhaps
i was

until i could see
the few strands of white
on her slightly tilted
head heavy with
questions of
existence resting
on her tired shoulders
where that hoodie
hung like a white flag
resigning to the
imaginary toil
too much
for her to take

the horizon stopped
giving
we have reached
the
end

darkness
just darkness

we too gave in
sat down
spaced apart
grasping any
space that is
left as

she stared ahead
i watched her
and stayed