The Morning After

I frequent the streets that lead up to the square
where a motley of men congregate
to speak their minds
but never their hearts.


Here is where it began
Climb up, climb up!
The rusty steps of the fire escape ladder
(Ten thousand)
A twist and a turn
(Nine thousand and ninety-nine)
A flurry of plumeria leaves and tobacco
(Nine thousand and ninety-eight)
A tentative smile
(Get a grip)
Milk on your shirt
(Before you slip)
Stains on our sleeves
(Nine thousand and ninety-seven)
The park and everything in between
(Nine thousand and ninety-six)
The parts of our skin we should never have seen
(Nine thousand and ninety-five)
I'd rather


dangle my two feet over the tarmac
than deal with the weight of the morning after.

Philosophical Mathematics (An Interpretation)

 

Drew the last Venn Diagram to explain something to a friend, which lead to a series of other pointless mathematical diagrams. I clearly have too much time on my hands. Selamat Hari Raya, everybody!

An Unlikely Prayer

I wish for my actions to be independent of irrational thought, yet dependent on a limitless capacity for compassion.

Please let me accept wholeheartedly the prospect of being wrong despite this burgeoning itch to always be right.

Grant me enough prudence to know when to think, when to decide, and when to stop.

Things I Encountered on a Highway at 3AM (Both Literally and Figuratively)

A swarm of insects
Although we differ greatly in size, humans and insects share one common ground--there is a predictive quality in our behavior patterns.

Ants learn by interaction; though their interactions are not quite as emotionally agonizing as the ones we are forced to endure.

Moths are attracted to light, just as we are drawn to enlightenment. In both cases, the end result is disorientation. In both cases, the desire for light is self-destructive.

A honey bee's stinger is its one and only mode of defense. Once it stings its victim, the bee's stinger is detached from its body and it will subsequently face death. Mankind's fate is doubly tragic-- our stings leave us not dead, but with a hollowness that derogates our will to live.

An eery mist
A fog covers the field where you sit cross-legged with a sickle and tobacco stained teeth. Hacked weeds and headless rodents surround your dreary patch of land. There is no way for me to convince you to leave your Godless shrine, so I choose to rescue the parts of my body that did not get lost in the grey.

Crows
A single crow is an omen. A murder of crows is an ending.

Sailors.

Some people live in split second transitions of daydreams.

Sailing steadfast on their mighty caravels.

Tying themselves tightly to the masts, hoping that monsoon winds will carry their cargo loaded vessels away from leaden waters; towards coasts where sunlight embellishes the shoreline with opulent hues of gold and ivory.

The hulls of their ships gleam like elephant tusks, spearheading the drifter's pursuit for soil and sand.

Uh Huh Honey.

 

Bigger

For in these cold Chi night's moon, you my light
If heaven had a height, you would be that tall
Ghetto to coffee shop, through you I see that all

I could do it, maybe one day
When you figure out you're gonna need someone
When you figure out it's all right here in the city
And you don't run from where we come from
That sound like Poetic Justice, Poetic Justice

Underwater, stove-top, blue flame scientist come out with your scales up
get baptized in the ocean of the hungry
(Humdi luli lalilulo, Humdi lulilalilu)
My niggas turn in to gods,
walls come tumblin'

Original rude boy, never am I coy
You can be a shorty in my ill convoy
Not to come across as a thug or a hood
But hon, you got the goods, like madeline woods

Fingerprints.

You popped up on my computer today.

My Skype went through a system update and by some technical mismanagement my profile picture changed to a picture of you.

I can't remember when or why I had changed it years ago. Maybe it was one of those cute couple-y things we succumbed to back then; the exact reason escapes me. The years have managed to trim the fuzzy edges of my memory of our relationship. All I'm left with is the stripped down core: we were good, right up until the point where we weren't. Nonetheless, I felt a sting. In that picture, your hair went past your eyebrows which could only mean it was taken a few weeks before we called it quits. You're sporting a 5 o'clock stubble, which rounds out the sombre look you wore so often. It's the image of you I've carried around all these years -- worn out and shabby, but composed in your own way.

You were a P.O. Box, a few swift strokes of the keyboard and a low-end web camera I stared into day in and day out. Continents still separate us after all these years, as it rightfully should. Why did you make a digital appearance again today after so many years of absence? My guess is as good as any. It hardly even matters. Fate and destiny is a phase that I've thankfully grown out of. After all, symbols and signs are what we make of them.


Since that juncture of my life, I've been wary of online communication. Everyone is the idealized version of themselves here, myself included. It's all quite formulaic.

Hide as much as you like!  Reveal as little as possible!  Be intellectual up to a point!  Write with wit!  Care but don't care too much because the world is going to end anyway!  Words are like windows so choose them carefully!

It amazes me how much everyone has been avoiding physical contact with each other. Just look at how seamlessly our interactions have been formatted into web protocols over the last couple of years, i.e. count the amount of conversations you have on your phone/online vs. the ones you have in the real world.

I suppose it's the safest way of keeping each other company. Safer than sharing a common space with someone new. Safer than whatever it was that we had.

Lace Doilies Look Like Snowflakes Don't They?

I remember spinning slowly in my room on the first day of the year. As a kid I constantly spun in circles, curious as to why I'd lose my balance and topple over after doing multiple 360s. I wanted to recreate that feeling; the satisfaction that came with losing control. The light-headedness. The frivolous rush. The I wonder how long I can make this last? sensation.
Unlike my juvenile experimentation, the turns and twists on that January morning only left me irritated and slightly nauseous. Had I trained myself to resist any loss of control over the years? I wondered if it was reversible. I wanted so badly to regain the comfort I had assimilated with the unfamiliar. Hard to believe we were playmates once. Anyway, that was close to 6 months ago.

Since then, I have

• moved into a run-down apartment (a trade-off for getting a room of my own, which at my age I have come to appreciate as a luxury)
• started the second half of my sad excuse of an education (the most valuable lessons in life/mathematics/politics/whatever can't be taught on PowerPoint)
• wrote a few sad songs which I have sung for people who cannot relate to the distilled sub-genres of hip hop and pop that have amassed disproportionate airplay (GUYS, synths do not save lives)

Family, friends and people are moving. Time is marching on its feet as well--linearly or cyclical, that is still up for fruitful debate. There is purpose and opportunity, but there is no distinction between the two--this, thus far, has become my current everyday struggle; aside from the usual affairs that befall a female 20-something melanchomaniac.

I feel like my life is a three-spaced wheel split into change I can control, change that bubbles in a dark cauldron with the intention to slither out of the sinister brew and into my life, and change that controls me. It spins, and spins, and spins.

Most current picture, taken within 3 months. In case you forgot what I look like.

Hands

A weaving web, one tiny glove
the lines and stitches, the makings of
our tiny five-fingered glove
to cover from the biting cold
                     of nights alone.

Hands are never free unless they are held
I have you glued under my nails.

I carried life colourblind
with outstretched arms, words divine
stealing light from power lines
to lift us from the swelling cold
                         on nights alone.

Hands are never free unless they are held
our fingers trace the missing rails.