Variations on the Word Love - Margaret Atwood

This is a word we use to plug
holes with. It’s the right size for those warm
blanks in speech, for those red heart-
shaped vacancies on the page that look nothing
like real hearts. Add lace
and you can sell
it. We insert it also in the one empty
space on the printed form
that comes with no instructions. There are whole
magazines with not much in them
but the word love, you can
rub it all over your body and you
can cook with it too. How do we know
it isn’t what goes on at the cool
debaucheries of slugs under damp
pieces of cardboard? As for the weed-
seedlings nosing their tough snouts up
among the lettuces, they shout it.
Love! Love! sing the soldiers, raising
their glittering knives in salute.

Then there’s the two
of us. This word
is far too short for us, it has only
four letters, too sparse
to fill those deep bare
vacuums between the stars
that press on us with their deafness.
It’s not love we don’t wish
to fall into, but that fear.
this word is not enough but it will
have to do. It’s a single
vowel in this metallic
silence, a mouth that says
O again and again in wonder
and pain, a breath, a finger
grip on a cliffside. You can
hold on or let go.

A New Person Every Day

A New Person Every Day

I made a picture composed of six clocks,
installed it above my bed with the help of a friend.
This friend and I, we're not speaking anymore
but his effort continues to hold up the timepieces,
representing six zones. I've confiscated their batteries.
Connections keep miscarrying anyway.
Until I figure out why, I won't start new ones,
busy as I am with all the stuff
from overseas:  my mother in Singapore
confides that third brother has been checked
into an institution. Apparently there had been a fuss.
Don't tell father I told you, she adds. I won't,
I say into the phone, wondering with whom
I'm being more complicit. My Hunanese friend
didn't reply to my IM for one whole night,
and only the next day tells me the news
that he didn't get into grad school in Shanghai.
Had it not been for my encouragement in the first place,
would his disappointment have been less strong?
A Taiwanese friend complains that the wrong president
has been elected. I wonder what Xiaogang thinks,
with whom I severed contact.
I had said unretractable things to him in KL,
which he unfairly would not let me retract, crying
"There's no use forcing friendship after the fact."
New in Beijing, my Hong Kong friend
sends an Email mistakenly identifying Aristotle
as the originator of Aristophanes's  "two halves" story
in the header. In the body, she announces
her engagement with Colm,
a new person she just met 28 days ago.
I undeceive her about Aristophanes.
Jean-Michel deletes me from his messenger —
first from his Médecins Sans Frontières account,
then from his U.K. home.
I wonder if this is a function of
too many new people clogging up his Skype,
though I then remember that he did lose grandmaman
shortly before I said "Peut-être" to his "A bientôt,"
and then over his "Arrête!"
drew the lips of my laptop shut.
In San Francisco, B. whom I love
is making a film I won't ever see.
The memory is still fresh in my mind,
of our knees knocking under the table
as above, he takes my hand in his.

posted by SHALINE (potato)

Homecoming

Homecoming

          I

Being told to love you
only breeds resentment
that I learn to bury.
What should be natural
is now nurtured into
docile sterility,
cultivated and pruned
till it relents and dies.
Every August, what love
that remains for you grows
out of its grave, summoned
by on-air pageantry.
For one night, it flowers
forth and you are worth it,
persuading me I would
regret not being part
of you. Each time, I pray
for that feeling to last,
knowing it will be gone
after the fireworks fade.

          II

Here at the exchange point,
boys file off the ferries
dressed in every colour
of the spectrum, scheduled
for a transformation:
grooming into green gear.
When asked to, I will swear
fealty with forked tongue,
using words forgotten
soon as they are spoken,
handing over body
so love and devotion
can be hammered down deep,
invisible lessons
intended to take root.
Whenever my heart tries
to bleed, treading the mud
of the island will serve
to cauterise its stump,
to teach it self-control.

          III

I yearn to be able
to love you so deeply
that it hurts and informs
my words against my will,
but my flesh is too weak
and you are not ready.
Instead, I sow distance
between us, to reap and
negotiate with love
strictly on my own terms.
There is no need for guilt
where how I feel for you
(or do not) is concerned.
I have the patience of
a horticulturist:
tending my affection
in a guarded corner,
until you have ripened
enough to love me back,
or I to compromise.


posted by SHALINE(potato)

Full Moon and Little Frieda - Ted Hughes

A cool small evening shrunk to a dog bark and the clank of a bucket -
And you listening.
A spider's web, tense for the dew's touch.
A pail lifted, still and brimming - mirror
To tempt a first star to a tremor.

Cows are going home in the lane there, looping the hedges with their warm
wreaths of breath -
A dark river of blood, many boulders,
Balancing unspilled milk.
'Moon!' you cry suddenly, 'Moon! Moon!'

The moon has stepped back like an artist gazing amazed at a work
That points at him amazed

Valentine - Carol Ann Duffy

Not a red rose or a satin heart.

I give you an onion.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
It promises light
like the careful undressing of love.

Here.
It will blind you with tears
like a lover.
It will make your reflection
a wobbling photo of grief.

I am trying to be truthful.

Not a cute card or a kissogram.

I give you an onion.
Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,
possessive and faithful
as we are,
for as long as we are.

Take it.
Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding-ring,
if you like.

Lethal.
Its scent will cling to your fingers,
cling to your knife.

Another Sunday Morning By Carter Revard

What I walked down to the highway for,

                                   through the summer dawn,

                                            was the Sunday funnies,

                     or so I thought—

                                      but what I remember reading there

                           in the shadowless light

                                               among meadowlarks singing

                     was tracks in the deep warm dust

                                           of the lane, where it parted

                                  with its beige dryness the meadow’s dew—

                    the sleek trail where a snake had crossed

                        and slid into tall grass;

                                                  the stippled parallels

                with marks between them where

                                                  a black blister-beetle had dragged

                                 its bulbous belly across

                      in search of weeds more green;

                                                              the labyrinth of lacelike

            dimples left by a speed-freak

                                        tiger-beetles’s sprints that ended

                                         where it took wing

                              with a little blur of dust-grains;

                                            and stepping through the beetle-trails,

         the wedge-heels and sharp-clawed hands of skunk-track

                              crossing unhurried and walking

                                       along the ditch to find

                                  an easy place for climbing;    

not far past that,

            a line of cat-prints running

                                               straight down the lane and ending

        with deep marks where it leaped

                                                  across the ditch to the meadow

                 for birds asleep or wandering baby rabbits:

and freshly placed this morning,

                                               the slender runes

                                      of bob-whites running, scuffles

                    of dustbaths taken—

                                        and there ahead

crouched low at the lane-edge

                                     under purple pokeweed-berries

                     four quail had seen me,

                    and when I walked slowly

                    on toward them, instead

                           of flying they ran

with a fluid scuttling

                                     on down the lane and stopped frozen

                                               till I came too close

               —then quietly when

                     I expected an explosion

         of wings they took off low and whispering

                and sailed, rocking and tilting

                                          out over the meadow’s tall bluestem,

             dropped down and were gone until

 I heard them whistling, down by the little pond,

                 and whistled back so sharply

               that when I got back to the  house

                  they still were answering

                   and one flew into the elm

                  and whistled from its shadows

                                                  up over the porch where I sat

       reading the funnies while the kittens

                         played with the headlines

                                         till when the first gold sunlight

                 tipped the elm’s leaves he flew

back out to the meadow and sank

                                   down into the sun-brilliant dew

                             on curving wings,

                and my brothers and sisters waked

                                           by the whistling came pouring out

       onto the porch and claimed their share

                                  of the Sunday funnies—

                     and I went on to read

           the headlines of World War Two,

with maps of the struggling armies leaving

                                            tank-tracks over the dunes of Libya

                            and the navies churning their wakes

                             of phosphorescence in the Coral Sea

                             where the ships went down on fire

                             and the waves bobbed and flamed

                          with the maimed survivors , screaming

                                  in Japanese or English until

                                  their gasoline-blistered heads

                                  sank down to the tiger sharks

                                   and the war was lost or won

                                 for children sitting in sunlight,

                                  believing their cause was just

                                 and knowing it would prevail,

                                   as the dew vanished away.

Countdown by Grace Chua

After midnight, the tired astronaut
surveys her chrometop kitchentop
and counts the hours down
till the alarm-clock rings.
Thinks of yesterday's shopping trip
the kids outgrowing their shoes again
and such unfinished things.
Daytime, and her mother-ship
shuttles its small satellites
from playschool to violin class,
the swimming pool, art lessons, ballet,
and feeds them at irregular intervals
in a twenty-four-hour tour of duty.

The washing machine groans. Pipes swish,
the dryer roars. She wishes
she were in a vacuum,
not vacuuming or doing dishes.

She longs
to be in the dark, and young,
with star-fields leaping light-years
beyond time's gravity. And peers
out of the window at the night,
and counts down hours till the end,
craning her neck, till all the clocks break free.

Joanne Leow - Watching My Grandmother Eat Fish

like a cat

her once slim fingers
tear each morsel off
the bones
deliberately

Crouched, intent
between mouthfuls of rice
she informs me
that I used to snap off their tails
and with great care remove their skins
declaring the flesh boring

And I think how I know no other
like her really
living in her house of strangers
in a race where blood is most prized.

Gilbert Koh - Train Ride to Singapore

The train pulled out slowly
like a long sigh
and I saw from my window
how you stood alone at
the station platform
with hands in your pockets -
you refused to wave
but smiled a reluctant, sorry
kind of goodbye.

Five years ago we skipped
the bahasa melayu class
to play chor dai di
in the dirty, deserted
alley behind
Ah Hin's coffeeshop,
we talked about girls
and about all the
things we'd do
when we were old enough
to get a job or into
university -

things were so much
simpler then.
Now we understand that
the colour of skin
opens doors for some
in this country,
forever closes them
for others.
I'm going south
alone to chase a dream,
because I can,
you can't,
for this I'm sorry
and I really don't know
if I'm ever
coming back.

A Girl by Ezra Pound

The tree has entered my hands,
The sap has ascended my arms,
The tree has grown in my breast-
Downward,
The branches grow out of me, like arms.

Tree you are,
Moss you are,
You are violets with wind above them.
A child - so high - you are,
And all this is folly to the world.

To a Jilted Lover by Sylvia Plath

Cold on my narrow cot I lie
and in sorrow look
through my window-square of black:

figured in the midnight sky,
a mosaic of stars
diagrams the falling years,

while from the moon, my lover's eye
chills me to death
with radiance of his frozen faith.

Once I wounded him with so
small a thorn
I never thought his flesh would burn

or that the heat within would grow
until he stood
incandescent as a god;

now there is nowhere I can go
to hide from him:
moon and sun reflect his flame.

In the morning all shall be
the same again:
stars pale before the angry dawn;

the gilded cock will turn for me
the rack of time
until the peak of noon has come

and by that glare, my love will see
how I am still
blazing in my golden hell.

If You Forget Me by Pablo Neruda

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine

The Furthest Distance in the world. (By Rabindranath Tagore?)

The furthest distance in the world
Is not between life and death
But when I stand in front of you
Yet you don't know that I love you.

The furthest distance in the world
Is not when I stand in front of you
Yet you can't see my love
But when undoubtedly knowing the love from both
Yet cannot
Be together.

The furthest distance in the world
Is not being apart while being in love
But when plainly can not resist the yearning
Yet pretending You have never been in my heart.

The furthest distance in the world
Is not
But using one's indifferent heart
To dig an uncrossable river
For the one who loves you.

Arthur Yap - a list of things

A MARKET AT UENO

gesticulating fingers of lentil, unwriggly eels,
spearheads of bamboo shoot, soothing water chestnuts,
green snakes of cucumber, jetsams of seaweed,
wrinkled-nose pickles, earspans of brown mushroom,
calm persimmons, outlandish roly-poly apples,
air-licking clams, dry earth-crusts of fish,
icy-eyed bream, powdered kabuki faces of cake,
paragraphs of beancurd, exhaling piles of garlic,
enpurpled piccolo noses of aubergine, lazy grapes,
no-nonsense tangerines, arms-folded-over squid,
shrine-pillars of celery, bullets of green chillie,
hibernating squares of handkerchief, fat tabi,
expandable sweaters, ventilated t-shirts, healthy cod,
alliterative clogs, knobbly topshell, discusses of sole,
lumpy puffy octopus, cheap skate, tight-jaw oysters,
brisk aprons, tough-guy pork, sectional ropes of radish,
whispery crinkled lettuce, placid sweet potatoes,
smarting capsicum, defiant crabs, sensuous musk melons,
humpy peanuts, leathery heels of abalone,
aerial spring onion, hour-glass pears, rotund avocados,
rib-caged pumpkins, chlorophyllic piles of iparella,
grumpy red mullet, macho beef, sassy tomatoes

are all there.