December 31, 2004

The amazing thing that happened today

as I stood in the shower
shaving my right leg:

I felt a piece of my uterine lining –
a jelly-clot so warm
I almost expected it to
still pulsate and hum
with blood;
gelatin so red
it was almost black –

slide down my unshaven left,
leaving a slippery trail of
crimson in its wake -

a blood moon that
bloomed and blossomed by
my then sinister,
now sacred and feminine,
foot.

December 30, 2004

FruitLoops

You call me a banana –
well, I could be a banana, I suppose …
(or an apple, or a honeydew, or a grape –
but not a grapefruit or an orange)
I like bananas enough;
but if I had to be a fruit,
I’d be a cherry –
a black cherry –
I love cherries!

You call me a banana
because I said I find the Chinese characters
difficult to decipher,
and don’t always understand every word
the newscaster says on the Mandarin news;
that, and because I prefer
communicating in English.
(Would it make you feel better if
I’d said I speak Singlish lah,
and my English not so good -
aiyah, like my Mandarin loh?)

You call me a banana –
meaning, you think that
I think that although I’m yellow on the outside,
I’m really white on the inside.
If you had asked,
I would have told you what I really think:
that I’m an Indian trapped in a Chinese body.
(But would you call me a rotten banana then –
yellow on the outside and brown on the inside?
And if I spoke German, would you call me a Nazi;
would you lynch me for speaking fluent Japanese?)

You call me a banana –
are you the sort of person who thinks that
all Chinese people must speak fluent Mandarin?
If people were fruits,
the European tourists here would be rambutans –
red and hairy on the outside and white within;
you might want to be a mango
so you could be happily – and acceptably –
yellow both within and out.
(What about mangosteens I wonder –
who would be mangosteens?)

You call me a banana –
automatically presuming that
if I’m poor in Mandarin
and am proficient in English,
I must be a debauched groupie of “the Western culture”,
the disgraceful paradigm of a desperate
Chinese-wannabe-ang-moh;
that I’m ashamed of (and indifferent to) my Chinese roots,
and, subsequently, of all things Asian.

You call me a banana -
are you a cultural chauvinist
or a Sino-manic fascist?
Do you think a Chinese person who
cannot speak, read, or write, in Mandarin
is as “unnatural” and “shameful” and “abominable”
as a girl who isn’t at all inclined towards
the male of the species?

You call me a banana,
you say I “jiat kentang”;
you don’t understand:
I don’t see colors the way you do,
my favorite carbohydrates are noodles and pasta,
and I’d prefer to be a cherry –
a black cherry.

So,
why do you call me a banana?

December 22, 2004

Jungles (on the way to Johor Bahru)

speed
through the jungle
on the long and meandering never-
      ending gray
river and its many rivulets
all of tar and concrete

on both sides
a blend of a myriad of dense leafy
      ferny greens
tall thin trees and sturdy ones
in competition with the drooping
      steel ones
that give off their own light

then a sign flashing past warning that
Speed Kills

a short distance on you’ve gone
from jungle to jungle
still dense but no longer heavily wooded –
heavily concreted perhaps -
steel reinforced mammoths unashamedly
jostling to get closer to the sun
even though they have no need for the sunbeams
and cannot photosynthesize

the river of tar and concrete rises
majestically as if some river god has
      commanded it
as he makes an appearance

beneath
a different stream runs blue and gray
catching and reflecting the sun’s rays

December 21, 2004

Rag doll

If you stop and listen for a moment,
maybe you’d hear her silent cries
pleading with you or someone
- anyone at all -
to please pick her up, her little body
limp with sadness, crumpled in the corner,
having been discarded,
then forgotten.

She’s so sorry now that she hasn’t been
the perfect doll,
that she had sulked before when you’d
taken her out so very often to play –
she’d thought she’d collapse from wear
      and tear -
but she didn’t.

And she now remembers all the
happy times and all the fun she had;
now is she sad, now does she regret
as she lies limp and crumpled
in the corner where she’d ended up,
waiting and pleading for someone –
anyone – to please pick her up.

December 20, 2004

untitled

before i’d said it or written it
i’d thought a lot about it
and i’d made the decision
before i’d said it or written it

it was a tough decision to make
but i didn’t see many choices before me
if i didn’t do it then
it’d have died a long drawn-out, agonizing death

i’d much preferred a quick death
not painless – when has Death been painless
for Its survivors? – but quick, at least,
and i’d chosen it

it wasn’t an easy decision to make
it was daunting and soul-numbing
but it had to be done
to avoid a death much, much worse

so i took them out for one last time
and packed them all up carefully
in the hopes that they would not
disintegrate into a fine dust of unbeing

and then i said goodbye
and laid them all to rest
locked away as deeply as possible
it was goodbye; it was for ever

i’d said it and written it
i’d finally stopped thinking about it
i’d done away with them
i’d said goodbye; it was for ever

In Memory of Memories - untitled

i remember that one time
i pretended to get lost
- stayed lost - just to get back
at you and the others

who’d conspired to
lose me in that maze of flats
so i’d start crying or something
(it was such a juvenile prank)

and to this day
i still can’t believe
you actually fell for it
and ran around looking for me

and how you never got mad
when i eventually
let you ‘find’ me
and you’d even laughed about it

paybacks are such a bitch, aren’t they?

so now i am running all around
looking for you
hoping to find you
wondering when you’d let me

so when you finally would
let me find you
i promise
i wouldn’t be mad either

In Memory of Memories - untitled

i hope you remember
– as i do –
every single moment
we had shared

as we trekked through the
hot and humid outdoors

as we whispered in the
cold and dark cinemas

as we slumped exhausted in the
backseats of cabs at night

as we laughed so hysterically
that where we were didn’t figure
in our consciousness - and that
really didn’t matter at all -

and all that you remember of those times
is that we were carefree and young
and were always laughing

i hope you remember them all

but if you don’t
i’d be just as contented
if you remember
just me

In Memory of Memories - untitled

do you remember that one time
in art class when you’d grabbed me

grabbed me around my waist
as i stood on a three-legged stool

peering down through the crowd
that had gathered around our art teacher

as he demonstrated
the art of Chinese painting

and you’d shaken me a couple of times
and frightened the hell out of me

and when you’d finally stopped
and helped me down

i’d started yelling at you
about how dangerous it was

how i could have fallen
and how i could have been hurt

but you’d just smiled and shrugged
and calmly said (for the very first time)

“I was supporting you.”


i never could figure out why
this sentence of four simple words
meant such a great deal to me

how something uttered so casually
could remain so momentous

even now



19th – 20th Dec 2004

December 18, 2004

In Memory of Memories - untitled

i can’t remember the first time i saw you
but i won’t forget that i’d ever known you

ten years ago our lives intersected
but they never did converge
instead, they ran parallel to each other
for years
close – almost touching; or, even,
glancing each other at times –
but they never did converge

and all those times i’d wondered
and all this time i’ve been wondering:
what if?
and always
what if?

what if we had met each other halfway?
what if either or both of us had said something?

but i would never know.
we would never know.

ten years later we’ve moved apart
farther and farther away
from each other
in opposite directions.

what if?

what if
one day we’re so far apart
that i’d suddenly come to see you
right in front of me
that we’d come to stand face-to-face?
what if?

what then?

December 17, 2004

untitled

i piled it on
layer by layer
hiding and disguising

Someday
i’ll take it all off

layer
by layer
until i stand
unclothed
nude
naked
bare

the courage i now don’t possess
will insist that
I stand tall
in defiance
unashamed

unafraid that I
stand exposed
exposing what is true
even if vulnerably so

maybe then
you’d be the one
to cower
or turn away
weighed down
by your layers of
pretense
your many façades

while I walk
tall and unencumbered
proudly naked
and
honest

December 09, 2004

I don’t know what to say

But I’m not without things to say

And I don’t know how to say

The things I want to say

(So I’m going to say
  What I don’t intend to say
  And I won’t say
  What I intend to say
  And that is all that I can say)

December 07, 2004

Will you be the

Center

of

my universe

my Sun and Moon
my shooting star
my Milky Way
my incomprehensibly
eternal
infinity
Will you be?

untitled

Do you accept this life
Will you accept it?
What’s so bad about it?
Everybody takes it on
Why would you not
Why should you not?
You’d have a job
You’d have a life-long companion
You’d have some insurance
      for your twilight years
What’s so bad about it?
Do you want to forever be
      a dependent
      a parasite
      a dreamer

      alone?

December 03, 2004

untitled

A bright bus ride
       through a well-lit street
Clear, hard light
       everywhere
Has never made the darkness
Darker
The multitude of vibrant
       brilliant spheres
       just make
This loneliness
Lonelier
(Never have I needed you more
  When I wanted you more)