Long Stories Short

'Lullaby'

2010-07-24T10:21:00.003+08:00

We ate our fill of the evening, watching the sun descend into the horizon as we were sitting in the sand. While breaking peanuts to feed each other, I had wanted to tell her that the sound of the waves reminded me of the mechanical lull of an old clanking electrical fan that had tethered my body to sleep during the days of my childhood. But I had only kept mum, chewing the peanuts that she had palmed up to my mouth and enjoying it.

More and more people had started coming to the beach as it got dark.

The sea breeze made us linger a little longer than we had intended.

After we had decided to walk back to the main road, I collected all the snack wrappers in a plastic bag for disposal. She stood up, dusted off the sand from her jeans, and slid her feet into her sandals, wiggling her toes into the straps.

Babe, I said to her, Look at the moon, and it was just so round and bright that the landscape around us changed under its light. What day of the month is it again? She smiled and said, You know, and then she moved closer to me and I could put an arm around her and when we walked the waves were breaking upon the shore, and when we kissed it was sweet, and the sky was cloudless with its stars staring back down at us, every single one of us.

'The Afterbirth'

2010-04-16T22:33:00.002+08:00

Having found my vehicle in another night's dream, I took to the road, and feeling rather guilty going against the one-way traffic I kept as close as I could to the inner part of the way. It kept growing more and more narrow until the earth began to crack and give way to chasm and darkness. An approaching car balanced itself on its right side, swerving to avoid me at the very last minute. It almost fell into one of the fissures. I got out of my car and found myself being able to carry it like a suitcase. No. It was as light as a paper offering for the dead. I was then descending a stairwell. It was an abandoned building filled with cobwebs and rotting wood. The smell of dust permeated the air. The stairwell reduced itself in structure the longer I went downwards. The steps had became ladders, the ladders had became silk curtains leading into nothingness. Relatives from my father's side of the family joined my descent. We had found a red packet somewhere along the journey and one of my cousins had repeatedly said how fast time flies; he couldn't recall now how much he had spent raising his children. The others echoed his sentiments.

'Qing Ming'

2010-04-04T13:00:00.003+08:00

'14 January 2010'

2010-01-15T11:45:00.006+08:00

Sometimes nothing makes sense in retrospect when I awake and my eyes are open again to the real world's light. It is as if the mind would pick randomly at any detail and incorporate it into the dream. A confusing tapestry that just flows with its own sense of reasoning.

I dream of a hospital hall with many beds lined up beside each other. I dream that my father is in one of the beds--his deathbed, lapsed in a coma while my mother is trying to find out his Chinese zodiac animal. And because it is not something that I know the answer to, my mother (who is as ignorant as me in the dream) becomes a seeress of sorts, tries to find clues by spilling the contents of vases that are on patients' tables to read how the water flows, how the flowers fall. She turns the hall upside down as she goes from one end to the other. Patients sit up with frightened and worried expressions on their faces. But I am as far away and detached as a camera, documenting the events.

When she is done, she stands before my father and says, "He is a Dragon."

It is then that I know why this piece of information is so important.

It's for his death certificate.

'Ghosts'

2009-11-06T14:13:00.006+08:00

I'll never know if you were really crazy, or just craving for the attention. You were scary like that, stories coming out from you the moment you had a listener. You also drew characters which imitated those in comic books that were all the rage then. You were one of the few people I knew who were bribed to draw the naked female form, and said no.

The world moves so slowly now, while I'm tracing my way back to you in a story.

You were a part of the camping committee, one of the juniors and I was reluctantly the camp commander. We were in the school compound having a camp, after everyone else had left for the weekend. Where we had set up we called it the "Siberian Block" simply because it was isolated from all the other buildings, tucked away in the far corner of the school's grounds. The really younger ones were so desperate for food that they ate the noodles straight from the plastic packets. None of us could cook to save our lives. And then we had a game to play.

It was a pretty clear night, so still that I could hear the insect sounds surrounding the classroom where we discussed the night's next activity.

We were supposed to be going round the school; some of the committee members were supposed to be stationed at certain points. We were supposed to be doing some scaring. I was frustrated with how things were going; some of the members weren't paying attention to what was assigned to them. I voiced out my dissatisfaction, insect sounds filling each pause. You were out with my distant cousin, making sure the school was safe before we would carry on with our plans.

You came back white as a sheet, covered in a blanket of cold sweat, barely speaking. It was my cousin who spoke of what had happened. Like so many of your outrageous stories, I would've been crazy to have believed in it but you left me no choice. I listened to your story which was told not in your words:

"We were walking towards the school hall when this guy asked me to stop. He said that there were 'things' there, three of them, just heads and spinal cords hovering about, while everything looked normal to me. And when we tried to retrieve our steps he froze, like his body had seized up."

"What happened then?"

"He said there was another 'thing' approaching us, slowly. And that it was staring directly at him. When it went right through him he shivered."

You were the reason we had to call off the night's activities; the juniors were restless, but I had to make sure that everyone was safe, as silly as it sounds now. Again, you had shocked us to the core of our beings; frightened us with your boogeyman. But it wasn't enough; the night didn't end yet for me…

We were in the old clubhouse and you elaborated on your encounter to me.

"Listen, when the 'thing' approached me, it told me that the Devil would be coming for me tonight. It had the most horrible face. It gouged out one of its eyes in front of me…"

"How did that happen? I mean, it was just a head with no limbs."

"Just imagine invisible hands, I guess."

I prayed for you with my eyes open in that dark room filled with the musky smell of old things and dust. I prayed for you like a brother, because I was taught that evil existed in many forms. I was earnestly frightened for you and for everyone else who was there in the school. I prayed with what words that I had and was relieved when the morning finally came and the camp had ended with everyone still safe.

It's so easy to believe in anything when you're that young.

'Six'

2009-08-25T18:58:00.010+08:00

Think of what symmetry means to you, reduce it to a childhood memory, a painting perhaps, made from pouring paint over paper and folding it directly in the middle, pressing it hard before unfolding it again. I forget what it was that mine looked like, because it wasn't intended. What was it that I had learned? That art was beautiful and useless. I couldn't paint either, couldn't feed the colours into the spaces that I had made in pencil. It became cloudy, unpredictable, like real weather, overflowing into my plans, ruining it because the result was different from what I had in mind at the time.

I made the simplest rockets: a triangle over a rectangle. And monsters, always monsters threatening the world as we knew it came from a friend. Somewhere a city was being torn apart by our rockets and monsters. Papers tore from our enthusiasm for destruction. This had happened, that had happened. Nothing was resolved: the monster was unscathed, we had thrown everything at it--all our rockets and the kitchen sink. Why was this one so hairy?

Scenery was the hardest, I couldn't put things into their proper perspectives: it was always warped, laughable, it was strange that I had still tried. Colours had made it worse and I had envied the beautiful and effortless water paintings of friends. I wonder now if I had made any drawings of parks, would I have known what to put on paper since I was too young to explore our Lake Gardens then, did I base it solely on my imagination or was it stripped off something that I had seen somewhere, because I was a copier, a lover of children's book covers (although I had never used tracing paper).

I wish I had kept what I had made at that age, but now it's too late; what would I get if I could dissect all my art to their very atoms.

'148'

2009-07-29T17:00:00.005+08:00

I thought of the cold air within your vehicle and felt the immediate need to embrace you, my heart, if only for the briefest moment. Travelling in the dark of the highway you had nothing but occasional strangers in other vehicles for company. My understanding of the world changed, my need was no longer one for articulation. For the first time in my life, I tried to recognize which exit it was. Was it the north or the south one that you would have to take? Worry, like a spider with legs made from metal, walked across the surface of my heart. I thought of the cold air around you, compared it to mine, wondered how fast it was that you were travelling, distance over time. Were you safe? I had wanted everything to go well for you. I closed my eyes and I hoped. And when your voice told me that you were making it, step by step and turn by turn, to me, I was overwhelmed with a sense of pride. You had left your parked vehicle in the garage, and I had marvelled at how beautiful you were under what little light there was.

'Berserkers'

2009-07-02T12:24:00.007+08:00

Dear __,

Sometimes I wonder if the small town we came from is as safe as when we had left it. Did you hear about the news? Did anyone tell you what happened? There were two groups of youths of different races involved in a gang fight. There were a few who died, even innocent passersby were casualties. The story: it varies from one person to another--I can never be sure of the details, even if it's from the newspaper. How I get injected with my weekly dose of town news is when I talk to the cab drivers. I listen to their accounts like skeletons that may or may not have been the truth. The Devil's in the details. No one I knew was involved or had witnessed the incident firsthand. What one cab driver told me was this: a gang had gone to rob a shop that was owned by someone who was affiliated with another gang. There was a chase, and then a showdown. Someone had lost a hand, or an arm. They were just kids, still schooling and yet were capable of such acts of violence. It was probably as simple as it was easy for them. As if both races had lived side by side all along, under a cloud of false tolerance, false peace--a house of cards in the eye of the storm.

Weeks later, you can still see police cars with their flashing lights making their rounds in town, the matter apparently still unsolved. Mothers fearing the worst for their children when they're out late.

'Orbits'

2009-06-17T08:14:00.002+08:00

'Trees'

2009-05-30T16:04:00.010+08:00

Strange, I thought, how the course of a life is shaped. Having my second helping of macaroni soup, listening to two story tellers, I found out how my mother ended up working where she is now for more than the entire duration of my existence.

She was originally working for a Christian Malay, who had the name of the first human from the Bible. He was an Anglican pastor who scolded her harshly one Christmas eve because she could only go to work late in the evening. My grandfather had passed away days earlier and it was the last day of the rituals. She personally went to their residence to offer this explanation being the person that she is, accompanied by her younger brother, my well-educated uncle who was already working in Kuala Lumpur by that time. Acting as a translator was the pastor's wife, a Chinese lady who was originally from Hong Kong. The pastor sounded angrier and angrier with each translated message, spewing alien words like a rebuking prophet to my mother. My uncle, not being able to stomach it anymore, perhaps with the realization of what was being said, burst into the house looking for my mother's room and when he had located it, packed everything that she had, got out and told him that she wasn't going to be working for them anymore. It had been less than a week for her there.

"Dramatic," I replied, smiling with a little disbelief as I turned to face aunty.

"I was going to have a fourteen year old girl work for me, but found out very early that she was a good-for-nothing! She was sent to one of my friends to help out, but when my friend got home, the young maid was singing away from a book that she was holding while being in bed! She was fired on the spot."

"You can't expect a girl that young to work as a maid," said my mother.

"How old were you then?"

"25."

It was later that aunty heard news that my mother needed work, through a grapevine consisting of friends and maids. She was hired and aunty's daughter took to her immediately, giving her the grand tour of the house when the pastor's wife arrived with one of her sons by taxi at their home. She had wanted to convince my mother to return to them. It was her second day at work.

"I had actually called and talked to her before all that. Asked her if your mother was still under their employment and if they had wanted to have her back. She had answered no to both questions."

"That woman was possessed. She'd wake me up at three in the morning and ask me to find a taxi for her because she had wanted to run away from home."

"She wasn't that well mentally."

"She was possessed, I tell you."

"Back to where she was trying to get you back," I said.

"There I was, with her kid tugging on my left hand and aunty's daughter at my right. I didn't know what to do actually. Their two sons were always crying their eyes out and there was one time when their parents just left them with me when they drove to Singapore!"

"These people didn't know what they had, in your mother."

"Aunty's daughter was quite serious with keeping me, saying no to them the whole time. And even when I had told them that I had wanted to stay here, she kept visiting my family's house with the child that was crying the most. My mother, your grandmother, kept saying each time after their visit, 'Such a pitiful family.' It was a really crazy time for me. It didn't help that at the time there was an Orang Minyak running loose in the kampung, molesting and raping girls."

'Tapes'

2009-05-08T15:37:00.002+08:00

1.
A teacher once told me about what tapeworms could do to a kid. Wash your hands. Only then can you eat. A tapeworm would get inside you if you didn't make sure of that. And when night falls, as you lay in your bed, an adult tapeworm would crawl out from you through your sphincter, to explore the world that’s outside of your body.

2.
What do you know about tapeworms? Do you remember what you were taught in school? This is what I recall about its body structure--to put it simply--the head would latch on to an intestine with teeth-hooks, and from there body segments filled with eggs would drop off and new ones would grow. A chain of self-replicating events, all happening inside you.

3.
How far will you go to make yourself beautiful? What if the costs were hidden?

4.
Imagine a beauty product that would enable weight loss. A tapeworm head, waiting to be ingested in each pill capsule. What happens is it will take off, this miracle of a pill, with groups and groups of women, as one after another begin to lose weight upon taking it. They’ll even begin to feed their children with it, those with weight issues.

5.
Imagine a day when they find out what they've really been doing to themselves, to their own family.

6.
A fool would say, “What you don’t know won’t hurt you.” But what if I knew firsthand what would be involved? I would take each angle of the matter into consideration. It would never be too late; its progress would be in plain sight. I’ll know what I’m doing.

7.
I do this because I’m a loving parent, the only one she has, I tell myself. I want to know how far I can take it before I introduce this method of weight loss to my daughter. I know she has always, always wanted to be beautiful. In other words, thin.

I've read that the tapeworm can even travel into the regions of the brain, liver, muscles, even eyes. But I also think of what it means to be anorexic, bulimic.

8.
I dream of the tapeworm inside me. I dream that it is breakfast and that we’re sitting at the marble table in the kitchen passing plates, filling our cups with milk. After that, the tapeworms inside me and my daughter would slither apprehensively out from our mouths to drink from our cups, like kittens, before retreating into our bodies once again to sleep.

'Palindrome'

2009-05-05T20:08:00.007+08:00

'Weak'

2009-04-23T08:09:00.001+08:00

"I was screwed to the point of being
brainwashed," I said to my current colleague.
It was a prior workplace where screwing
was a daily affair. One could not afford
to say "I don’t know." You’d get an earful
for that. Where I was then, "I don’t know"
also meant "I don’t care."
"Ask someone else."
"It isn't my business."
"I prefer my hands to remain clean, thank you."
"Find the answer yourself."
"Fuck you."

The world only moves with the presence
of knowledge, but there he was, my manager,
a balding man, trying to pin
the blame on someone instead. Me,
I couldn't contend with all the birds,
my aged opposites,
who feigned blank faces
so automatically.

And so I flew,
not knowing where I’d land. I danced
for five months between little things.
I breathed smoke for the first time.

And when I heard that the whole factory
was falling to pieces later, I was comforted.

I felt it was some sort of compensation
from above: it happened simply
because I left. But it’s messed up:
how heavy it is nowadays for me to say,
"I don’t know" and mean it,
and feel offended when others do the same,
like I've eaten from the Tree
of Knowledge and can’t give it back.

'Tender'

2009-04-09T18:03:00.006+08:00

Like how my mother and I were taking apart all the floor mats that were affected by the rain getting in through a hole in the roof, section by section. Why were the workers so reckless, didn't they know that there was proper furniture in the house, ours, albeit unused? I grew angrier and angrier, not understanding how these things happened. We lifted the beds and pulled out the mats while underneath damp layers of newspaper tore. The smell was pungent. I had to hold the mats properly on the way out to avoid dirtying the house any further. Hosed them off under the shelter of the garage, and hung them against the kennel's fence to dry when I was done. My mother told me she cried on the day she had found out. Our mattresses were soaked, even puddles existed within our rooms. And the men, they still had the nerve to demand for more money as work was being done. I asked her how they could have gotten away with that. I asked her many things, but knew in the end that there was nothing else we could do, save for what she had wanted: the taking apart, the cleaning.

'Tongues'

2009-03-29T16:16:00.006+08:00

I'm cradling nothing
in my mouth, see for yourself
the fire went out

'Aura'

2009-03-18T16:44:00.008+08:00

I can only guess how it ends, probably in the scrap yard, probably not anywhere in Taiping that I can name. But it's an act that’s necessary, the inevitable change. It has been cooking me during afternoon drives between both of my homes and errands. It’ll be easy, I think, to hand it over, place the keys into another man’s hand and then walk away.

Everything will seem like it has just happened yesterday . . .

I take the rear view mirror off--the part that loosens itself anytime the vehicle hits a bump or rough part of road nowadays and return it to where it had fallen.

I take the money back from the mechanic, and then he takes out the new battery from the car and puts it on the bicycle he came on. He goes on to reinstall the dead battery and closes the hood before cycling back to his house, backwards, a stone’s throw away from mine.

I turn on the air-conditioning and radio after realizing that the fuel meter is almost running empty.

I wipe the fogged window backwards, making it foggier because it is not as cold inside the car as it is outside. All the rain goes back up to the clouds; it gets drier and drier until all the rain has ascended to the sky.

I stare at the dent on my side of the car door. All the heated words exchanged between me and the man is backwards. I stare at him, at his motorbike, the fishing gear. He doesn’t seem to be hurt or have his ride damaged. I get back into my car. He proceeds to ram into my side of the vehicle as I’m reversing to the right, at the same time the car door is being bent back into shape. His tires screech, the sound backwards. I am watching him go backwards, away from me. My car goes into reverse at high speed. And then I pass him before turning back out into the main road. I head home, everything in reverse.

I watch as the smoke crawls back into the radiator, wondering where the radiator’s cap is. I close the hood of the car, and then I return to the car before the car jerks back into life.

I return to the car backwards, and drive out from home in reverse, pass the traffic light turning green and then red. I drive backwards pass the parsonage, the girls’ school, the prison. I drive it in reverse around the Lake Gardens--not knowing that it's a swan song in reverse. I drive back to where I got the car from in the first place and alight from it, in reverse, walk backwards to face the man who sold it to me and return him the keys.

'Frantic'

2009-03-12T09:16:00.003+08:00

At the very least, a chipped
tooth will show,
but no, no extermination.
The roots
will survive. Yes,
there’ll still be a slow poke

to poke
fun at. Have some chips
with it, yes?
Sit back and enjoy the show.
Every story has its roots
buried, awaiting extermination.

But once the exterminating
begins, please, no more poking
around the bush. The roots
are often elsewhere, below chipped
dying trees, never showing
above ground. Oh, yes,

damn it! Yes!
Beautiful extermination:
What does it show?
What does it poke?
It leaves not a chip
or a single root.

Why root
for just one destroyer, yes?
Why have a chip
on your shoulder? Exterminate
or poke,
only what holds water will show.

Oh, it’ll be real horrorshow!
The unraveling of your roots!
The unrelenting pokes!
All these things arriving, yes,
on the day of the exterminators,
the day of uncashed chips.

And why showoff, yes?
It’s like knowing your roots right before an extermination,
like poking others with your knowledge, with a glass, chipped.

'Routines Pt. 2'

2009-02-18T13:57:00.005+08:00

Enter the author, wearing a starry mantle and a crown of light. He looks solemn, dragging himself when he walks and hunching a little as if the crown weighs too heavily against his head.

How heavy can light ever be?

The author all the while does not raise his head, not even to look at me; his body language says he’s tired, that he’s powerless to evade his responsibilities. He shows me his open hands. They’re empty, but he can’t hold them still.

And out comes a rhetorical question: “And when is it my turn to get what I want?”

I think: you don’t get a turn, when I take his hands into mine, closing them.

I think: I’m sorry this is fucked up.

The author starts crying, his body shivering with each sob. The light surrounding him begins to pulse, growing weaker then stronger when he takes a deep breath. His tears move across his face like diamonds.

I give him a few more minutes because that’s all I got.

'Routines'

2009-01-14T15:32:00.009+08:00

I wake up to the sound of my phone alarm going off, switch it off and sleep some more. I wake up again about twenty minutes later, still in the dark and get myself out of bed, look out of the window towards the other apartment block. Sometimes certain apartments are lit, with people sitting out on their balconies or looking out from the windows. I undress away from the window, in the safe darkness of my room. Take the towel hanging from the closet, wrap it around me and unlock the door to my room slowly, careful to shut it again without locking myself out.

I enter the bathroom after turning on the lights and water heater, lock the door and stare at the mirror. The grey in my hair is now very pronounced. I have begun to put on weight in my face. There is a scratch on my shoulder that I believe was made by some insect. I brush my teeth and spit out red-tinged toothpaste into the sink. It's almost been always lately: my gums bleed too easily. I shower under the heated water, trying to remember the contents of my dream, trying to remember if I even had one. This usually leads to nothing. I turn off the water and turn back to the mirror which is now clouded with steam. I like what I see: this familiar facelessness. I dry myself thoroughly before returning to my room.

The door leading to one of my landlord's room is open--he is out, the bed unmade--I see this the moment I step out of the bathroom. I have never considered entering it, even if it was to close the window to keep the rain from coming into his room. He is usually out very much earlier than me.

I enter my room and lock it, pull the window panel and curtain shut. Dry myself some more before getting into my office clothes. Dry my feet with a small towel and apply talcum powder to them before wearing socks. I take my watch, wallet, mobile phone and bag, and leave my room, locking up behind me.

'Dwelling'

2008-12-16T11:24:00.009+08:00

I was sitting by the entrance of the train watching objects and landscapes blur under the noon sun. I was still sitting down when the interiors of the train became a mall. A scene unfolded before me: a kid who was wearing very new shoes adamantly defended himself against a shop assistant who had accused him of stealing them. He became very angry and verbal, to the extent of being abusive and the shop assistant could only stand helpless and take it all in like a sponge without saying a thing. I watched a couple making out against a wall. Things changed very dynamically in the dream, a lot of it was forgotten, but towards the very end, I was reprimanding a friend who was wanting to have an affair outside of her engagement, and like the shop assistant she was silently soaking up all my words, but with no understanding in her eyes.

'Dugaan'

2008-11-28T14:06:00.014+08:00

Imagine driving for more than an hour and then resting for a while at one of the last stops before resuming the journey, the wind beating across our faces through the open windows after we found the air-conditioning shot, and finally making that left turn. I drove towards one of the toll gates, and while we waited for our turn to pay I realized that the engine had died by itself; kept dying with each turn of the ignition key. Seconds later it was starting to smell, something was happening under the hood. Smoke seeped out from underneath it. The car was dead, dead.

We got down and she went to the toll gate to get help while I popped the hood open to see what it was that was making all that smoke. It rushed out at me when I raised the hood, and I was disorientated, seeing the insides of a Proton Wira for the very first time, not knowing where the support rod was. The smoke was in my face. I wondered if it was carcinogenic. I couldn't make out what broke or burst, there seemed to be oil splattered across various surfaces of the engine.

Tried to connect it to a popping sound I might have heard while I was driving, wondered if that was it.

I went too fast, shit.

Why did this happen (again)?

(The previous week I had car battery problems. The battery was replaced, and then it turned out to be a faulty alternator.)

Two male workers helped me push the car past the toll gate and into an empty lot situated right in front of the surau and washrooms. I had the hood opened and propped and we examined the mess again. One of them said that it wouldn't be possible to repair it without sending it to the workshop and provided a business card of a tow truck operator while I tried to figure out what the problem was by providing visual details to my car mechanic over the phone. He asked me to check the levels of the black oil and radiator liquid, and I did.

The radiator was bone dry. A few pipes that were connected to it were broken.

We called the tow truck operator. He arrived about fifteen minutes later and explained what our options were. We agreed to have the car towed to the workshop that he was working for and he immediately went to work. After taking our bags and belongings out of the Wira we shifted the lot to the truck and watched each step of the process.

It was a long straight road. We crammed our things and ourselves into that little space beside him. We held hands over bags and I was explaining where we were in Taiping. Both sides of the road were thick with trees.

At the workshop, the owner suggested that we leave the vehicle for further inspection, and told us that it could be collected the next day. All will be well. I asked him for the cost, but he didn't know, couldn't ascertain it without checking the car thoroughly. OK, I said, but please know that we need to leave with the car tomorrow.

They were the ones who drove us home: the owner, his wife and their daughter. Told them that she wasn't from here and that we were working in Penang.

The wife teased us, made me the small-town kid and her the city girl.

"Dugaan," the wife said, in Malay.

This incident, luckily for us, happened at just the right time and place: right in front of that toll gate, and not God knows where in the middle of the highway--this is what lovers have to go through, the wife elaborated. Trials and tribulations. A test to see what the relationship is made of.

Dugaan, I said to myself, like it was a new idea. I liked it. I held her hand again and smiled as the wife went on and on, talking to us, but mostly to her, since she was listening and responding more in the conversation. Me, I was thinking about how lucky we were.

'Spine'

2008-11-12T09:54:00.003+08:00

And on the third day after lunch I left the rest with their bags and talk and made my way down the hill by myself, the retreat done. Gravity was tugging so much at me, my pace was inconsistent, a mess and suddenly the whole hill was on fire: shrubs, trees, the grassy parts on both sides of the snaking road. It was turning to hell and there wasn't a road there anymore where I was. It was the rougher path, the 'shortcut' and I was urgently trying to get myself out of there, everything still burning everywhere. And then I made it to the foot of the hills! But I kept running: I passed the garage and their jeeps, the information hut, the entry gates, the food stalls, the Christian soldiers' cemetery, the resorts, the school, the lakes, the prison, the museum, another school, the field, straight all the way to where my mother was staying just so I could go against her wishes again.

'Change'

2008-11-05T14:42:00.005+08:00

This feels a lot like that day where I woke up early to vote. I was assigned to my primary school, the place where I had fought the most and lost most of my teeth. I can't remember if I was excited. I was still overwhelmed by sleep and drove there in a haze. Couldn't remember what it was like to cast my vote there the year before. Forgot all the protocol and started wondering if I was doing things right. Was I in a proper dress code? The trees were still majestic, the grass lush. I went in when my name was called and indicated the party I had wanted to win in pencil on a piece of coloured paper, fed it into the transparent ballot box and walked out. A few steps outside the classroom and I realized that I had marked my choice with a tick instead of a cross. Was my vote spoiled? I stared at the screen later in the evening and saw that there were thousands of spoiled votes. I laughed. Before I drove my friend out, his parents warned us to be careful, that it could be dangerous out there, because it was rumoured that some riots were happening in Johor. What had happened could always happen again. It was crazy, what was implied by all those votes. We went out, had the night like we always did, but I think in the back of our minds, all of our minds, we were fearful. We were sure of nothing.

'Be'

2008-10-28T14:31:00.005+08:00

Even the Bougainvillea common in the place I call home are anxiously growing towards the rough tar road where you'll alight. They have been growing along the dirty moss-covered wall for a time before arching away from it. Drooping branches with petals paper-like to the touch. Brilliant red, magenta, white. When stirring amid breezes they seem to me almost hopeful for your arrival. A world waiting to be tamed.

'Violence'

2008-09-02T11:27:00.012+08:00

I was very angry. I took it all upon myself and carried the heavy plastic sacks filled with soil one by one to the back of our house, ignoring my mother's pleas. It would've amounted to the same thing, carrying them and putting them into the car, then driving to the back to deposit the soil next to the drain behind our house. They were heavy and at times seemed about to burst as I struggled to make my way from the front--passing the living-room, the kitchen, the bathroom, and then the toilet--to the last room leading to the outside. We had shifted about twenty bricks earlier by car to the back. Debris and earth had remained in the backseat on old newspapers. We found a nest of ants beside the drain when my mother was weeding. They were fleeing in hundreds with larvae in their mouths. I tried trampling them to death. Then the truck came and bags of cement were stacked next to the front door. Sand was unloaded, blocking the entrance to our porch. I spent the next fifteen to twenty minutes still fuming, shovelling furiously the sand away into another pile so that the gate could be closed and locked. My mother kept telling me to stop, that it was enough. Let us take turns, she said with a hand held out for the shovel. I shook my head. That's the last time you call me useless, I muttered.

'Makes A Gun With His Hand, Says'

2008-08-26T08:54:00.003+08:00

truth avoids temples
foreheads
instead it desires
intimacy
it lovingly presses
against the roofs
of mouths
everyone's
a hostage
there's
no walking
away

'Silence'

2008-08-12T16:51:00.004+08:00

Your embrace was a term in prison.
Your hair the shackles against which my limbs ached.
Why was I tame when it was a beast beating
in place of my heart?
It was a fever you had brought me into.
Everything burned.
You took the black from my hair and weaved
nights where I couldn't remember a thing.
You buried me with kisses
until nothing from my old life remained.

'Listen'

2008-07-09T16:44:00.009+08:00

Your story is the face
I'm trying to read in the dark.
There is no turning back
from the path we're taking.

What you want is simple
but we're using all the wrong words.
I want to hold your face
what little of it that's true.

I want to lie to you
to be the hand of mercy.
I mean, we're in the same boat
it's dark, we're sinking

in the reflection of the moon.
Only one of us should drown.
I'll pretend to be the strong one
and hold your hands to my face---

one last story is all you need
to remember me by. I know
it's hard, I know you're tired.
But you have to leave.

'Same'

2008-06-22T15:04:00.011+08:00

"Did you know that she still likes you a lot?" she asked from her side of the vehicle. Her voice was devoid of emotion. It was dark save for a few streaks of ocher intruding in from the streetlight we were parked under.

She took in her cigarette again and breathed out coils of smoke that slowly dissipated into the air.

I didn't answer her. I tried to peer through the darkened interiors of the car for her features. She was beautiful, more physically beautiful than her sister and I wondered what I was doing out there with her so late.

Wondered what I was doing when I was chasing after her in the dark a few years before and a filling from one of my molars had came loose in my mouth. And in that different darkness I had tried to see what it was that I had spat into my hand while she ran ahead, away from me, a drunken stupor of confusion and heartbreak streaming through her being.

She went on to tell me things about her sister: how she had missed me, how she was looking in all the wrong places for something that was essentially me, and failed.

"Don't tell anyone what I just told you," she said.

I nodded, without feeling anything substantial, perhaps I was really over us after all.

But then days after when I replayed the imagery of what she had fed to me in my mind, slivers of guilt and pain found a place within me and I felt sorry for everything her sister had to go through as though it was all my fault.

"Can I play a song or two for you?" I said to her, breaking the silence, looking at my acoustic guitar in the back and then back at her.

"A serenade!" she giggled.

I played her a song I had actually written for her sister, and after it was over she commented that it was beautiful but sad. I told her it was about me when my relationship with her sister was almost over and that her sister will never get to hear it--it was intended to be that way.

And then I played another one, the newest song I had at the time, and after that she asked, "Why are your songs so sad?"

I merely shrugged.

I didn't want to say "I don't know" as true as it may have been then, but the order of those words have stayed with me since, like a profanity or a scar, over a heart that no longer beats for anyone but myself.

'Mistakes'

2008-05-24T22:44:00.003+08:00

you have your mistakes
you listen to your heart break
and it's the sound
of rustling leaves

you're immersed in your hands
trying to study the lines that took
all these years to form
when you're gone gone gone

you're burning in water, drowning in flame
you're fevered with all the things that don't matter
it shouldn't matter

you're burning in water, drowning in flame
you're fevered with all the things that don't matter
it shouldn't matter

you weigh your mistakes
your heart's at home with what's been made
with all of these bones
and withered leaves

they shouldn't matter

[download]

'Strand'

2008-05-12T21:31:00.012+08:00

I finally made it to a church service early yesterday morning and was constantly peering over my shoulder for a friend who said that she'd be meeting me there. She had planned to pass me some pictures of the wedding luncheon I had attended some time earlier this year. She never made it, but I left the matter. I didn't text to ask where she was or why she didn't turn up. I ended up forgetting about it totally.

I was too occupied with Mother's Day after the service.

I didn't stay too long there. I grabbed myself a cup of coffee and downed it almost in one go, a rose from one of the youth group members, meant for mothers who attended the service and two packets of fried mihun. Stopped only to exchange the typical pleasantries, and then I was on the way to my car, but not before an uncle who used to give me English tuition commented on my greying hair and said that if anyone asks me to dye it, well, they're just not being accepting of who or what I am. His wife said that she was waiting for my big day, and I replied that I was being too fussy in choosing the candidates, which I think fell on deaf ears because the uncle then invited me to go over to their place for a visit, any time, any time at all. Sure, I answered and then I got into my car, started it and sped off home.

At home, I passed mum the rose and a packet of the fried mihun and she said that she wouldn't be able to have lunch even if she was to eat only a little from it. She left her packet on the kitchen table. I had mine and watched some Sunday morning cartoons that were on the tube and dozed off for a bit while we waited for our turn to leave the house.

No special plans or gift-shopping made this year.

I had given up on eating leftover cake which had remained abundant even after it was distributed as a Mother's Day tea-time refreshment for those who had turned up to the house late in the afternoon, having experienced it for a couple of years.

I had given up on taking my mother to some place fancy for lunch, since it was not really her thing. I foresaw that most of the restaurants in town would be utterly packed and chaotic anyway.

I drove us to my great-uncle's first, walked around with the shuffle blasting this week's array of albums as my mother cleaned and arranged the altar for her weekly prayers.

Next, I drove to the grocery shop behind my great-uncle's and napped as I waited for mom to purchase her lottery numbers.

We had lunch finally at a nearby food court, where I ordered Bak Kut Teh minus the innards for sharing between the both of us, and over the course of the meal, when the realization that my mother was sixty-eight this year struck me, things felt very poignant somehow, but we continued conversing as we ate and when we were done we left.

'The Ferry'

2008-05-06T08:51:00.004+08:00

'Static'

2008-04-23T21:52:00.011+08:00

You will tell me about your first kiss. You will tell me that you went under-
water the moment your lips touched his. It felt like drowning, like your heart was beating too fast and everything inside wanted only to be free of your body.

Your heart was a bomb, seconds away from going off.

You opened your eyes and felt his tongue inside your mouth. At one point his teeth grazed against yours. It felt like drowning, you will repeat. But then, you closed your eyes again and continued to kiss him.

Everything else in that room was so still, so quiet, you will say.

I will offer you my hand after that.

You will look at me, curiously. Here, see this, I will say, pointing to the middle of my palm. Lines are all you will read. A diamond, I will say, here, and I will touch it lightly like an abrasion.

Once I tried to catch a badminton racket after throwing it high into the air above me, and it cut my palm open. I clutched my hand in pain and then opened it slowly to find a clean long line running across it. I traced the line with my left index finger, and pulled at the sides a little to see how deep it went. Strangely, not one drop of blood left it.

I will look into your eyes as I tell you this, my finger still resting on the diamond in the palm of my hand.

And then I will take your hands into mine, and say, my first kiss--

It felt like I was drowning too.

'Reset'

2008-04-12T21:51:00.012+08:00

I watch a game show on television in the kitchen. It's about making a deal or not. There are beautiful girls, each standing beside a case representing a certain amount of money on the show. I pity the last one because she has to stand for an awfully long time, all the while smiling and trying to look professional because they are on television. I forget to dry the dishes. I wait for the rain to stop. The windows are rattling from the amount of thunder going on outside. I finish watching the show and think to myself that that guy is lucky. Perhaps his family members bring him luck, I think. I go to the sink and look at the amount of dishes piled out for drying at the side and think that they would be dry in the morning anyway. I get my keys from the marble table and go up to the television room to say goodbye to my mother and goodnight to my aunt.

____________________________○

I drive and think that I will need something to drink later, perhaps when I don't feel as full. I am full from having two servings of rice with some dishes mum made from cucumber, prawn and chicken, and vegetable soup. I drive and listen to Rick Dees. I have been feeling afraid lately when I try to cross roads. Sometimes I see myself attempting to cross a road and not make it, and think that that would be a terribly pathetic way to go. I continue to listen to Rick Dees and there is a guest on the show who happens to provide the voice for one of the Chipmunks. Guess which to win a prize. I drive and wonder what would happen if I told my colleagues that their ringtones are irritating. The one who sits in front of me has a couple of ringtones which are sung in the Chipmunks' voices. I drive and wonder if it's OK to tell my colleagues that sometimes I want to kill the things that irritate me next week. I reduce the wiping level of the windshield wipers because the rain isn't as heavy anymore. I watch light flash across the sky and wonder if my modem has been fried.

____________________________○

I listen to 'I Know You Are But What Am I?' on repeat at home. I hear a dog barking and a motorcyclist passing by outside.

The dog is still barking.

Now there is a girl shouting. She is wanting for the dog to be quiet.

'Rivers'

2008-03-29T16:20:00.005+08:00

I remember punctuating the night
with heartfelt goodbyes, farewells
with breath reeking of wine and cigarettes.
Earlier, I had tried to craft conversations
but lost my way with you beside me
whispering questions into my ear.
You were very beautiful.
If only you could have read it in my eyes,
when I couldn't put it into words
and prematurely said goodnight instead.
I had wanted so much for us to stay.
The roads back home were rivers
where the night unfolded in my mind.
I had to ask if you had reached home safely.
Perhaps you knew all along,
with that smile, which was an answer
falling through my fallen form.

'Nutshell'

2008-03-13T21:17:00.011+08:00

Only an hour earlier I was trying to touch her knee. I was sitting up on the floor with my back against the wooden frame of my bed. She kicked my hand away and said that she was ticklish. I looked up at the wall, the messed up desk which I had not used in ages. She was trying to make herself comfortable in the upper right corner of the bed, drawing her legs up and holding them against her body with her arms.

"All I wanted to do was just to please God," she said. She said it without much feeling, how she felt that she had done nothing wrong in wanting to preserve her virginity for the man that she would marry. I felt some sort of obligation because she chose to call me, but could say nothing to make things better. So we were silent for a while.

"Just leave him," I said, "if having sex with you matters so much to him in your relationship."

"I can't believe my friend just gave herself up to him!"

I tried to place myself in her shoes, tried to see what she saw at that moment. She had left the city to get away from the things which were eating away at her but ended up getting a text message halfway through our dinner from a friend who confessed that she had liked her boyfriend all along, and was very sorry they ended up having sex a while back.

"All I wanted was something true."

I was still staring at the desk when I thought about how fucked up I was, feeling the way I did about her being on my bed.

____________________________○

"Do you think I could borrow a t-shirt from you? Just for tonight."

I went through my wardrobe and passed her a light blue shirt. She went to the bathroom to bath and change. I wondered where I was going to sleep. My mother wouldn't be coming back to the house because she had made herself a room in the other house, also because she didn't want to intrude, which I felt particularly strange about.

When she was done I told her that I would be sleeping in my mother's room and that she could have my bed.

"I'm so sorry," she said. I explained to her that it wasn't going to be a problem and she shouldn't worry. Told her I had fallen asleep many times before in my mother's room.

Unfortunately, there was only one table fan in the whole house, and it was placed in my room.

____________________________○

I tossed and turned on my mother's bed. It was very warm in the room: the ventilation was poor, making it very uncomfortable. I started to be sweaty.

"Are you asleep?"

She peeked into the room from behind the door which I had left ajar.

"No," I said, thinking to myself that it was a bad idea after all choosing my mother's room.

"I'd want you to sleep in your room, you know. I could take your place here, instead."

"No, that wouldn't do."

"Then?"

"We could share my bed."

____________________________○

We shared my bed; she took the half facing the curtainless window while I took the half closest to the oscillating table fan. I made sure that she was able to get a fair share of the breeze. But still, I found it difficult to sleep. The sweat was cooling on my body, and I found myself thinking of her, lying beside me. I thought about the light blue fabric of my shirt on her skin. I thought about holding her. I thought about feeling her with my hands. I thought and I thought. I would have taken anything more that would have happened had I turned and got closer to her, anything at all. I got hard. It was the worst place to be; to be sleepless and wanting.

I didn't turn; I kept my back to her. I let her curl up with my checkered blanket as the night got colder. And then, after what seemed like a very long time, I slept.

____________________________○

"I hardly slept at all."

"Me too."

I drove us to church. Many of the church members stared at us as we made our way into the service. Some of them winked at me. She didn't seem to notice the attention though. I was very conscious of everything I did once we were inside: how I clapped my hands, how I sang, how I read in unison with the others. I tried very hard to stay awake during the sermon.

We stayed a while after the service and many welcomed her. I stayed silent most of the time, throwing in an occasional nod or two, here and there in conversations which took place. After that I suggested having lunch together, but she declined and said that she would have to go back soon. She would be buying some buns at the station, have those on the way back and that would be enough.

____________________________○

"I'm glad I came here," she said.

I thought about us sharing the bed, but didn't say anything about it as I drove to the bus station. I was very tired, and felt more comfortable not saying anything, even though she would be leaving. The volume on the radio was turned so low that I couldn't hear what song it was that was playing. We passed an army camp and came to a crossroads, where we stopped because the traffic light was red.

"Whatever happens next, take care of yourself," I said.

'Me Ves Y Sufres'

2008-03-01T14:36:00.009+08:00

I've yet to have my dinner, I've been waiting as usual. The buses move so slowly that I allow myself the luxury of a cigarette. The air is humid, winds are blowing in from the sea. The wars are just beginning, I think to myself as I eye the symbols surrounding the bus terminal in the form of flags, banners. Scales, rockets, moons, daggers. I let the smoke linger around me, consciously distant from the other commuters. It starts to get to cold.

A trishaw stops a few meters away from me. Two ladies alight from it, the younger one almost immediately opens her purse and hands four ringgit to the driver and gestures to the other to hurry up, as she leads the way to a bus. The driver seems stupefied for the moment and then shouts to her that she needs to pay more. She doesn't even turn, instead, she retaliates by saying that some girl told her that it was only two ringgit and that was what she handed him, four for two persons, and waves him off rudely, as if to indicate that was the end of the conversation. Her companion, fragile with age, walks slowly towards the bus that she is on.

I'm sorry, I didn't say to the driver.

You could read the confusion in his face. His eyes. He was still sitting on his cycle when their bus left, and then, resigning himself to what was dealt, he turns the trishaw and makes his way back to town.

I put out my cigarette on a tissue, in a tray on the plastic litter bin and watch as the embers slowly transmit itself unto the paper, eating it away. I wait, again.

'Coals'

2008-01-29T18:40:00.000+08:00

The coals of our hearts lie waiting,
their hidden fires the same dream
resting between our motionless bodies.
Perhaps it stems from the breath of a body
we dearly desire. We catch ourselves
saying Breathe into me, breathe
into me to one another with nothing
but our eyes sometimes;
we talk of forest fires and rain
until they are all cherished alike.

'Eskies'

2008-01-19T21:03:00.000+08:00

It was like the time when I was sobbing and breathing in too hard to talk that the only words which managed to escape me were either broken or fragmented but my mother, she understood and she held my hand, and placed her other hand on my shoulder as we both watched Misty breathing her last, convulsing and frothing, vomit and spittle slowly mixing and covering the black and oily garage floor which was cold against my bare feet and the only thing I could do was watch, watch her and cry and when that was over, years later, when I couldn't find Tobby, the neglected one next to the wooden box which housed the gas tank where he usually was one day after school and asked mother where he was she said that he was getting too old so they had to take him to a clinic and put him to sleep as if it was the most common thing to happen to any child and within minutes when it dawned on me that I wasn't able to see him again I cried my eyes out anyway, even though I didn't love Tobby as much as I did Misty and I told myself that I will never forget them, never forget them if I could.

'Blood Flowers'

2008-01-15T21:09:00.000+08:00

If you should call me by any other name, call me Justice. Remember the time when I asked you to choose one of us; just one of us and you couldn't? Justice or Charity, like it wasn't even a question. I was staring out my room's window when I had asked you that, into the graveyards scattered all around, without much thought. And then the other night when I was slouching over the table we shared and didn't really drink that much, you asked me the same thing, well almost: why, why not you. It has always been like this; while I'm often unmoved by anything, you're too passionate. Perhaps things would be different if we would finally come to understand what we know. Did you feel how cold I was? I was tired from all the wanting. I still am.

'32'

2008-01-06T12:10:00.001+08:00

So, I woke up at 8:00 and found myself in someone else's apartment, on the living room couch, cold as anything from the fan and wind that was coming in from the outside, because the sliding door to the balcony was open. I couldn't get back to sleep again because I was missing my wallet and backpack and I had this terrible terrible hangover. The first thing I did next was text the person who drove us last night, and asked him to search the car to see if I had dropped my wallet inside there. We got lost because everyone was so drunk and I couldn't tell for the first time in my life where I was upon leaving the mansion, where we had our dinner. It didn't help that the driver was making all the wrong turns. I was pretty much screwed but I had to remain collected and plan things properly. I would have to miss my KL trip next week to get my things sorted out. I compared myself to a snatch-theft victim that I saw the other day, as I was making my way to the mall for a movie. I had about two hundred ringgit in the wallet for my rent. No use crying over spilled milk now, I told myself. I went to the kitchen and poured myself a cup of water to drink and then I bummed a cigarette and had a smoke at the balcony which overlooked the area. In spite of everything that had happened it was a beautiful cold morning. Saw a few birds and tried to remember what had happened the night before. Someone broke a chair. Someone else broke a glass. I drank too much wine, which ironically was my least favored drink for the night. One of my colleagues teased me by inviting me to dance and when everyone saw that they tried pulling me towards the dance floor to dance with her because I kept saying no even though I had actually wanted to, because I was afraid of embarrassing her. It was all bits and pieces after that; it was that bad.

My manager woke up shortly after I entered the toilet and when I got out, I explained sheepishly to him that I was missing my wallet and bag and he said hey, don't worry, I was taking care of you last night and all your things are in my car; you were so hammered that we couldn't find your place so I had to bring you here.

'Red'

2007-12-12T12:30:00.000+08:00

Little is true here; it's too dark
too deep. The earth moves along
to your song. You're tied up
here in this cavern.
The ceiling hurts
you with its poison.
Sometimes it stops

to observe you. Sometimes
the snake is just as tired
as you. A body bound
by flesh and blood
fighting against itself.

Little is true here save
for what's really within
the cavern, your body
your hand. Nothing
diffuses the anger
the hiltless blade
that you're holding.
It wounds you
with its uselessness.
And it knows this.
The knife cries along
to your song, tearing
skin, weeping
your tears for you.

2007-12-04T21:57:00.000+08:00

Tell me if you are going to be sleepless
tonight. Tell me if it is love
that will be doing it, and I will know if you are poor
like so many, broken and grounded.
Sometimes we lie
not knowing ourselves what was ours.

I try to name everything that was once ours
but I am losing more and more each day; sleepless
sometimes when I am alone, lying
in the dark, trying to empty my thoughts of love.
Gradually grounded
comfortably poor.

Tell me what you remember about being poor
speak of what distance means to you. In your words, our
stories. How every place was a hostile ground.
Talk until the both of us are sleepless.
Tell of this thing called love
and if you cannot or have to, lie.

The only lies I tell myself, are the lies
that I tell myself sometimes when I am too poor
in understanding what I had before. Love
is ever elusive, even as a memory. But what was ours
will remain sleepless
in me, like roots taking ground.

It feels like I have been walking in circles ever since. The ground
bears my footprints; it does not lie.
It feels like I have been sleepless
after you. I am poor
at this, bearing all this load and yet our
stories are all I have to remind me of our love.

Someone once said Love
is a place, a holy ground
that is ours
for the taking. To lie
in its light one would need to be poor
again, sleepless.

Will we find what was ours in another, old love?
I will wait for your answer, sleepless. Stare at the ground
for some stillness; lie to myself and wait. Poorly.

'Fans'

2007-11-27T09:01:00.000+08:00

'I Will Be True'

2007-11-20T21:43:00.000+08:00

1.

In my state of stupor, I admired my friend, who was readying his vehicle for the morning's journey to Bukit Mertajam where he would have to go through the usual protocols and tea ceremony before coming home again with the bride. He was fixing ribbons to the doors and trunk and after a while we started to heckle at him, mostly about how it wasn't his responsibility, and that since it was his night he should just lay back and let things be for the moment. He turned and smiled at us and we went on without him, although every once in a while someone would start shouting for him to return, and some of us would join in, never really forgetting about him or letting him go. He only got back to the rest of us upon completing his handiwork, tired and ultimately, satisfied.

2.

The wedding convoy honked too early, probably a neighbourhood or two away from the actual destination. We were all very amused by this.

3.

The bridegroom slipped a red packet under the door as soon as he was asked to, and this was immediately followed by everyone groaning; some slapping their palms to their foreheads almost in unison (because gaining access was supposed to be very hard; almost an ordeal and in some rare cases: torture, because of the many tasks that can be given to the bridegroom and his entourage to complete, with the gift of the red packet as the climax of the ritual).

And then unbelievably, the door clicked open.

[I was actually mentally prepared to ingest horribly concocted drinks for my friend's sake, and was (honestly speaking) a bit disappointed that all it took was less than five minutes.]

I nodded off a bit on the way back.

'Carnal'

2007-11-09T23:36:00.000+08:00

What I didn't say: I am going to be the wolf in this story that I'm about to tell you. It will not be the story of Little Red Riding Hood; not in the way that you know it anyway. But because I'm good with words and you like my voice you will immerse yourself utterly in the story that I'm about to tell you, not realizing of course that what I'm going to tell you is just--in essence--a story about you and me, tonight. And after what I will do to you someone will find me, cut me up to release you and fill whatever space that's left inside of me with heavy stones and sew me back together before throwing me off from a cliff's edge into the ocean where I can only go down, down, down.

Goodbye.

2007-10-30T07:17:00.000+08:00

'Tourist'

2007-10-29T19:05:00.000+08:00

It was cold on the bus and I couldn't sleep. I kept my eyes open for the green signs to tell me how close or far I was to my destination and when that got too tiring I closed them. I shut them without music for the first half of the journey, without drifting off to anywhere. I found the darkness of going through certain places comforting; easy on the eyes. Some of those which were illuminated were beautiful but I was squinting as we passed through them.

Perhaps it was lethargy talking. Or hunger from having to rush myself to board the bus in time.

(The fastest and most hygienic meal that you can have within twenty minutes in Butterworth, with some time for the loo, is probably two cream buns, plastic wrapped like how you knew them in school during recess. Red Bean, Chocolate, or Strawberry. A tall glass of tea with a couple or three teaspoons of condensed milk to wash it all down and you'll be at your best to go.)

*

The first thing that I looked out for after purchasing my ticket back was a taxi. And I laughed because I actually spent a minute or two not finding one (because things are never there when you need them).

Almost instinctively on my part I hunted for a taxi which was already on the road. There were too many drivers loitering around the entrance of the bus terminal, talking to each other in voices too loud that it seemed almost foolish to be asking any of them. I had wanted someone who was already with momentum (so I could say step on it had there been a need for such course of action and he wouldn't have felt less inclined to do so). And so I tried to single one out amidst the midnight traffic.

He saw me as I was walking beside the main road: the cars on his side slowly impeding the progress of his vehicle; nodded after my wave, and signalled and waited as I made my way across the road to him. Only when I was seated in his taxi, did he ask me for the details of where I had wanted to go, making me repeat the names of the surrounding landmarks of the place twice, then thrice; totally destroying my hopes and earlier impression that he was going to be the one who was going to take me where I had wanted to go--efficiently and without complications--when he had answered yes to the place I had asked him, so confidently at the door. But that man did it and for that I am thankful.

'To Absolve'

2007-10-21T12:25:00.000+08:00

For the longest time, Inertia was talking and I was listening. Inertia was pointing to the past, holding my hand like a well-meaning friend as I recounted to myself everything that had ever been misplaced, mismatched or discarded.

Inertia giving my hands sclerosis when I failed to listen so that I could not touch and find comfort in anything new. Inertia only stopping when I said sorry, because it was our safe word. Inertia stroking my brow, combing back my sweat-tinged hair as I laid in the reeds. Inertia expecting nothing from me, which she gets in full, every time.

She only gets younger, becomes more beautiful. Sometimes when she kisses me I see hearts and hooks and I can't help but feel alone, in spite of the company.

Once she sang to me as I crossed the sea: "In truth I am everywhere, tipping your scales of recognition with illusions of familiarity and leaving when you discover that those places are hiding places. Everywhere being always and always being on the verge of something, anything more than this."

For the longest time, she made me forget that this atrophying body is also a body, filled with light. But I understand.

'Blank'

2007-10-07T10:28:00.000+08:00

I waved to my cousin, and he waved back; we were both talking into our mobiles. Mum was asking me to step into the compound, to see how far they were in deconstructing the place. They took out all the window panes, the roof was gone. Only a few walls were what remained of my great uncle and aunt's house. There were some shacks where the tall mango tree used to be. It kept their tools and basic necessities. Some workers were staying there until the job was completed. One shack was specifically made to house the ancestral altar for the time being.

I stepped in after the line was abruptly cut. A worker was taking out long pieces of plank out to the front, there was a tractor where the kitchen was, digging into the ground, breaking the cement where it stood each time its digging arm was raised. A lorry was parked in the back road, full with broken concrete and debris. The view of the clear sky was unobstructed.

"So you're free today," said my cousin in Cantonese. "Yeah," I replied.

"How long has the work been going on?" "Oh about a week or so."

Nothing else was said after that. We didn't try to. I walked around for a bit more and said goodbye, got into the car, turned back to look at the place and my cousin one more time and drove off without thinking about anything in particular.

'Killing Odin's Ravens'

2007-09-25T13:07:00.000+08:00

Imagine me as a place, somewhere between
Thought and Memory, perhaps as a time of day

Where would I be? When would I be?

If I were to touch you on your neck, underneath your clothes
Over all the places you hid from me
Would my hands no longer be mine?

Imagine me as a room, disarrayed
The lull of an electric fan
Singing along with the crickets
The space where no lovers can exist

Imagine me as two-thirty in the morning
As it rains over the hills
Everything dark with dreams

Monsters trying to get in
The skin over my heart so thin
The walls no longer fighting

I knew what was coming all along
After all, I had asked for it
When I had my hands on your neck, underneath your clothes
Over all the places you hid from me
When those hands were no longer mine

You were a room
With two empty chairs facing each other
Like mirrors or windows

And because I knew touching anything inside you
Would mean shattering everything
Like glass, over and over again, I did

I was small and hollow
And I could not love you any more
Than I could a stranger who stole my hands from me

'Dissolve'

2007-09-15T00:52:00.000+08:00

1.

She tells me that I can do anything if I put my mind to it. I tell her no, that for most of the things I do which she deems hard--it's just a matter of making a routine out of it; it really doesn't take a lot of effort--you just need to do it enough times and it'd be easy after a while. She goes on to tell me that she thinks more often than not, I end up in adverse situations--almost as if I am subconsciously in want of having a difficult life. I smile and say, well that would make anyone a better person now wouldn't it.

2.

I remembered our conversation as I trudged in the rain, my luggage in tow. I looked up at the umbrella I was carrying and noticed a small opening which was allowing drops of rain to fall through. My sleeves and bag were wetter by the minute.

Rain had already seeped through my shoes, socks, trouser legs. Everything got so heavy.

3.

Where does the future lie?

I could see how hard and where the winds were moving, by the way the rain was dancing.

All of us are already in motion, each in our own Trajectories.

I remembered some verse about seeds being sown. And somewhere not too far behind, talents.

I remembered nothing clearly; I was drenched with memories that were fond of touching each other, overlapping, and rain. A bus passed me by at high speed, on one of the roads.

4.

I smiled at the circumstance, no longer trudging.

We keep moving, that's the only thing that we should do, not stay nor stop nor feel sorry for ourselves no matter how unfortunate we may perceive ourselves to be.

There's only this. Only this. Make the most out of it now. Move.

5.

As I neared the jetty I wondered if I could at least become half the person my mother is--if I really really tried--one day.

What's encouraging is that she already thinks that I have the ability to do it.

6.

Why was I afraid to write about the future?

Perhaps it was because I somehow believed that forming a preconception of it would influence what would eventually take place along the way.

Perhaps it was because I've come to realize that it will always be harder to create, than to destroy. And because of this I had felt defeated; felt the need for stagnancy and routines; felt my heart like an anchor, rooting itself deeply into the earth, hungry and interminably searching.

Perhaps it was because it is so Blank, that I simply couldn't imagine it.

Because I was afraid of disappointing you?

7.

Reflecting cupped rain
Tides are forever beating
Breaking without names

'Bone'

2007-09-04T21:43:00.000+08:00

The first few minutes spent outside were Dark, but once the Ochre was flooding everywhere, making everything it touched its own, illuminating the dancing drizzle and making it delicate and snow-like, I started my awkward journey towards the unlit house barefooted.

A flick of the wrist through the window and I unlatched the door to where my heart once was.

I turned on the lights as soon as I got in, closed the door and rubbed the gravel off the soles of my feet before I entered the living room (not that it made that much of a difference).

I stopped for a while beside the fridge and laundry table and noticed how the wall behind seemed almost like damp corrugated cardboard. A sea's poor sad mimic.

There were holes in the wall.

I opened the door to the living room and switched on the lights there. There was another hole in the wall, next to the empty plastic wastepaper basket. I walked around the room and as I did, the discomfort and realization that the house was thinly layered with dust and more debris from the termite infestation set in.

What was once my room was unlocked after a brief hunt for the key. Posters had given up on hanging on the wall; Faber Castell Tack-Its were no longer faithful to their cause.

I went through the dusty books and folders on the table. Inside one of the folders were pages and pages of printed guitar tablatures from the internet, mostly of songs from bands which I had listened to avidly at the time: Pearl Jam, Radiohead, The Smashing Pumpkins. I had also found tablatures of songs which I had never actually heard, but were (probably) still given to me by friends who thought they were a great find.

I never got to playing Blur's 'You're So Great' properly.

I sat down on my bed upon dusting it and remembered as I went through the papers one by one, brittle bones of some thin familiar dream.

Memories of escaping, running.

I spent the next ten minutes sifting through various objects before settling on three for relocation: a black and white comic trade paperback, a music magazine, and a letter.

( _")

'Sunset Staring Evening'

2007-08-26T15:20:00.000+08:00

In an abandoned landing field
losing ourselves purposely in the middle of nowhere
we were trying to fly a kite
were our disagreements and efforts lesser
would we have succeeded sooner
at flying it?

Warm with sweat, cheeks red glistening
we were careful with the glass coated kite string, taut against spool
anchoring a kite dot you said
you're a good person
and laughed as you added, you're a lost saint
you and me both, Alea, I quipped
which means she who ascends

In an abandoned landing field
purposely lost in the middle of nowhere
we were flying a kite we had known all along

Happiness.

(" , )

'Across The Sea'

2007-08-22T13:39:00.000+08:00

I would have asked you
to fedex my heart back to me
but the cost to ship it
would be more than its worth

The Les vaches postcard you sent now serves as a bookmark

At times I feel like a parrot
chained to a perch
late in the evening

A flute as it is shoved
into a student's mouth
by a mad teacher

A pair of speakers
muted for a prank call
over the intercom

A dashed porcelain idol, a withered cactus

The shoes you helped buy
(you understand me enough)
are without shoelaces

I miss you like a kite
misses the wind

( _")

'Handwriting'

2007-08-17T12:42:00.003+08:00

I wrote this yesterday, on the way back to Penang from Butterworth via ferry:

I'm so disjointed when I'm bored.

____________________________*
Transcribed:

Rats crawling overhead. Need to be wary like how I am when walking along roads in Masjid Kapitan Keling; though some believe that pigeon shit landing (on) / being in contact with a person means luck. Not so the case with rats. Rats are crawling overhead, on the metal structures of the ferry, using them like bridges and channels.

The wind's so strong and there's a leak from the ceiling a few metres away. The wind's so strong that I can hear it through these headphones. I'm having trouble writing with the wind beating on these pages; like I'm seated next to someone who's also writing but with his left hand, (and) is clumsy or is intentionally so, just to obstruct the production of these words.

I'm listening to 'Comforting Sounds' by Mew; "Nobody has gained or accomplished anything."

It's the outro now. The wind's still beating, flipping the pages on my right. Hard. I'm smudging the ink. The trumpets just kicked in and I'm looking at the lights from the mainland's bay. I'm so tired.

( _")

'Reed Richards'

2007-08-13T21:21:00.000+08:00

Calloused fingers softening from an absence. Tracing the rim of the glass; I am waiting for the foams to subside. We all slowly lighten up a bit, breaking away from our respective inertias. Seems that we've been needing to read, even after so long. We're studying (again) each other's expressions. Reacting, to each other's stories. It feels strange to be seated again side by side with my friends. A whole table of them, all the way from a decade ago; a few, for even longer than that. Have we been reading each other correctly so far? I'm cracking up over the minutest detail, any one that amuses me. I am bumming cigarette after cigarette (with prudently timed breaks in between); we take turns emptying out the jugs and jugs of beer into each other's cups. Sweating with condensation, reflecting the palm face of hands indicating No! No! No! Thank you, that's enough for me tonight. We take our turns to ignore our friends, smiling as we continue to pour into the night. How have I been? I've been having this friggin' dry cough that seems to act up the moment I sweat. I down a bit of my beer and cough again from the effects of the gas rising up within me. I tell my story of how my mother is toying with the idea of matchmaking me and a few of them break into laughter (all of us are totally oblivious to how loud we are). Good for you! they say as one pats my back and another nudges me, almost bruising my arm with his elbow. Nah, it won't happen I say, but I never go on to explain why. Here, cheers man, I say instead, to no one in particular with my cup raised, and everybody joins in, glasses clinking clinking clinking clinking clinking clinking clinking in celebration of our reunion.

Not one toast the whole night.

(" , )

'Tanglung'

2007-08-07T19:31:00.000+08:00

What was it like, that day? It was late in the evening, I opened the door to the back of the house where we would usually hang up our washing to dry and we stayed there for a good part of our meeting. Out from your bag you took out two boxes of coloured candles. You smiled and asked me for a lighter and I went searching frantically through the whole house for anything I could use to light them. I eventually found a box of matches imprinted with the logo of some Japanese Hotel and it was made to look like it was lacquered. I pushed it open and there were a few left. You were trying to swat away mosquitoes as you worked away at taking out and placing the candles at their various sites before they were set into your designs and I was beginning to think that it was a bad idea after all, but kept it to myself because you had suggested the activity in the first place. Your hands protected the fragile flame as I transferred it from the match to a candle. You were laughing because my hands were shaking a little. You called me old. We went on lighting the other candles one by one, all from that one flame. I can't remember what we talked about then. I think we hardly spoke at all--we were so immersed in the process of lighting the candles, watching the place grow brighter and brighter. The most striking thing was the overwhelming silence of it all. And after everything I couldn't hold you like I used to.

( _")

'Scene'

2007-08-04T00:43:00.000+08:00

1.

It's strange how stars triangulate
and then multiply, outside a bus moving across states

2.

If it was day instead, my heart would beat
irrational fear throughout my being
falling into the sky as gravity laughed
my hands cold, shaking

as if I had been running too long

3.

But it was night, the dark was kind
and after a while the eyes adjusted themselves
wide enough to be mirrors for ochre lights

4.

I whispered against the sound of a child singing and air conditioning
photographs yellowing in my mind

(we were sixteen, he was seventeen
we were outside a church too early in the morning, discussing the afterlife)

I whispered to her, out to an uncertain future:

5.

When we die, that's where we go
into the sky, each of us eventually a star
you, me, and everyone else we'll know

(some will be brighter but only because we compare them to the others
each one can be seen, if you look hard enough
if you care to remember)

6.

And she smiled, my daughter, so far away
I imagined her trying to hold my hand
the effort in her tiny fingers

slowly understanding
form and meaning.

( _")

'(Un)certain'

2007-07-30T13:52:00.000+08:00

If I was certain then I'd be defeated.
If things were certain then we'd be defeated.
That's how things go I guess.
The Not Knowing makes us move.

If you haven't knocked how would you know that it wouldn't be opened to you?
If you knew that it would be shut to you would you have moved?
The action which you would take to knock would cause a ripple.
A ripple that in turn would cause other things to take effect
Even if the door is not meant to be opened to you.
And you'd know and learn.

Would you have held him tighter, kissed him harder, embraced him more
If you would learn that you would lose him?
Or not begin at all?
Never to know what it is like to love and then, lose

To be uncertain is to be beautiful in those moments
To have the world and everything in it bending
Towards the brightest of possibilities
Is to be Triumphant

(" , )

'Teardrop'

2007-07-21T01:06:00.001+08:00

I was a child again, playing in the rain, with my brother and sister when the bus drivers wouldn't let us beg on the buses because we were dripping wet. There was a moment when a bus was leaving the cracked and potholed asphalt lot and we were so engrossed in our game that one of us was nearly knocked down.

I was the bus driver expressing my disdain over what I saw. One of the buses had almost hit one of them, and yet they went on playing, chasing and kicking puddles at each other in the rain as if nothing else had meant anything to them. I held up my hand and warned them not to come into my bus when they approached. They would have added to the mess on the bus floor. In spite of that, the oldest among them defiantly came up on the steps and stared at me, as if comprehending the situation a little too slowly.

I was the ticket checker who scared away the kids. They left the moment they saw me, and when I got on, the bus driver was telling me how one of them was nearly killed by a bus which was leaving the area. Fucking kids I said in reaction. I folded my umbrella and left it at the driver's side and started to tear each of the passenger's ticket, beginning the collection at the front and ending with the back.

I was the passenger, and after passing the ticket checker's portion of the ticket, I folded what I had left in my hand in half and pocketed it into my shirt pocket. I was sitting next to an Indian man, who was in his fifties I presumed. He started to open a little book of names, addresses and numbers; flipping and stopping, flipping and stopping. I looked out again; the children were gone but it was still raining.

( _")

'Empathy For Cancer'

2007-07-19T22:12:00.000+08:00

Nothing I say means a thing
Not one; nothing at all
The rudder of this ship is broken
I will mislead you
Just because I keep falling
Into the trap of saying something
When we are silent, awkward
The words from my tongue
And the impulses of my heart
Will move you but
They won't mean a thing
Not one; nothing at all

( _")

'Gossamer'

2007-07-14T23:00:00.000+08:00

Dear _____,

I'm sorry for all the times that I've been judgmental, you know how it is: sometimes I just open my mouth and spew my poison as if I'm right, as if I've always been; as if I know more than you. That I can verbalize my thoughts at its purest whenever I choose, to you, just because I'm older. Can I reiterate the fact that I'm more than comfortable in revealing this aspect of myself to you? I think the only other person who comes close to how I treat you in our conversations is my mother.

I think I just like to see the looks on your faces when I exaggerate.

I'm glad you found love. And I'm glad for once that I was wrong.

Remember when I asked you if you knew what you were getting yourself into? (I'm reading this really chunky book and I'm really getting my money's worth in the sense that it's already been more than six months since the date of its purchase, and I'm still left with eight chapters or so until I'm done. One of the chapters has this in it: "In Life, Misery should be the anomaly, instead of Happiness.") I was skeptical. It's become a force of habit. And for that I apologize.

But I smile on days when I think of both of you together. And right now I hope for the best for the both of you in the days to come.

Be well now, and take care; you will be missed.

Write to me again, and perhaps I'll find time to write back this time in my pretentiously cursive handwriting (everything about me is exaggerated).

Bye.

(" , )

'Siren's Song'

2007-07-10T19:55:00.000+08:00

Two nights ago, I dreamt I was marooned on an island in the middle of nowhere; I was walking along its sandy white coast barefooted. The winds were whistling, beating cold into my bones. And though I had sighted an approaching storm, there was no urgency in me to remove myself from that beach; for me to seek shelter. I walked on and soon the angles began to change.

*
I was no longer within myself. The perspective was that of a camera's, with scenes being played out before it: I was inside a cave, hidden deep within the island. It was dim but I could make out what was before me. It looked alien, old, broken. The gigantic machine began to suddenly work, move, scream.

Tall barriers were being raised one after another along the passageway, as I moved backwards towards the entrance of the cave. After the final barrier was erected, a turret broke through from the ground and stood guarding it.

From inside its chamber I could still hear the machine continue to emit its cry. After a while I realized that it was a beacon. A beacon stirring up the consciousness of some ancient Leviathan, resting in depths of the sea. And when it was fully awakened, it would rise up to the surface and destroy everything that was on it.

*
I was back on the beach, but I was not alone. I was with a friend who I had not seen in a while. We were walking on the beach together, talking. I regurgitated a list of things which I have yet to forget about her; things she had told me when we used to talk over the phone, for hours on end, a decade ago.

"You didn't call me on my birthday this year. You knew. But you didn't, on purpose," she said, teasing.

"But we don't talk anymore. What's the point? Everything has changed and no one bothers to keep in touch. We never really did talk after we both started working. And what could I do about it? Pretend that it isn't what's happening? We've become very different people."

"You're the only one who still remembers, you know? All those trivial things about me."

"As if it matters," I said, sarcastically.

"As if you are begrudging yourself fortuity," she said, smiling. And it was true.

*
And we both went on like that, walking and talking; white sand and cold wind, until the end of everything.

( _")

'See This Through and Leave'

2007-07-06T12:16:00.000+08:00

I was staring at the expanse of white around us.

I remembered what I had written for you, but I couldn't bring myself to read it to you:

Warmth like sunlight in:
Bright colors stirred dawn-sonnets,
Stayed soft smells

Our bodies tumbling
Through folds and creases; falling
Disquiet heartbeats

Reined in this presence,
Fingers sought reality:
An Eternity

In embrace thrice felt;
Beyond a wordless sweetness
Desire tarries

As one reminder:
Our souls are not parallel;
We hope and we live

So I told you that I'm not from around here instead. And you stared at me blankly, as if I had spoken in tongues which were not from this world.

"No, you're not. But I can't shake off the feeling that I've seen you from somewhere before."

"You haven't," I lied.

I'm just here to say goodbye.

And then you start to cry, as if remembering, and apologetically, I bring myself closer to wipe your tears away.

But even before I get to touch you, you wake up.

( _")

'Have You Seen Me Lately?'

2007-07-01T12:22:00.000+08:00

I've been to a lot of places recently. I've been busy and things are changing but I've not written anything that I would like to have posted here. I've been wordless about things lately. I suppose I've been consciously searching for the inspiration to write about the things which I've been experiencing but the words just never got to me and so much has happened since that I am discouraged. Some days I find myself seated for hours facing either some computer screen or the pages of my old diary and they remain sadly blank at the end. I've been thinking a lot though and the world seems smaller because of it. I've been bold. I've been drinking. I've been wanting to hold hands and I've been wanting to kiss and I've been wanting to remove my masks but at the same time there is that fear of having everything go wrong after these wants are realized, because it is all too familiar: worlds have ended and worlds have turned against us only because we had wanted to be truthful, open.

( _")

'Promises Promises'

2007-06-11T23:53:00.000+08:00

We will be on the brink of great things, you and me--I keep hearing you say--
Our coronations will be twenty floors above the ground
With aerials and only aerials as our witnesses
Aerials amid the rain--when it rains
How glorious it will all be!

And then--

There is nothing to erase, you know
There are no faces to be found in the trapped air
Nothing in the glass walls around us
Nothing as old or preserved as our first memory
Hardly anything to wait for, to search for
But again and again we are tracing our fingers across these walls
Lingering on each bubble that we find
As if each one was a prison
Each one, a heart
Reminiscent of our own

And I find myself on the rooftop, alone

After a while I am thinking of all the things in the city
The lights that are held still; the lights that are moving
The limping dog (with a sock over its left paw) that I pass daily
The rain, lightly kissing everything above and below...

As the breeze whispers over my shoulder, I am reminded of you
And I still don't know if you exist, or if I had made you up

But I surrendered to the way that I remembered you
That's all there was

( _")

'The Remote Part'

2007-06-04T12:42:00.000+08:00

1. We were laughing at how their voices broke when they sang. You didn't sing immediately when I asked you to, but there were a few times later that you did, and I couldn't name any of the songs that you accompanied.

2. We tried to draw hearts.

3. At various intervals when you asked how was I doing, I had wanted to answer "My head's like a hole"--which seemed a bit like I was trying to impress you--and honestly, I'm glad that I didn't.

4. I enjoyed the word association exercise. Liked how you stopped after some of my turns. The sea of faces, I believe, only served to add to my giddiness. And no, I'm adamant: A.L.F. doesn't look like that.

5. Michael means "Who is like God?"

6.

"(...) So I’ll wait ‘til I find the remote part of your heart
When no where else will let us choose a comfortable start
And even if the breath between us smells of alcohol
Call it confusion in the best way possible..."

(" , )

'The Minor Fall, The Major Lift'

2007-05-24T18:45:00.000+08:00

1.

There is an old building that breathes too cold in my mind. So aged that even paint is stripping itself away from the walls, to be blown afar off. The lines of graffiti there are blurred by thriving moss--markings made by boys too desperate in their attempts to unmask the female anatomy; too excited in revealing their knowledge to their peers; too much in want. Too much in need.

And there I added to the wall with a marker that I was carrying:

"Because of need
one day we will open
the gates to our homes
with knives in our mouths
for protection."

2.

And afterwards I remembered how much I had wanted to change for you---

I could have woken up one day with black or green eyes, in place of my dull dark brown ones. I could have walked up beside you and smiled when you had noticed me and you would not have recognized me at all. Because I would have been everything that you wanted.

But I didn't.

3.

I looked out through the partly crumbled doorway of the building and there it was: an open field. I walked out of the building, and upon finding myself no longer under the shade of the trees outside, began to run across the field

until I couldn't anymore and I fell.

With my back against the ground I held up my palm and watched the sun's rays outline my fingers in a red glow. For a moment I was translucent; for once my hands were that of a lover's.

( _")

'A Trusting Whisper'

2007-05-15T21:50:00.000+08:00

I am walking home and a simple equation of the night appears to me in the form of a lost kitten, mewing from across the road, barely audible against the sound of passing vehicles.

Minutes later I am awkwardly holding it by its scruff and we cross the road together, back to where I resume my walk home (or so I thought). I let it down and the kitten follows me, apparently certain that I can lead it home too. And then, for a moment, I actually try.

We stop at a nearby junction and I start to throw random cat dialect into the darkness and tall grass, in hopes of locating the kitten's family, but to no avail. I turn into the road and chance upon some benevolent individual's leftovers, and wait as the kitten greedily gorges itself, rustling the newspaper every now and then.

We continue further into the road after that, reaching a dead end when suddenly some dog starts barking all crazy from one of the houses. I carry the kitten by its scruff again and walk back out towards the main road. It had started shaking, petrified the moment it heard the commotion.

Once the barking was way behind us, I let it down and it began to follow me again.

When we reached the main road I knew it was trying to be brave, because every once in a while it stopped when a vehicle was approaching and followed when it was clear again. I was watching out for it closely, even though we were safely beside the road. Kept an easy pace for it to follow. But sometimes I had to carry it again because it just refused to go on. Sometimes it hid under parked vehicles that were along the way.

And strangely as we approached my apartment, the kitten no longer seemed interested to follow me. I called for it once, twice, many times and it never came. I tried looking for it under cars which were parked on both sides of the road but it was gone.

I have not seen it since.

( _")

'Mother's Day'

2007-05-12T15:09:00.000+08:00

I woke up at 8 something in the morning, fresh as I could ever be with 4 hours plus of sleep
made my way to mum's, the month's water bill on the dashboard
thought about when and where I'd get a cake premix as I was heading towards the main road
thought about fixing the damn cassette player and all the wasted tapes that are still in the laundry basket
realize now that I didn't feed the fish this morning

Found it blissful to play guitar beside a standing fan with the oscillation disabled (seated of course); waited for it to be 10

Mum and I went for breakfast when the 'house-sitter' had arrived
she had wanted noodles so I took her to this place that I've been haunting on weekends lately
and when she couldn't finish her noodles, I helped
she told me, the older people get, the less they can eat
and that if I were to continue with that appetite, I'd be just as fat as dad was, one day

I tried to drop her off first at my cousin's place but got lost from using a shortcut
because I had wanted to repair a broken rear signal, and didn't know how long it would take
(she loves being back there, catching up with the family)
we found our way, a u-turn and 2 rights later

The car electrician's shop was closed so I asked an auto accessory shop worker about it (2 lots away)
he smiled and said that he was originally from there, added that it's been closed for good, for some time now
I asked if they could fix my signal light and he said yeah sure and yelled for another worker
who fixed it in less than 2 minutes, for 2 ringgit

I returned to my cousin's and nodded off on the couch while mum chatted with 3 relatives

(" , )

'Carousels'

2007-05-06T10:43:00.000+08:00

No one seems to want to see him anymore, you know. But he's there the whole time dispensing advice so freely--the passionate sort of advice that you'd get from people on their deathbeds, as if any day now could be his last. He says that love isn't what it used to be, that love is just getting too exclusive. That nowadays, love is incomplete and people are just blind to the concept of it being so. He talks about Jesus' ministry, and I can see why people are just avoiding him. It could be one of the reasons. We can't seem to take up our crosses, he says: to love those who are unclean and hungry; to love those who we find embarrassing and unlikable. That we could never bring ourselves to speak the truth when it hurts; that we could never bring ourselves to love, without judging. That we could not humble ourselves enough to be taken advantage of when we love. That we could not love without limits.

He talks like that and says, Love and suffer for that love. And still: love, love and love. But not many of them listen, you know, and those who do think him crazy.

For me, I think people are just falling out of love too easily nowadays when something adverse gets in the way of the relationship. Sometimes it's just because it isn't going the way that they want. That easily. They leave without fighting that adversity, as if the relationship was a bad decision made in the first place, something that they could neither face up to, nor admit, to anyone else. So easily.

I pray that I'm wrong.

I thought about all that as I alternated between staring up into the sky and watching passersby and buses during that one hour or so of waiting on that uneventful Friday night. Thought about what it would be like, to be on an airplane each time one flew by.

( _")

'To The Heavens, And You'

2007-05-02T07:53:00.000+08:00

[Listening To: 'Are You There?' by Mono]

I never blamed the rain; it rains and it rains and it rains
I try to be profound and say that gravity is different here
that things are slower here; heavier, here
but that's just me, trying to make the mundane interesting
this pensioner's paradise means so much to me
when I think about it, that perhaps, I'll take you around to see
the various places which shaped me one day
and if you're up for it, the people, too
I think I'll let you read me, after all
Life's too short for me to keep insisting that what I've written
stays on the shelf. My pride has made me a jail keeper, a builder of facades
it's funny when you ask why, because it seems to me that you already know
I wish I could say this but it's still too early to tell (I am careful):
we are vessels carved by sorrow, to be filled with joy
I think this is what I should have answered a friend
the other day; anyone, any other day. We can hope

I think it's time that I lifted my head

(" , )

'Horizons'

2007-04-23T19:11:00.000+08:00

we have lost our ability to cry
being accustomed to apprehension at every turn

but what does it mean for us to gain the blood of sears
(sifting the possibilities of any given juncture)

when we can no longer rise from the ground
to strike the sky with our lightning

when it is only now that we recognize
that the broken heart cupped in our hands

was also a stethoscope

( _")

'A Warm Room'

2007-04-14T20:57:00.000+08:00

I am listening to Envy.

I am wondering if I am giving meaning to too many things--that I am reading words on too many pages which are in reality blank, or are meant to be. My own words. Presumptions. We all know where that leads. I wonder if I'm trying to escape, without ever physically trying.

Yesterday on the bus, the air-conditioning sounded like it was someone snoring; and it reminded me of a really old fan which my mum had reluctantly kept when I was much younger, because strangely, I had found the clanking extremely lulling. I found myself missing nothing in particular, nothing I could name, then or now. I was nostalgically, lost.

I wish I could talk like I used to. For hours, even with distance; especially, with distance. Perhaps what I need is just someone who listens on occasion; someone who's able to connect to what I'd say (and vice versa, of course). I wish I could talk to someone in person, and he or she would be amused from witnessing the gleam in my eyes and the pace of my conversation, even if they would be less passionate than me about the subject(s).

It's hard for me to be hypocritical and tell anyone I know how to live their life. As far as I'm concerned, it's all in theory now. You live your life the best that you see fit. Don't be a sheep.

I haven't felt real anger for years.

You know, death is very much like being in the dark, but without the consciousness of it. It's just this big black nothing. I can say this because I had a brush with it, when I was involved in a horrific auto accident a few years ago: I had slowly regained consciousness after the collision, my limbs felt like they were lead, and one of my friends was muttering profanities again and again in his state of shock. It was his voice that I first heard when I awoke to the aftermath. It was like I had awakened to a nightmare. The four of us made our way out of the battered vehicle by ourselves, and till this day, I swear, that if I had been any coherent then, I would have killed all those bastards who did nothing but discuss among themselves our vehicle's plate number, for what possibility it may have had as a winning lottery number.

I stumbled and sat on the ground. The whole scene unfolding before me as I comprehended what had happened, what was happening.

I wept in the kitchen when I told my aunt about it a couple of days later, but left out the part about me wanting to murder anyone. I had never felt as helpless or wronged in my entire life. A really close friend had passed away in that accident.

( _")

'Closures'

2007-04-09T22:19:00.000+08:00

I met you under a bridge
I met you and carried on, as if we were on speaking terms again
I shook your hand; asked how you were doing
went through the motions of catching up
and as if simple conversation had reconciled us
we talked some more as we made our way
to my primary school for our high school reunion
We never spoke of how it was
an execution ground during the Japanese occupation

The stairs seemed to go on and on
the stairs seemed to be haunted, but this isn't the one
I said to myself, the one that everyone used
with an urgency that was neither explained nor mentioned
isn't this one. I cannot remember
which floor it was that we had met the others
The irony was that these were faces
that I hadn't seen or heard from in years
faces that I will probably never see again

We were in a room and it was dark
we were in a room and it was dark because there was a projector on
and everyone was discussing angles and ideas
for a horror movie and this had made me uncomfortable
and then the projector went off
and I was alone
A light came on and I was staring at an exhibit of a stingray inside a glass box
I faced its underbelly; its mouth, a cut rectangle bleeding leftwards
was seen as a smile. And then I knew; this--this was what they were trying to emulate

( _")

'Nothing About Blowing Up Bridges'

2007-04-05T15:00:00.000+08:00

Finding my grandfather's place in record time. Supposedly, his coffin was four pieces of plank, nailed together.

Joss paper, similar in design with our RM10-00 and 50-00 notes, so much so that a cousin commented that he would probably be able to walk into a shop, buy a pack of cigarettes with it, and receive change. If the lights were real dim.

A cow pissing. The stream was avoided like it was acid by oncoming vehicles; and me telling my mum, all the more reason to wash my car later.

My father's elusiveness, even from beyond. His grave was the most difficult to reach.

Paper offerings, cigarettes, the burning of shrubs and freshly-cut grass.

Mud, caking on my shoes.

Me, my cousin, and our maps.

A toad in an urn, calm amid the shortening joss sticks.

Reading the label of the wine used for libation (16% alcohol content; not to be consumed by those aged 16 and below).

Red ants biting and refusing to let go.

Mistaking the ice cream vendor's bell for a ritual one, upon entering the temple.

Walking through the temple, examining various memorials; noting pictures, names, birth and death dates, ages. Being on the brink of tears from all the smoke.

Petting a pariah pup minutes before eating a durian-flavored ais krim potong.

( _")

'Comes As No Surprise'

2007-03-31T12:56:00.000+08:00

I tried playing and recording someone else's song for you last night
But my voice cracked and broke; it failed to sustain what I was feeling

Stray sounds from vehicles passing through the veins of my suburb
The buzz from an aged microphone

All these things kept getting in the way, until I felt that I wasn't doing the song any justice
And so it was abandoned; though I had wanted to make something for you

I tell myself: I don't mind retreading, revisiting
But no one ever replies

It is as if everything I had ever been to them is now kept (perhaps, lost) in an attic, or a basement

In some shoe box with yellowing letters and silverfish:
A mixtape given one Christmas day, that can't be played anymore

( _")

'It Read...'

2007-03-28T20:55:00.000+08:00

This weight is the same weight that kills later, I believe
The weight of holding, with unclasped hands
The weight of knowing and pretending that you don't
The weight of looking in from the outside through a stained window; helplessly a voyeur
To a world that goes on without you, a world devoid of your echoes
Such a trite path; that once you closed your eyes to believe in me
Our embrace had not betrayed how empty my heart was
How heavy it could be

( _")

'Inauguration (2nd March 2007)'

2007-03-20T18:38:00.000+08:00

(" , )

[Credits: All pictures by Aisyah]

'Ruins Alone a.k.a. Tatsuya Yoshida (Central Market Annexe, 24th and 25th March 2007)'

2007-03-19T13:20:00.000+08:00

Saturday, 24th March 2007
Time: 8.30pm to 11.00pm
Entrance: By donation (no less than RM15)
Main Act: Ruins Alone
Supporting acts: Supercali Collective (Singapore) / Ciplak / Akta174\\AngkasaLepas

Sunday, 25th March 2007
Time: 8.30pm to 11.00pm
Entrance: By donation (no less than RM15)
Main Act: Ruins Alone
Supporting acts: Klangmutationen / Modar / Infinite Delay

[As posted in Joe's Ricecooker]

( _")

'Battles'

2007-03-18T20:52:00.000+08:00

[Listening to: Azmyl Yunor]

I've never really seen you grow, you know. It's been like this for years, you and your complacency. You justify this by saying that you're happy with what you have at the moment, but are you really? I think you're just lazy. I know you. "Must all potential be realized?" was what you used as your shield. Your dumb tagline. You are afraid of change. You turn back and fear that you might repeat those mistakes again. You keep telling me that this is the realm of death and decay; that there are no degrees to death. No state of being deader, deadest. But where are you? You keep forgetting to offer your palm to her, for reading. You're blind to the true signs of where you are now. The Ace of Diamonds was a Red Herring, child. Nothing can ever be told from cards; they can only be played.

Don't pretend you're Atlas anymore. Live.

( _")

'The Leaving (10)'

2007-03-10T21:43:00.000+08:00

I guess we can start all over again if there is a fire.

I stood beside my car thinking about it. About how different we are now. And if you've forgiven me. How can one ever tell just from a phone conversation? We talked about what seemed to be a world of resignations. You had just tendered your letter while I am still considering if I should stay. "Eleven animals leaving the zoo!" someone mentioned this morning at work. It all boils down to pros and cons I said. Pros and cons which I am still weighing. What makes us risk the comfort that we have? For some of us, we begin falling the moment we think of leaving. We fall, slaves to our own inherent inertia.

There were too many clouds in the sky tonight. I cannot remember the last time we saw the stars together; cannot remember, if we ever did. I smiled: it didn't matter; I could see you falling fast asleep, tucked away in your seat. I had searched frantically in my room this morning for that watch you gave me on my seventeenth birthday (time just seems to go by faster when I'm not reminded of it--which was why it was lying among my books during the weekdays). It was pocketed; to be worn for our meet.

But you didn't let me see you off at the bus terminal.

"Yeah, it's better this way," I said, over the phone; unsure if my choice of words were wrong. I didn't want to pursue the matter further, even though I felt otherwise. I didn't want to tick you off on your last night here. Not with how you've spent your time here in the last couple of days. I was a putrid person for never wanting to let go when I was with you but I have long since learned. I had wanted to say: I'm sorry for who I was and what I did. Just before the goodbye. But I didn't.

I had forgotten to tell you about an Indian remedy for removing chicken pox scars by applying a mixture of lime and cucumber juice that I had read about days ago.

( _")

'2'

2007-03-09T20:59:00.000+08:00

[Listening to: 'When I Light Your Darkened Door' by J. Tillman]

She will not know it, nor will she recognise it
Her tendrilled shadow falls against everything behind her
Her ghosts are tired, old, ashamed
We stood face to face, shivering in that cold weather
The very spot where I bled every last drop of belief
From my eyes into the layer of rain at my feet, years before
Our arms were broken in so many ways that we couldn't hold each other
That never could we live in the present

( _")

'Pathos'

2007-03-04T17:50:00.000+08:00

I took three lozenges from the foil-lined packet and popped them in
I felt death dissolving, dispersing its properties into the walls of my mouth
Death calming the crow perched within my throat
Nothing I could think of
Save for the crow falling into sleep
Its beak feet twitching in reluctant surrender
Pecking scratching ceasing for the while

A strange stillness took me
As I found myself staring into the darkness
Playing into a room filled with a great number of friends and acquaintances
Who were all shrouded in the same anonymity, black facelessness

It was not for escape or want of change that I sang
My voice frail in temporal respite
It was for you that I travelled again
I revisited, remembered
The things that were and the things which could have been
A packet of death on the soft guitar case at my feet
You, thousands of miles away

( _")

'Fireflies (KL Jam Asia, 2nd March 2007)'

2007-03-01T09:05:00.000+08:00

5 songs/30 minutes.

( _")

Note: Click on the picture above for larger versions of the flyer.

'Muse (Stadium Negara, 25th February 2007)'

2007-02-27T18:13:00.000+08:00

Sad to say, when we left the place (passing the exit where Muse's entourage had gathered, along with the odd police officers and RELA personnel), not a single banner or poster of the event was to be found: we had been beaten in the task of acquiring the much sought after post-concert souvenirs. What had initially seemed to be an aftermath of cigarette butts, plastic mineral water bottles and lethargic bodies was waded through as we mutually shared our disbelief--that we had actually attended a Muse concert, right here in Malaysia.

I was so sceptical that I had briefly mentioned it to a good friend (who is almost as tabooless as me), hardly considering if our thoughts or exchange would actually jinx the event--that the band could possibly withdraw from performing at the very last minute, leaving us all high and dry, about an hour before entering the stadium. Perhaps it was the Heineken talking.

Weeks spent "doing my homework" (read: a task of going through Muse's entire discography during my bouts of travel to and fro work--one which I did not properly commit to, due to a number of things which were beyond my control) had paid off when I could actually follow what was going on for a good part of that evening. The saturated pit did much in impeding breathing that after a while, I was secretly wanting slower and softer songs to be performed (though 'Hyper Music' would have definitely made my day); and not exhausting myself for 'weaker parts' in songs (read: head-banging only when I can't help it; though I did really appreciate the finer parts i.e. the piano arrangement in 'Butterflies And Hurricanes'; the ambient instrumental found in 'Citizen Erased'). Adrenaline rushed with each familiar pattern, killer riff. And though half-coughing, I did make an effort to sing along to the songs that I knew. Everyone else did. I found myself dazed, drenched in the surrounding frenzy during faster [/familiar(?)] tracks such as 'Hysteria', 'Supermassive Black Hole', 'Feeling Good', 'Starlight', 'Plug In Baby', 'Time Is Running Out', 'New Born' and 'Stockholm Syndrome'.

I lost myself out there.

(" , )

'Rockets'

2007-02-17T22:10:00.000+08:00

I sat in the living room, looking out at the porch; at the sky, as it rained. Waiting for the candles on the altar to go out before we left the house - mum was worried as usual - she didn't want to leave any chances for an accident to happen. And of course, we couldn't just blow it out. So we waited. This same living room which I actually miss falling asleep in, having watched all those Chinese New Year movies with my cousins years ago - is now desolate save for visits from my mother and me. It hasn't been the same since my (paternal) grand aunt passed away. Nowadays the house is empty, with an occasional stray cat lazing outside by the entrance. Broken windows, rotting wood, cracks in the walls, dead leaves, cobwebs and dust.

***
Amidst receiving text messages (those of the forwarded variety) from some friends - I found myself having another steamboat meal (the previous one was with some colleagues about a week ago) with mum, aunt and a few of her friends for the Reunion Dinner a few hours later. The following were some of the topics conversed as we partook of our meal:-

1) Fertilized eggs.
2) The reason why the first three dishes of any grand dinner are children's favorites.
3) The tablecloth which was used.
4) The napkins.
5) (Generally) the beneficial qualities of a banana when digested, in terms of athletic activities.
6) Golf.
7) Noodles and Boric Acid.
8) How small chicken eggs are being sold to unsuspecting buyers at the local market as kampung chicken eggs.
9) "The Year Of The Boar."

I find myself smiling at the fact that besides mother and me, none of us there were blood-related.

***
I guess it's only inevitable, that these kind of transitions take place. That one day, bumper to bumper traffic fueled by dedication and piety; the stuff of our homecomings - would cease - and in its place: new gravities, celebrations, reasons. That a time would come for all those people and places of our youth to exist solely within us; being neither physical nor tangible. Our definitions of words revised (in this case: 'Family'), with each step. But nothing ever truly lost.

***
Happy Chinese New Year!

(" , )

'Creep'

2007-02-13T12:54:00.000+08:00

1:
I am the only person I know who hasn't watched Fight Club in its entirety. For some inexplicable reason, the movie just refuses to continue after a certain scene, every time I do (VCDs, DVDs etc.). Unfortunately, I already have a rough idea what the movie is about. I have a strong feeling that I'll pick up the book.

2:
For the first 23 years of my life, my only mode of transport was the bicycle. Also, I only started driving 4 years after obtaining my license. I am the fifth owner of my current vehicle, which I only use during the weekends.

3:
Let me be the first to tell you that Bragg's Apple Cider Vinegar works wonders on warts.

4:
I have been eating on the left side of my mouth for years.

5:
I fell off a durian tree once - I am uncertain if this particular event has made me dislike durians.

6:
I am constantly apologetic. I believe it's more of a condition than a habit.

OK. The disease stops here. There.

( _")

'Your Light Though Elusive Takes Me To Pieces'

2007-02-12T18:31:00.000+08:00

Verse 1:
Break my hands
Please grant me respite from this
Makeshift love
And all that is due to me
Firstling feelings
I suppose I have you to thank
Hold my hands
Though I can't feel them no more

1st Bridge:
Could you grant me more than this
Some simple words that keep me safe
The reasons wrong 'cause it's all a lie
But then again, I feel it's right

Verse 2:
Understand
I could never with your glance
Of porcelain
That kills with the word "friend"
Will he love you
Shatter your heart right after the dance
Break my hands
No I can't hold you no more

2nd Bridge:
Could you grant me more than this
Your simple words to keep me awake
Steal the sorrow, cure the wound
At least enough to see me through

Chorus:
Please tell me it's all right
Please tell me that you're still mine
Please tell me it's all right
Please tell me that you're still mine

(Repeat Chorus twice)

( _")

"10 + 1"

2007-02-10T19:37:00.000+08:00

[Listening to: 'All Along The Watchtower' by Bob Dylan]

She had lobotomized him at age of thirteen (she was his teacher). Her words had always been of warnings, though she herself had considered them to be well-meant advice. It was enough to stop the lifeblood in any boy from running. Even the simplest school activity such as karate had enough symbolism to be cryptic, dark; inappropriate by her standards - her religion. She spoke against it, having learned his enrollment - asked him to leave it immediately. He had learned later that one of the words which actually represented the said art was 'patience': a combination of the characters 'knife' and 'heart' - the bearing of pain. And how ironic that it had become his tattoo since...

Desires tailored from velvet; intricately woven. Extinguished like candle-flame.

Her son was also from the same school - the golden boy who had never returned after furthering his studies. Was seated a few tables away from him, in a bar playing blues, years later in the city. As he tended to an itch below his cheek, an understanding dawned upon him - that her own son could have possibly harbored some sort of hatred, or resentment towards her. More or less what he himself had been feeling for years (unknowingly at first).

He looks well though, he thought to himself. Manicured. Stuffing himself silly with croissants. He stayed where he was, pretending to admire the bricolage adorning the walls, all the while thinking hypocrites hypocrites.

( _")

'Shelter'

2007-02-08T12:36:00.000+08:00

I had a dream:

The world was on fire.

I kept myself in a room: never wanting to go out; wanting never to meet any semblance of the nuclear fallout. Until I remembered that I was actually waiting for someone, amid Armageddon. I stood waiting behind the dilapidated wooden door, catching nothing as I peered through the darkness of the world outside from a diamond shaped hole. As I did this, I recalled who it was I was waiting for: a mere dream-person.

In the beginning, we were constantly at loggerheads over everything and then, as clichés go, I fell for her.

I waited so long.

When the door opened I somehow knew that it was still her. All three of them had been subjected to the repercussions of the fallout. They had been mutated: mother, child, friend.

I felt sorry for her friend, because I secretly knew his real burden: that he had to accompany her all the way to me. I said good evening, sir and embraced him. Perhaps fulfilling his role then, he vanished into thin air.

The baby seemed to be asleep as she laid him down on a blanket, supported by a table. His hands seemed to be pushing his box-shaped head; his neck, elongated by a few inches.

The child doesn't look alright I said to her. No, he's not anymore she replied. I couldn't leave him behind even after, she explained. And then I cried.

I cried for the dead child. It's been a while since I've felt anything as sad, so I know. I wept. And then I forced myself to stop, because I had to think of where to bury him.

( _")

'Foreigners To Hostile Places'

2007-02-04T11:36:00.000+08:00

Our pandemic condition is this:
that (sometimes) without realizing it,
we are walking on the surface of a lake;
we are in love

Better to have awakened to these miracles
and later, become wind-conscious;
gain dark weights made from premonitions;
witness the intangible debris of our hearts, scattered on unpaved roads
and consequently, sink, or fall out of that love
than
never to have realized these miracles at all;
never to have realized that in our own fashion
we have been Peters, Atlases, Sisyphuses, all along

Our pandemic condition is this:
that (sometimes) we do not realize
that we are walking on the surface of the lake;
that we are in love

Until it is much, much too late

( _")

'Set Yourself On Fire'

2007-02-03T09:49:00.000+08:00

1.

There was a day when I was outdoors and the gardener called for me; to show me the body of a decapitated snake. Camouflage had not worked in its favor. He was trimming the hedges beside the mail box when he found the body still in shock, struggling. The head, was never found.

2.

Sometimes I am slinking away in my dreams of the garden and house. These are times when dream-snakes of countless varieties invade, and usually alone, I am as though making my way through an extremely cluttered or narrow museum, ever watchful of each and every snake I encounter, as if any one of them could mean my death. I wander aimlessly along these paths drenched in neurosis, until I am awake in cold sweat, fear. Thankfully, snakes never follow me out into the waking world, unlike, (once) the dream of splinters.

3.

We set fire to the grass clippings and garbage that we had gathered under a young coconut palm. Slowly, as the flames caught on, a body began to form from it, coiling itself around the palm from the base, climbing skywards as carbon trailed in its wake. We watched it all burn--burn! burn! burn!--and returned indoors when it began to snow ash.

( _")

'Starcrossed'

2007-01-31T13:20:00.000+08:00

It's like getting caught outside in the heavy rain without an umbrella,
saying I love you over and over again,
over a line that's constantly breaking with crackling and silence.
Everything that has happened
weighs like perforations, exit wounds.
Like how electricity passes through silver,
or a break-in is conducted.
What's left is a brand made on a bruised heart
which develops into the shade of burnt paper days later.
And stays, for the rest of our lives.

I will keep half-burned albums,
and remember as I pick from the ash;
pieces, always, always coming away in my hands:
how you were playfully arching away from me;
your lips pursed,
my clothes still damp from the rain---

How we tried to make each other whole.

( _")

'Unusual Disasters'

2007-01-27T21:15:00.000+08:00

1.

I seem to assiduously have in mind
abandoned mines
each time I recall your eyes
some two thousand swines drowning in them
each time you cry

2.

Your mother calls this a dream every time you bring it up: you were about four, bawling your eyes out late at night in the bedroom. The lights were on; no one came to your aid. You fell out of your bed, blankets in tow, almost sprawled on the cement floor--in agony from a high fever. Things got worse when you threw up where you were: inexplicably, you started to nosebleed. All you could do was cry as you watched the blood-mixed spew unfold. No one came for you; no one heard you.

3.

(...)

"But you're not the woman with hemorrhage, are you?"

We stared blankly at each other, and then I realized my mistake: I never told you about that particular story of a woman who was bleeding for more than a decade; she had sought Christ in the crowd, in faith that she would be healed, and touched him. She did it in secret, for fear of being reprimanded; for fear of being accused of tainting another--but it wasn't so when she was discovered: "Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace," He said to her. She was in that moment miraculously transformed: a new person.

"Never mind."

I wish that somehow, one day, I would be able to read the same peace and love in those eyes of yours; find those pools no longer on the outskirts of Hamelin, whose people daily recount their ingratitude towards the Pied Piper, one lost child at a time.

( _")

'Gas Head Goes West'

2007-01-20T13:11:00.000+08:00

I'm currently biting on a fresh piece of gauze, wondering when the pain will kick in. Wondering if I'll just have soup for lunch. The dentist was concerned enough to instruct me, via his nurse, thrice, to (please) return to the clinic any time between 2:00 and 6:00 P.M later, should I experience any further complications from my second molar's extraction, from my right upper jaw.

I began suspecting that there was something amiss with that particular molar two weeks ago. Said suspecting triggered by how wrong it felt when I tongued it one fair day. A loose, jagged feeling.

Imagine me now, having my fears confirmed by the dentist, contemplating on his elaboration that the extraction might be done in a few stages because of how it was cracked; it was just an individual corner, whereas the other areas of that same molar remained intact. "But if you're lucky, all it would take is one yank."

He was a fair man; and suggested that I could either keep it like it was (as I was not experiencing any pain, just psychological discomfort each time my tongue ran over that specific part of my mouth), or pull it out. I bit the bullet and chose the latter.

He applied some sort of cream to numb the few injections which would make the extraction painless afterwards. It's not really that unpleasant; a needle going into the walls of your inner mouth: just close your eyes, clench your fists.

I was a bit nervous when he asked me to wait outside, fearing time would lessen the effects of the given injections. A girl perhaps twelve, was on the brink of tears (someone like me, with an overactive imagination), accompanied by her very verbal parents who were both trying very hard to comfort her. She couldn't sit still.

I went back in after an elderly lady's turn, sat myself in the chair and braced myself for the worst.

"Ok, I'm going to apply a lot of pressure. Stop me if it hurts. Alright?"

Now those words were enough to subject me to an altogether new and different numbness, in my brain. Nevertheless, I nodded.

The human body is an amazing thing, I found myself thinking as what he told me was being exactly done. It was pressure alright, but not an ounce of pain. I was amazed; fists still clenched; could see in my mind that tooth still stubbornly clinging to its home, roots breaking bit by bit.

And then, it was out.

( _")

'Disconnected'

2007-01-16T21:23:00.000+08:00

I am a rusty can
dangling against a barb wire fence
from a severed piece of string
caught on the outside of the fence
if you picked me up
and held me against your ear
you would hear Nothing
but the sound of the wind
if there is a wind
echoing through my empty tin can being
that's me talking, and you listening

( _")

'Headlong'

2007-01-11T19:18:00.000+08:00

Headlong, I am revisiting:

I flicked open peanuts, fingers numb. The strange gravity pulling pushing inside, as blood rushes to make me systemic against predators. It is the eve of a wedding and I am seated at a table covered with ricepaper, flicking open, then eating, peanuts; I've made a mountain from the shells and I can't seem to stop the automation. I laugh when I'm expected to. I laugh at drunken jokes, at how atrocious one of my uncles is, at myself, and how everything fits and feels like a warm glove, over what was not, before.

It is dark and I stagger out into the carpark for my vehicle, but not without vomiting a few steps after. As in "the dike burst, and the floodwaters vomited forth." I am alone in the lot, head down, a pattern in it; a rushing of thoughts--one of them being: this is a circle: regretting then indulging; indulging then regretting. It is my last working day at the factory in Kamunting.

I recall telling my friends (who would then worry), "I'm going to ride home in my spaceship!!" in a state of jest only I can appreciate, and smile, as the ignition starts.

I am, of all things, dancing. Or trying to dance, but am clouded about how well I'm actually doing it. In the end I just move, each atom of my makeup screaming pulsating; the surrounding environment the stimulation. I ache all over the next morning, underarms with gin blossoms.

I turn, and he tells me: "For me and mine," to which we clink cups and finish what remained of our beers, "that something as simple (and unoriginal) as 'in her haze she reciprocated when his mouth sought hers', was a Juncture for me," he blurts on, after. He is silent for the while and I smile, appreciating the irony that past and present is one; that it helps ease unforgiveness on his part, at least for the moment. He will never forget her, his first love.

I am in the back of a car, missing the sensation of cheek against nape.

Drunk, trying to construct clumsily a Babel with my poor words as adobe: "Today when you left me, your shadow, at home--the feeling of it was so strong that it was violently eating me, at around ten p.m. I was; am nowhere. And now, reduced to nothing," I found if difficult, gave up, saved the draft and slept.

From behind me beacon lights from a cruising by patrol car force me to realize that the party had been reduced to a pantomime. And while still unintentionally adhering to the paradigm of a performer, I try to finish 'Wonderwall' as softly as I can, only to forget what came next in the song...

( _")

'The First Weekend'

2007-01-08T19:51:00.000+08:00

Yesterday my aunt turned 75! So I stayed back in Taiping instead, to celebrate her birthday-dinner and got back to work (very) early this morning. Note to self: never light candles which have already been placed on the cake with a lighter. Matchsticks work better! And never forget the cake knife!

Poor aunt asked for a lesser, inappropriate knife for the cake cutting ceremony because the proper one was misplaced somewhere in the house (she didn't like to keep people waiting). The show went on--we sang the song; observed with bright smiles as she blew out the candles successively; we cheered.

(The celebrating was done in the garden; where rain and frequent movement of guests damaged a good area of turf, enough to consequently muddy anyone crossing. I found it particularly uncomfortable having to squelch my way every now and then.)

I'm partly inspired to sing at people's birthdays now; just give me a list of songs you want performed and a few days for practice (and beer to calm my nerves for a bit, before the real thing). Herewith I state my conditions, should ever such a proposal be made of me: I'd be entitled to a short break in between; to gorge on whatever everyone else is having, on top of being paid. I am after all, a reasonable being.

Seriously though, I'm wondering how much yesterday's keyboardist made from the stint. I think one or two guests asked him for the chords to some songs, but I could be wrong. It could be his number.

I woke up at four something A.M. today simply because I consciously told myself that I could not afford to oversleep, and if I did, I'd miss my 6:30 A.M. bus back to Butterworth, and would be late / absent from work today and that would have not been a great way to kick-start the week. Monday, though considered the most dreaded day of the week; the anything-that-can-go-wrong-goes-wrong day, is a day I can't miss (I've reluctantly come to accept myself as a patron to Murphy's Law).

And strangely, after such a day of work, such dynamics at play, I feel good.

(" , )