keng yang

“The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. What do you get at the end of it? A Death! What's that, a bonus? 


I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it out of the way. 


Then you live in an old age home. You get kicked out when you're too young, you get a gold watch, you go to work. You work forty years until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement. You do drugs, alcohol, you party, you get ready for high school. You go to grade school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities, you become a little baby, you go back into the womb, you spend your last nine months floating...

...and you finish off as an orgasm.”

- George Carlin


got this off my sergeant's Facebook page. he's the one who, unknowingly, inspired me to try my hand at my first poem. 


i'm very protective of my sergeants, i like them all very much. though i've never wanted to be a commander nor do i have the makings of one, when they tell me of their troubles of being a sergeant, as a subordinate, i can't help but feel for them.


times like these, i wish i could be the one protecting them instead.


on an extra note, i've finally told Vick, my chief sergeant, about my.. identity. to put it euphemistically. i am glad. it's slightly ironic; despite being the sergeant i'm closest to, he ended up the last person knowing. in camp anyway.


but there you have it, all the people on my shift - with whom i'm comfortable enough with, and have enough trust in - now knows. it's a weight off my shoulders. 


edit: there are a couple more i wish i could tell. oh well, time will present the opportunity.

so called

I would die for this, that, those
chh.

woven with 5% integrity, 2% honesty and 93% posturing

fibres of oppressed sweat, yarns of countless dreams


lift off the precious glass dome,
confront the dainties
confirm with a
touch
sniff
lick
suddenly
the magic goes poof!
the shiny packaged delusion,
deflates with a wheeze.

it's not so precious after all.
(revelation of the year!)

who started it?
Chanel, Gucci or boss of the mob, Louey V?
puppeteer of paupers and princes alike
Chimaera of untold proportions,
powered by shackled minions
gorges on foolish millions

Barbie-nators and Ken-bots
stomp stomp stomp, pout pout pout
yet even the Plastic giggles
at the sad hilarity
of a show putting on a show.

wee ping

And in that moment, I swear we were infinite.


- Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

a sense of conviction

"A happy ending was imperative. I shouldn't have bothered to write otherwise. I was determined that in fiction anyway two men should fall in love and remain in it for the ever and ever that fiction allows.."

- terminal note from Maurice, E.M. Forster

the sum of liberty

normalcy,
once so alien
prodded aside
with the longest yardstick
and the snootiest sniff

metamorphosing
into something warm
and infinitely curious

golden limbs

scraggly hair

schlumpy clothes

never seemed so,

dare i say it -

attractive

normalcy,

used to be 

trampled upon

face smashed into earth

common as dirt

in its crudeness

mundanity

provinciality 

simple-mindedness,

the saplings of

happiness

are young

and possible

the veneers

of hedonism

nihilism

perfectionism 

narcissism 

self pity

self hate

self indulgence 

flash

bang

sound

fury

blah blah blah

shall wither

against the bright sunlight

of the unbridled youth

in all his possible happiness

pray for it, to touch you.

vestiges

found this inside a recently acquired book, An Equal Music by Vikram Seth. Kindle and its ilk can't replicate these glimmers to another life. i like M's succinctness.

*

He stared after him. His face was silent, closed, yet sickly fascinating; it drew in the confidences of Turmoil and Pain, themselves the underlings of Loneliness, an Overlord so pervasive, its tendrils marauded across his features, seeking to fester, germinate and eventually, vanquish that fragile mien.

*

a snippet dreamed up while cycling at the park with my baby sister. i always get small, random snippets popping into my mind, but never the entire story unfortunately.

on the flipside, Singapore Writers Festival starts this friday! who's up for it?!

Your face, it looked so lonely and painful, like you couldn't bear it - the little girl whose body was just half my size, taught me that tears can flow from silver eyes as well.


- Norihiro Yagi, Claymore

alike, unalike, alike

There are always those who take it upon themselves to defend God, as if Ultimate Reality, as if the sustaining frame of existence, were something weak and helpless. These people walk by a widow deformed by leprosy begging for a few paise, walk by children dressed in rags living in the street, and they think, "Business as usual." But if they perceive a slight against God, it is a different story. Their faces go red, their chests heave mightily, they sputter angry words. The degree of their indignation is astonishing. 


Their resolve is frightening.

These people fail to realize that it is on the inside that God must be defended, not on the outside. They should direct their anger at themselves. For evil in the open is but evil from within that has been let out. The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart. Meanwhile, the lot of widows and homeless children is very hard, and it is to their defense, not God's, that the self-righteous should rush.


- Yann Patel, Life of Pi

shane

told me, that i am not empty, i am FULL.

tonight, i started with Empty by The Cranberries

All my plans fell through my hand 

They fell through my hands on me 

All my dreams, it suddenly seems 

It suddenly seems empty

Shane told me to stop listening to songs with titles like "Empty". he brought me this instead:

i was quite taken aback when i heard the song. then i smiled. it was quite a remedy. 

i told him he was one of a kind. i thought about the responses i would have likely received from the usual sources and decided that no one else would have reacted like he did and that i would make an effort. i need to start writing again, i felt this desperately a few nights ago in camp.

an anodyne, i need an anodyne. 

dithering, withering, curdling - i don't want that, i don't do that - what would happen to all the beautiful words i've gathered lately? what would happen to lampoonery, mesonoxian, anodyne, inviolate? they need to be cultivated, caressed, tickled under the chin, unleashed, hurtled against that which we do not want to remember.

chrysalis - the tutelary cocoon from which a butterfly emerges. how strange, how strange, a beauteous word as such to perform a perfunctory duty. nevertheless - retreat, retreat! into the chrysalis, most sterile and more importantly, anodynic. 

Shane told me, i am not empty, i am FULL

a little bit of this

There is the story of baby Krishna, wrongly accused by his friends of eating a bit of dirt. His foster mother, Yashoda, comes up to him with a wagging finger. "You shouldn't eat dirt, you naughty boy," she scolds him. "But I haven't," says the unchallenged lord of all and everything, in sport disguised as a frightened human child. "Tut! Tut! Open your mouth," orders Yashoda.

Krishna does as he is told. He opens his mouth. Yashoda gasps.

She sees in Krishna's mouth the whole complete entire timeless universe, all the stars and planets of space and the distance between them, all the lands and seas of the earth and the life in them; she sees all the days of yesterday and all the days of tomorrow; she sees all ideas and all emotions, all pity and all hope, and the three strands of matter; not a pebble, candle, creature, village or galaxy is missing, including herself and every bit of dirt in its truthful place.

"My Lord, you can close your mouth," she says reverently.

- Yann Martel, Life of Pi