Sun Wukong

What if they forgot to collect your soul

in the middle of the story?

You ransacked the dragon king

and wiped out all monkey names in hell.

A moment's hesitation could ruin the movie.

Suddenly you might be happy ever after,

with your iron pillar bearing magic,

and your brothers,

who've always suspected you were different.

Your hairs clot the washing machine.

The headmaster finds you too hairy.

And upstairs, the party will happen without you:

They will beef up their body from the fruit of trees,

all thousands of its pink bearing immortality.

You wage havoc battle,

of which you hear only filled tummy.

Listen,

there're voices coming.

They're coming for the feast.

Examine your direction:

Beyond the Jasper Pool, the treasure chamber

are gourds of elixir.

Beyond, you tread the clouds

a leap of thousands miles,

and you wait for the five pillars,

to piss on.

*My last poem for the SingPoWriMo 2015 challenge in April, Day 23. The prompt was 'write a poem parody of a poet in the style of that poet'. I chose Ng Yi-Sheng's Ne Zha which is one of my favourite poems.

Original version: here

 

Distance

Feel but cannot bridge

Long forgotten how to touch

To bring adrift back

The Foreigner

She puts the everday of eggs and milk into her bag

counts cents to round up change but got snapped

No one told her it's difficult to say guten Morgen and danke

so they punish her with indifference of wie bitte

At the playground she is the only mother who plays

At the kindergarten's crowded front yard she sees no one

Her girl asks why she is not invited to Lina's birthday

Why she doesn't have yellow hair, blue eyes and Easter presents

Everyone loves a döner but no one is ready to accept the intruders

Even the traffics signs say they have no right of way to infract

In her mouth the pretzel leaves a bitter taste of wrong

and an anger at the myth to belong

She is trapped between the heroic and the pitiful

because of the godly cloth of monstrous curse around her head

The path you didn't take

Can't remember when

I chose the path you didn't take.

You two entwined vines,

the lone willow on my path,

all that's ever left of you.

Our roads crossed again,

briefly but seemed long enough

to look at your watch.

Blossoms dancing on your path

which's everything of you.

 

She Was A Mother Too

The thing growing in her

She did not understand

She watched the pregnant women

In the waiting room

She wanted to push them over

The window, the stairs

Each and everyone of them, Wiping out

That conceit from their face

That's some reason to be happy about

Instead of joy

Its tiny hands clawed at her, Twisting

Cold sweat, she started on her bed

She looked at the slump next to her, Dead

To her panting and growing fear, Lost

In his smug bliss of rubber of holes

She remembered staring at the surgical lights

Wide open eyes

The blinding lights did not hurt

as much as

When they emptied her

She broke into a run on her way out

Shivered despite the warm sunrays

She threw up nausea on the street

A nausea at her different colour

At not being a hero

At him who thinks it's her problem, not his

Nausea, she tattooed on her skin

She will never be rid of

Chai Chee

Boy had a backyard filled with rolling hills

Few neighbours to play with time on his hands

He laid seeds of vision upon these land

Didn't forget to water dedication

At night he lied on bed thought of his seeds

In the day he perched on top of his hills

Watching seeds grow into green emeralds

Generous boy fed his neighbours these greens

Hustle and bustle soon became these hills

Happy with his hard work and its newness

The boy spurred his neighbours to follow suit

Seeing the sparkle in his eyes they nodded

Gifts of his vision conceived on his world

He now sat in his backyard with legs up

His children drinking coffee next to him

Had other ideas 'bout kampong expanse

A Quick Meal

Interestingly enough, nine years

Away from hometown of my youth

I still learn from the kitchen dance

Her slender graceful leg

Her divine hip -

The small-waisted spatula

She feels unseen rhythms of stir frying within her

and reverberates a ballon on the warm metal floor

Twirling around with her geometric lines

Her body is taken over by

Crescendos of translucent onions

Orbiting jumps in searing meat

She finally falls onto the bed of frying rice

As the lid of lights descends at perdendo

She bows, closes her eyes

And let the heavy curtain of water

Washes away her sweat

The Last View of Singapore

young orchid will grow

dewdrops melt fore seeing

how tall it grows to be

Where he shouldn't be

His new baby's eyes

Its mother's mouth

Crescent of laughter

A field of bliss

A designer of homes

He sleeps in on workdays

Society won't give him work

An outsider, invisible

Like a rock among rocks

Milk bottles

Rice bin

Mouths

Marlboro

Dark shapes of his duty

Swallowing his vows

It's the only thing to do

So it's the right thing to do

Thirteen tiles before his eyes

At Pong!

Dwindling money in the drawer

Has to be returned

The bristles on his neck, wet

He closes his eyes

At Kong!

His friends look at his hardship

Indentify with him

Just because it's not theirs

At Zimo!

Jets of blue smoke

flush pleasure through alarm

Selling out her love and hopes again

Doesn't seem the right thing anymore

How does he go forward now

 

3am dream of Butterfly Lovers

Wake, from my dreams

The dried tears readied me

For today I escape, I escape

Clothed, in ten yards

Of red cocoon

Of golden phoenix arising

Pricking at my skin,

At the girlhood I now leave behind

Sit, in red sedan chair

A moving bamboo cage

To another empty walls

Breath, keep breathing

Sing, the rain and the wind

Before his white slab of stone

The earth receives me

In its furrow

Tapering away like my life

I bind our bones with red string

In the wedding of butterflies