The Sea of Fecundity is acne from an eternity of puberty. The dark side is always covered by hair. Acne erupts in a forest, unseen. There is no face without hair. There were phases without hair. They still insist on long hair being a phase. Being new was supposed to be the absence of a phase. Being new is being unable to face having no face. Especially without hair. Gibbous curls shift in an eclipse of a hundred years and everyone watches. An oblique profile. Picture it. Eclipses are a return to hiding. To be full of courage for one night a month only. To phase out every other day. To be up every night. To return to light pollution as home. To smile or frown without eyes to see yourself. To see eternity as a phase.
Post
To be lost in the city, there is a need
to be found. Turn on GPS –
There is no button to mark yourself as safe.
The Assistant says, “The traffic is safe,”
you are insignificant on the map. The party is
a beer and a stranger’s unauthorized arm away.
The Assistant has none of that, so it bosses you
around the map. The high school friend you knew
is at the party and in past tense. Knowing them is a
tense continuity. The Assistant knows present grammar.
The Assistant is remote yet takes control. No stars since
you fell from the sky, a graying dot on milky roadways.
Lights clubbing at your shine, you control filters that
have been filtered for you. The Assistant ensures that
it is safe. That your friend lives in the future.
That they will send a card in a scroll.
Post-SingPoWriMo 2018
Whew. Okay I suppose the month has been long over so although it’s not like anyone is going to read this, i’ll place it here just for the sake of registers.
‘Moonrain’ was a poem I did on Day 21 – You can say it’s one of my personal favorites during the 30 days, hence my posting of it below ^ ^ The rest though, i’m not too proud of them but at least I’ve felt that I’ve pushed the limits of my current wordplay ability (Words are beautiful creatures though, ah).
I’m pretty confident about getting into the anthology, though i’m far from having a proper manuscript of poems. Gosh – I don’t even want to think about how my prose has been rotting in a unloved corner.
On the day of the closing party, I received a waitlist for my application to Yale-NUS, which was incredibly frustrating at best. It’s a feeling where you know you haven’t been rejected (I was rejected on my last attempt), yet it’s not as if i’m hurtling towards success. I spent most of the month in a rather deep anxiety, dreading judgment day until to my worst fears it seems that the day has been extended for two more months. It’s nightmarish, and it’s currently affecting my mood to do anything productive.
To think that even just last year, I’ve given up applying for a second time due to the sheer emotion that is rejection, until my family has helped me with their words of encouragement. By this point, of course I want it so badly and I must succeed, right? I’ve gotten even further than the last time. It has been my dream to be a student there since I was still pottering around in NUS High (and feeling inferior to my STEM peers).
My fingers are crossed, but being tired of waiting just hurts.
Moonrain
(after Issa’s 「露の世は露の世ながらさりながら」)
And yet, what can sleep
restless in complex glitter –
Not living nor dead?
Naked gossamer;
So nude are these lamppost tears
touching solitude.
Transpicuous song –
Light centuries of spire
to the still, and yet.
Absence Notes
Currently participating in 2018’s iteration of SingPoWriMo (“Singapore Poetry Writing Month”), where in addition I have also volunteered for the role of a moderator (which means lots of half-baked critique dressed in casual comments). I may or may not upload links to this space once this siesta is over.
Also, one of our good poet friends have been discovered to be plagiarizing stanzas from the very beginning – I worry since the impact of such an exposé on her might be that of falling off a building, but likewise, I think for the users unaware of the theft.
A part of me is glad that my metaphors can be harvested like sweet potatoes. Not the most delicious things – But there’s sufficient time for selective breeding.
Listening Post
When the city is too small
for the heart, a walk in a bar is
travelling the horizon of the moon.
Each crater a landmark of progress
but in the same shade that is
unreliable since you circumvented
twice. If craters were large enough to
contain our warmth the universe
compensates by echoing loneliness –
Still, no one can hear the moaning
or the smell the alcohol that clogs
the futility of memory, the taste of
names that spill off your glass onto
the lunar soil. The next civilization
will question the evidence, likewise
aching for why aren’t there more.
Small Talk
My chiffon floated your irises;
Your raised glances were gifts to
a well of emotions kicking and
shoving to provide space. This
dress almost couldn’t contain
the breath I had imprisoned,
just so my eyes could escape
their corners to meet yours
tracing frills and sewn-in flowers
along my curvature. But it was
laughter we blossomed into –
The fruits of which an excuse
for us to face each other.
Your name clumsy on my ears
but those blue eyes were how I
recalled a cloudy day. I dared to wish
you meant ‘french kissing’ not as
‘the french way of kissing
as a form of greeting’
after we shook hands, so I
diverted my attention to your
dress pockets and their rarity
since it was impossible to find
my tongue cuddling against the
warmth of yours, anyway. Before
we parted at last I was an oriental
embracing western customs –
Your left on my right, vice versa
Until bold lips added blush to
my cheeks, softer than my brushes,
and I returned the favor, memorizing.
Off-Hours
An empty room jostling with space,
lit by the city and the stars.
Brubeck and his quartet taking five
minutes of contemplation,
thoughts freeing thoughts
to construct using constraints.
Fingers glinting under moonlight
like your bones against darkness,
solace rewriting time signatures
from metronome interiors.
Midnight transcended,
smiles escape windows
to become light pollution.
Walls will reverberate
emotions singing in the shower.
Silence returns as a lover,
whispering sweet nothings,
listening to how
you are static.
For Positivity
Oh Mother, Grandmother, Great-Grandmother – I’ll need the strength to do what I’ll have to do.
Sandbox Yearn
There is a sidewalk,
waiting for shoes while
I try to hear another pair.
Who will sparkle in moondust?
I disperse clouds with inertia
that tends towards anything, but
love is friction.
There is a city composed in
beams of starlight, within them
a window of distraction –
Of future lovers,
their quavers.
Can I improvise my desire,
to share a cloud,
in the entropy of my cells?
Anyone that wants to measure
the transparency of space
by my flickering eyes.
Lune L. 
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