Hearken me, I'm back

and i was also thinking that i no longer had to search for myself in booze and bright lights and wafts of smoke and strange people and reflections and walks like a damn cat on the prowl on heels over broken pavements, sidestepping cracks in the concrete and listening to the wind speak.
but i guess there is no end for it yet.
and it's strange that i have to enter a classroom 2 hours later with the pupils having little inkling about what transpired in the last 20 hours or so that we last met.
i'd thought that among the bright lights, i'd found myself. perhaps it's just an illusion, or perhaps what you'd said to her on a bright weekday afternoon on a lush green court with brick red ground still rings true, the sharp words piercing the summer's breeze like a javelin. it's all in the mind, though i'd hearken not to think so.
the strange bodies all squashed on a platform, the people waving their cigarettes in the air and the smoke leaving whitish trails in the calm, undisturbed air, the individual buried with his face in a pool of vomit, the swirls of beer and froth on the ground, the blue tops above taxis that scream "take me", and now this reminds me of that last day we met when the cab that i narrowly missed taking had some semblence of a meaning to me since it represented when we met, but in the end it all didn't matter, because everything was too late, just simply too late.

hello, old life, life of drudgery, of late nights, of fatigue and of dreaming of planes. hello.

addicted

today we formed a ring together and moved to the left and then to the right. i also realised with a start that today marked 11 years since i wore a white top, shorts, had on my black shoes and walking around white-washing, spotting a white-washer, escaped into the washing and realised there was no way out. today also brings to mind a bible-togging aged man who has aged as much as i have. i wonder if the drain that i stomped on angrily has been fixed. or is it still loose, hanging over the culvert and lying in wait for its' next victim to jump up in fright as a clanging sound erupts from putting on too much weight on one portion of it.

so i marked in school today once again and had this weird conversation with my colleagues about food and sex, through no fault of mine since there is a magazine with the words "have sizzling sex tonight" displayed prominently near my shelf, which obviously does not belong to me. so there was much talk about helicopters, if you do know what they're getting at. i'm still unclear but i think i've figured it out :)

i shopped at somerset today. bought a pink tee with a wide collar and another pair of beach-shorts. i need them for blah days when i don't know where i'm going. i sat in the smoking open-air section of starbucks and had my latte with a mango cheesecake which melted in my mouth and smelt ash, cigar smoke and conversation mixed with the acrid taste of expresso. it's at times like these that i find coffee tastes like water mixed with cigarette ash. and i'm also convinced that i'm a potential chain smoker, if i do decide to pick it up at least. give me my coffee and pills to tide the day, and also a pencil to tap in hand to signify an action.

i went to this tiny church on the outskirts of busy orchard, where i passed by while walking to mohammad sultan once and which i took a picture of in the dark.

dinner was a lovely sweet, spicy, bitter, sour affair at siam kitchen, which i'm into nowadays. i love glass noodles, tiny peeled prawns, chopped corn, chicken wrapped in pandan leaves, thai fishcakes and tom yum soup.

then it was off to "addicted" where the songs, music and visions brought me back to headier times, times when we were carefree and free and love was an easy word. so long since. so long since. i hitch a ride home and never turn as i walk towards the lift and all of a sudden i recall lights shining behind me, imprinting me against the pink tiles for a moment, and how you looked with the backdrop of the brick tiles, the white walls, the tiny palm trees, and time stopped still for a while.

se7en

sometimes you search for words to play around with, some words are over-used, some skip happily over your mind as you try to reach over and grasp hold of a semblence of a way by which to convey your meaning. at times, words fail, they are pointless, they fail between the barriers between articulation and conveyance of a specific meaning.

i'd never thought of you that way, if only you could hear, not just hear but also listen, hearing and listening akin to seeing and searching for the meaning, meaning the elusive character that eludes our grasp everytime.

we spend our lives searching, often, for that which is in front of us.

and when was there a need for me? how did this need arise and from where did it stem from? creation of reasons, creation of needy reasons, this is all getting too blatant.

cremation of you.

If you can't make your mind up,
We'll never get started.
And I don't wanna wind up
Being parted, broken-hearted.
So if you really love me,
Say yes.
But if you don't, dear, confess.
And please don't tell me
Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps,
Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps,
Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.
by cake.

but the lyrics to the song bring to mind some half-past-six-long-gone jewellery ad and some girl in a black/grey smocked tunic dancing around - was it so?
and reeks of pathetictism. if there were only such a word.

so perhaps? not, please.

brine

you know
it wasn't quite
so long ago,
that we ate
crabs
in a dingy coffeeshop
with oil, grime and dust,
fingers picking
eagerly into crevices.

walking sideways,
akin to crabs,
along the briny beach.
walking sideways as we shouldn't have.

fridays remind me of art,
blue fingers and hypothermia.
of screams and
balancing paint on art paper.

it's hard to think of what the mind conjured,
when it's no longer present.
why is it that the same song
no longer regales the same emotions?

i think and try,
but the song never brings more
than the movie to mind.
and which is that?
you ask.

i smiled at the whiteboard,
knowing what transpired.
you at midnight,
a friend who left.
you changed your number.
it isn't the same.
the phone that rang.
the phone hidden under the pillow.

a shrill ring that pierces the air.
a shrill ring past midnight.
conjuring images of horror,
blood and the unexpected.

has it been a hundred days then?
i wanted to sleep while watching you.

it lies, unopened

i realise yesterday who thomas reminded me of.

***

the fact that a prominent minister of singapore will be kick-starting the light-up ceremony over at chinatown brought to mind o'farrell's characters, mel and jake, the crowd, the push, the pull and how you just flow in a crowd, devoid of direction, moving as if attracted by the pull of a magnet in the direction the general want to go. there was an outlet and they wanted to leave, but a man carrying beer bottles dropped them, the glass bottles broke into tiny shards of glass and the beer foamed and swirled out upon the ground. they had to return to the crowd once again though why they preferred being pushed around the crowd to stepping on shards of beer seems unfathomable to me unless they were barefooted.

and then i thought of last year this time when we were together watching the certain minister's son instead kick-starting the event, walking through the crowds, pushing our way through, sidestepping and worming our way into any fatigable corner in order to move, just to move will do.
and then stuck and not moving, the firecrackers went off without warning and there was cheer and merry-making and you could literally see the crackers lighting up in bountiful sparks.

and then we meandered our way to burger king and sat down and ate and has it already been a year dammit?

***

your present lies unopened in my bag.

the shallow entity

it's quite sad to be stuck in somewhere resembling a time warp when the world goes on outside your cocoon.

***

i think of your full fringe now swept to the side and i think of how i tied my hair up today and yet my nape wasn't exposed because i was wearing that semi-shirt that i bought when i was with you, while things were still fine. i'm glad i can still fit into that shirt.

the pink. Mr Brightside the Pink. this suddenly reminds me of my pinky ring that i bought myself when i declared independence and which i lost somewhere in bugis, either left in the gym shower or slipping off my hand as it glides through the air in a futile attempt to catch the bus.

when switching on the current i think of seven years ago when i was all alone in that big school and how you were all alone too and how your bus rides to school ensured that you would pass me by every morning. i still remember shouting to you over the phone that you shouldn't let your life be such, that if it were such, you'd be better off dead by jumping into a river. at that exact moment, it hadn't occured to me that a river was probably a shallow entity.

but you're fine now and done good, that much my green eyes must rest. you have a big car and a fancy girl with pink hair and not much that i care about you but for god's sake stop trying to get to me when i know you don't care about me, it doesn't bother me much. oh, the pink again.

since when was i so associated with pink?

i lost the pinky ring and now i still absently graze my thumb across the base of my tiniest finger, hoping to reach for a tinge of metal and the criss-crossed patterns engraved on the ring. i could always reach for hers but it isn't the same. and for that, i won't.

words of the day: celebrated - initiative, infer, indulgent? no, of course not. briny.

everyday is a winding road darling, it's how you wind you way through it perhaps. but some days simply suck.

it's just the start of term, just the start of term.

the new year beckons

no. i refuse that. it does not beckon, it stamps its' feet, bangs at the doors, demands to be let in, stomps in and kicks the door shut.
it has come unannounced and is unapologetic, blatant and demanding. it demands you do something to welcome it, it demands attention and craves to be celebrated.
you welcome it unwillingly, annoyed by the need to usher in it when you've not let go of the past.

2005 was a blast. maybe not quite the blast that the term "blast" conjures to mind, but still, an eventful year.
after all, this was the year i did so many things for the first time, things i hadn't dared to do before.

i graduated, i taught, i drank, i danced, i slept, i wrote, i revelled, i dreamed, i thought, i travelled, i read, i cursed, i loved, i hated.

some friends are no longer friends, some were known only for a few hours when something sparked between us and created a wave that carried me on for another month or so. some friends were found after more than five years, some friends are totally lost now. some are best lost.

it's difficult to sum up the year in so many ways - guess i'm already late to this since it's already the second day of the new year, but closure, closure.

all in all, i learned. and while i'm not exactly welcoming that unwelcomed guest who came one too early, i guess, i'll live with it.

onward 2006.