our universe

This was an entry for an international haibun contest in 2018. No, this haibun didn't win anything. I thought it was pretty well written and would like to share it again here. On hindsight, I think there was no seasonal word in the haiku part of the poem.

photo by Paulina Milde Jachowska at Unsplash


our universe


After we have packed our hammers and saws and nails in the toolshed, and our daily wages have been tallied and registered by our foreman, we gather outside the doorway for a final smoke. Someone lights some incense to the earth god, giving thanks for another safe day. Another feeds the black guard dog, stroking its beastly head as it eats hungrily from a dirty dish.

It is mostly like this, the end of another day, the smell of sawn wood still clinging to us like a scab. Sometimes we drink some tea, over a stove fire, like our forefathers did, building railroads and harbours in America and Hong Kong, half a lifetime away from home. The red glows of our cigarette tips flare, taunting the stars that are coming out in the gathering darkness, over the bulky silhouettes of the unfinished buildings behind us.

We stub out our cigarettes, grunt some goodbyes and jibes, and start our trucks and motor bikes, for the journey home, the tires churning out a cloud of dust on the unpaved roads. Tomorrow we will be here again, the dog's barks, loud in the early light blues of our universe.

dusk descends
the cirrus clouds sing
of a flat earth



13/01/2018
**********

---

Huang Jia Mei (黄家美) -- 爱拼才会赢

---

© cheong lee san ( dsnake1 ) 2025

longing

Losing someone you loved dearly will break your heart, but they will live always in that broken heart.

pencil sketch by dsnake1


longing


We were night owls. We worked hard, partied hard after dark. We pub crawled, we drank. We loved the booming bass lines of live bands, the husky, sultry serenades of sexy songbirds. We loved bright shirts, loud colours, and sometimes we weren't sure which smell was stronger on our polyester, the cologne or the alcohol.

But above all, above us, we loved watching the stars. I tried to tell her that stars are just balls of fire, tried to explain to her about light years and the doppler effect and such. It's not very romantic. And she just smiled. To her, the stars are just jewels in the sky, mysteries not to be solved. So I just tried to point out to her, the Dog Star, the Big Dipper, and the stories behind the names, with what limited knowledge of the stars that I had. We would sit at the breakwaters, the piers, at the esplanade, the beaches, or the benches of city parks, looking up, sometimes her head on my shoulders.

But no more. She passed on, you see, a star herself, snuffed out. Is there a star less then? I can't tell, there are too many. Maybe the stars mirror us. A star extinguishes, someone loses a loved one. Maybe there are other star-crossed lovers like us, over the dark expanses, looking up at their night skies. Maybe there are wars being fought out there. Maybe the light I saw, was us a lifetime before.

if i could pluck the stars
put them in a jar
will you come back to me?


11/04/2013
**********

---

Drop's - 月光 [moonlight]

---

© cheong lee san ( dsnake1 ) 2021

Sengaku-ji

"The reputation of a thousand years may be determined by the conduct of one hour." - Japanese proverb.

photo by dsnake1



Sengaku-ji



Who would like to visit a graveyard when on a holiday tour? Not many, I guess.

But here I am, in one of the largest cities of the world, somewhere in Tokyo, on a cold balmy morning. Around me, are weathered gravestones with wooden votive plaques. Incense smoke rises from some holders. But this is not any graveyard. This is the resting place of the 47 ronin. I will not go into their legend. There are books and plays and movies. Yes, Hollywood has shot a movie about them with Keanu Reeves and though embellished with fictitious additions, it still try to stay true to the original incident. To the Japanese, the story of these ronin stands for duty, honour, courage and loyalty, the things that drive their psyche and soul.

I stand before these weathered stones, like the thousands and millions before me, bowing to them, trying to understand their courage and fears and sacrifices.

Perhaps we will never truly understand. Just like I do not understand how I navigated the chaos that is Shinjuku Station, the largest and busiest train station in the world, where I earlier had taken the train from.

An old lady comes, clutching a handful of incense. She walks with slow but determined steps up the stone stairs, to the graves. There are a couple of businessmen type there, in sharp black suits, and holding briefcases. They are sombre, silent, heads bowed before the graves. Perhaps they are seeking guidance on some difficult decisions?

The sky is threatening to rain. I walk down the stairs, out of the graveyard, and back to the main temple compound. Workers are trimming the ancient pine trees there. A teacher is bringing a group of young school-children, speaking in rapid Japanese. I do not understand his language to his charges. I just need to understand why I was here.


overcast skies -
a red maple leaf
falls from a branch.



written 21-11-2019
revised 07-12-2019
*****************

photo by dsnake1

---

It is 8°C in Kyoto when I leave for Tokyo. It is warm in the shinkansen train. I watched the countryside of Japan flashing by as I eat my bento meal. Power pylons, houses with satellite dishes, squares of tilled land, rivers, mountains with autumn hues of red, orange, yellow and green. I do not want to sleep, like most of the other passengers, and miss all these. Soon, after slightly more than two hours, the train rolls into Tokyo Station. Back into the cold, and the rush hour of Japan.

---

photo by dsnake1



© cheong lee san ( dsnake1 ) 2019

our universe

This was an entry for the Genjuan International Haibun Contest 2018, submitted in late January 2018. The results were out in early May. No, this haibun didn't win anything. :)

image from pixabay




our universe



After we have packed our hammers and saws and nails in the toolshed, and our daily wages have been tallied and registered by our foreman, we gather outside the doorway for a final smoke. Someone lights some incense to the earth god, giving thanks for another safe day. Another feeds the black guard dog, stroking its beastly head as it eats hungrily from a dirty dish.

It is mostly like this, the end of another day, the smell of sawn wood still clinging to us like a scab. Sometimes we drink some tea, over a stove fire, like our forefathers did, building railroads and harbours in America and Hong Kong, half a lifetime away from home. The red glows of our cigarette tips flare, taunting the stars that are coming out in the gathering darkness, over the bulky silhouettes of the unfinished buildings behind us.

We stub out our cigarettes, grunt some goodbyes and jibes, and start our trucks and motor bikes, for the journey home, the tires churning out a cloud of dust on the unpaved roads. Tomorrow we will be here again, the dog's barks, loud in the early light blues of our universe.

dusk descends
the cirrus clouds sing
of a flat earth



13/01/2018
**********

---

and if you are still in the office: Working Class Hero -- John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band

---

© cheong lee san ( dsnake1 ) 2018

thin red line

I wrote this for SingPoWriMo 2016 (the local variant of NaPoWriMo), and was posted at my other blog. The poem is inspired by a news report on depression, on an actual case where a widow wanted to jump from her block of flats, and her mother-in-law talked her out of it.

image by dsnake1, done with Sketchpad 4.0




thin red line



Sanity and madness, life and death, is just divided by a razor cut. Or a thin red line, and that is why, tied between her wrist and that of her young child, is a thin red thread. Standing at the rooftop of her apartment block, with the rapidly sinking sun, the dark clouds do look so much closer. As the wind slips around her hair, her legs, she takes a step forward towards the edge, her hand tightly holding her child's, the blackbirds watching, squabbling. The ground below is a dark abyss and the lights of the city are just mocking eyes. And then a soft voice, so close, so helpless.

mommy, i am cold.

And all the fears and hatred and pity fly off into the night, as she holds her child, feeling her warmth and she cries it all out and the child puts her hands on the mother's cheeks, and she cries some more, and more.

She tears off the red thread binding them, then, like a lotus growing out of mud, holding her child's hand, she walks back down the stairs, back to their home, as the stars start to twinkle in the sky above.


candlelight -
her face
brightens



05/04/2016
**********

---

“I went to the worst of bars hoping to get killed but all I could do was to get drunk again.” 

― Charles Bukowski

---

© cheong lee san ( dsnake1 ) 2018

lessons

To all the teachers that had bear with me, stood by me, thank you!

photo by geralt at pixabay



lessons


When the form teacher announced that morning that one of our classmates had left us we were not sure of the message, what it really meant. You see, what do primary one kids know about accidents and death? He fell into a well at home last night and that's that. He was a quiet kid, well-mannered, and we may miss him.

Miss Wee went out of the classroom, in between English lessons, a few times, I think, to dry her tears. The mood was somewhat sombre, we were quite well behaved for the rest of the day, even the class bully did not try to lift the skirts of the girls.

Then came the end of school day, and as Miss Wee dismissed us, we came running out to the patch of forest near the school, took out our empty match boxes, threw down our bags and plunged into the tall grasses to catch fighting spiders.

school bell rings -
chalk dust
on the teacher's hair



written 05/10/2016
revised 22/03/2018
******************

---

"We break rules. We break their hearts. Yet we may not break their spirits." - dsnake1


And if you are thinking of them : Lulu - To Sir With Love

---

© cheong lee san ( dsnake1 ) 2018

when the air flames

I was a eleven year old kid when I witnessed my first racial riot. Or rather the aftermath of it. My mother braved all that violence to fetch me from school, travelling a considerable distance by bus and foot.

This was also written for the Golden Point Awards 2015 competition.

ink/pencil sketch by dsnake1



when the air flames over the colour of skin


From my window I watched the flames from the torches lighting up the night air and the Chinese gangsters waving their parangs and staffs, shouting to march to Kampong Glam and the Gasworks, and in that moment, the thrusting, waving blades held more terror than all the spirits of the netherworld.

They would gather and talk later the next day, in the shop houses, the temples, over coffee and cigarettes, of last night’s battles, comparing scars, deep as the schisms of the colour of skin. How many Malays did you slashed last night, or were you chopped at instead? Did you run when the police raised their guns?

Of course I do not understand all these then, the burning cars in the streets, the acrid smoke drifting into our homes, and the eyes of the neighbours, all seething with anger and loathing. Neither my parents could tell me, didn’t great aunt treat her Malay driver like family, do we not miss their kueh when we moved to the city?

The nights have been dark
And our heroes are dead.


10/05/2015
**********

---

"Do not give them a reason!"
-- A Baltimore man, during the 2015 riots, standing between a line of police and angry protesters, trying to quell the aggression.

---

© cheong lee san ( dsnake1 ) 2018

moths

I wrote this, intending to submit it (and a few others) for the Golden Point Awards 2015, a national writing competition. So I thought I would polish it up a bit, office work took its toll and the deadline breezed by (can you imagine it was three years already?). So yeah, forget it, I will just post it here (and the rest of the lot, if ..) Wonder how it will perform in the competition though. :)

drawing by dsnake1 done with Sketchpad 4.0




moths


i

When I was a small boy, my father would talk to me in hallowed tones about Dien Bien Phu, showed me from some Chinese magazines, the monochrome prints of tired soldiers, a landscape so scarred by shells it could well be the moon and parachutes in the air like thin black mushrooms. I do not understand why a battlefield in Vietnam could excite him so.


ii

My father had come to South East Asia, looking for their Ellis Islands, their torches bringing them to a new land, as insects attracted to light, growing roots, hear the fledgling politicians pounding their socialist rhetoric, taking sides, staking a claim on an opportunity, building a home from scratch.


iii

In time, i served this new land, i bit a cigarette too, dug foxholes in hills, filled sand-bags just like some French troopers, biting on their Gauloises, in some hell hole in South East Asia. Only difference was, i need not fire a shot in anger, our Anne-Maries, Beatrices and Isabelles were not trampled upon, and died.


iv.

Later I retraced my father's words, understood why Dien Bien Phu made him proud of his skin, why we may forgive, but never forget, even among our own creed. And why my parents made sure that their children do have an opportunity that they were denied. In time I understood all these, there was so much learning even in a house without electricity and running water...


v.

bright pressure lamp
moths come in from the night
to die


written 08/04/2007
revised 13/06/2007
revised 25/01/2013
******************

---

“Not knowing when the dawn will come
I open every door.”

― Emily Dickinson, The Complete Poems


And a song if you are thinking of home : CSNY - Our House

---

© cheong lee san ( dsnake1 ) 2018

and all we cared about was the shopping

It has been a while since i visited the Orchard Road malls...

photo by dsnake1, taken around xmas 2015




and all we cared about was the shopping



A child was riding the train with his father. I was sitting opposite them and could not help listening to their conversation. "Daddy," asked the boy, "when the train reaches the last station, how does it turn around? It got to come back right?"
The dad was not too sure either, for he started to hem and haw.
"The train is sooo long, but it got to somehow turn around, right?", the kid persisted.
The father seemed to have an epiphany. "The driver walks back to the other end", he said.
"Huh?". The boy was not sure what his father was saying.
"There are two driver's cabins on the train, one at each end", the father explained.
"When the train ends at one station, the driver walks to the other end and starts the next journey from there."
The boy was quiet for a while, contemplating his father's answer. "I want to see the other cabin", the boy said.
Sighing, the father took his child's hand, got up from their seats and started to walk towards the rear of the train.
I smiled. Poor daddy, it would be quite a long walk...


in the train
only the children look out of the windows
at the world.


19/03/2016
**********

---

“Nothing you do for children is ever wasted.”

― Garrison Keillor, Leaving Home



Shared on Poetry Pantry #294 at Poet's United.

---

© cheong lee san ( dsnake1 ) 2016

one day in Batam

A few years back, I visited the Indonesian island of Batam. Just slightly larger than Singapore, and only 20 plus kilometres away by high speed ferry, it felt like visiting your own backyard. I expected the place to be quite laidback and backward, from the stories my friends brought back, from their days of working on the island.

But it is really not so. She is doing catching-up, and at a fast pace. The power lines on pylons crisscrossing the island, the satellite dishes on almost every rooftop, and the SUVs on the new highways are telling a new story. I have not been back there since and I wonder how she is doing today.

photo of a bridge at Batam by dsnake1






one day in Batam



We came down from the tour bus to a hot dusty track. The guide was saying this is how the locals still lived. The zinc roofs of the village huts shimmered in the noon heat, and I was half expecting them to melt, or burst into flames. In a field, an old man walked among the scrub and stones, shoeless. He was carrying a sickle but there were not many weeds to cut. We can feel the heat of the road through the soles of our shoes. A dog ambled like an old friend to the shadow of the bus, sat down and scratched its face with a dirty paw. A lady, wiping the sweat off her face with a blot of tissue, grumbled and muttered, and returned to the aircon comfort of the bus. I felt like we have landed on another planet.


lunch time -
        the flies buzz
        to another feast.




20.09.2015
**********






photo by dsnake1

---

"Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us."

-- Calvin, Calvin and Hobbs


Shared on Poetry Pantry #270 at Poets United.

---

© cheong lee san ( dsnake1 ) 2015

ash

I know I shouldn't be posting this, the first post of the year...

photo by Yuriy
image from publicdomainpictures






ash




walking across an empty car park, my heart has taken on the darkness of this night. i am thinking about a lot of things, the twelve hour shift i have just clocked, the hunger in my belly, the way this country is going, this rain that is still falling. the two NYC cops. Christmas doesn't feel like Christmas anymore. you want to run tears like the cold rain that had fallen on your face.


i punch a coke
from the vending machine.
wish it was a beer.


24/12/2014
**********

---

"and i shelter in the dark
like bats seeking moonlight"

-- dsnake1, after a rain


Shared on Poetry Pantry #235 at Poets United.

---

© cheong lee san ( dsnake1 ) 2015

you laugh and my heart sings

Another haibun. This was inspired by the prompt at Poets United Midweek motif, which was "melody".

Had to dig deep into the memories for this, but once there the writing was easy. :)

photo by Prawny
image from morguefile.com





you laugh and my heart sings


The train platform is crowded, it is the evening rush hour. I am already late for my date. I hope she won't be mad. Coming out of the train, I scan the crowd for a face. We see each other almost immediately. Throwing up a hand, she gives out a laugh, which sounds like a cross between a siren and a cackle. She must be really mad.

"Daddy!", she screams, letting go of her mother's hand, and her little five years old body flies into my arms.




neon soaked street -
a saxophone breathes
into the night



12/09/2014
**********

---

♡

---

© cheong lee san ( dsnake1 ) 2014

my mother and the moon

Tomorrow will be the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival. It used to be a big day in the past, but not anymore now, I guess. So, here's something to celebrate the occasion. Anyway, I have eaten some of the moon cakes. :)

image by dsnake1




my mother and the moon


Mother, whenever I see a full moon, I would be reminded of you. You see, you were like the light on a dark night that guided me. You were the Weaver and dad, the Cowherd, as you so lovingly told us, your children, those folk tales, about the moon and humans and gods and deities. But what I remembered most was, you prayed to the moon. Yes, mother, you prayed to the moon! On every Mid-Autumn's night, you filled a tray with fruits, water caltrops, three cups of tea, bowls of jelly, moon cakes, areca nuts and betel leaves, a box of rouge and a bottle of florida water. These you offered to the Moon Goddess, after you have lighted the candles and joss sticks, to pray for health and safety for the family.

"But mother, the Americans have landed on the moon!", I would say, and you would silence me and beg forgiveness from the goddess for this ignorant son. It has been years since I last eaten those jellies, mother, how I wish I could eat those jellies that you made on Mid-Autumn's day again. They were delicious and sweet. But now, you are up there with the moon too, among the stars, and as I gaze up at the night skies, I miss you, your wisdom, though you know little of letters, your compassion, your faith in us, and I am thankful, knowing you will guide us on in the darkest nights.



full moon
and other lanterns -

mid-autumn's night.



written 12/05/2013
revised 07/09/2014
******************

---

This is my attempt to translate the Chinese Tang dynasty poet Li Bai's "A Quiet Night Thought".


in front of my bed a patch of moonlight
it seems there is frost on the ground
i lift my head and gaze at the full moon
when i lower it i think of my hometown


**

The haiku at the end of my poem, I lifted from a previous post in my other blog. :)

---

© cheong lee san ( dsnake1 ) 2014

the last man

Are you feeling chilly, do you jump at the slightest movement of shadows? Here's a story from my NS days during basic military training.

Though the Chinese 7th Month, also known as the "Ghost Month", is over, I think it's still okay to post this.

I will try to get back to some serious writing after this. The work in the office is really getting crazy. :)


photo by Miyabi
image from morguefile.com



the last man
stop looking back.


The night over Tekong was unforgiving. Starless, tar black, bloated clouds threatening rain. Our patrol was trying to make its back to camp. In that tube of darkness that was the jungle trail, we could not see our palms if we had held them in front of our faces. No torchlights, no cigarettes, no zippos, our drill sergeant had warned. We had to trust the point man and his topographic skills. Walking in a single file, holding on to the webbing of the man in front, we inched forward like a wounded caterpillar.

Somehow we made it back, and as we straggled into the lights of the camp, my buddy came up to me, his voice highly agitated, and demanded to know why back there on the trail, i kept pulling his SBO and calling his name. Bemused, I told him I was at the front of the file, and did not do those things he said. I also reminded him that he had volunteered to be the last man in the patrol. And then his face turned a ghostly shade of white..

moonless night
white moth flies in
and rests on his bed.


23.08.08
********


© cheong lee san ( dsnake1 )