minus one

This was a challenge on Day 2 of SingPoWriMo 2023 (Singapore Poetry Writing Month). It was to write a "liwuli". A what? Okay, description below.

photo by Samuel Ramos at Unsplash



minus one


It should not be this way of course, a hard cookie crumbling. It is unfair for both of us. And chemo is not cheap either.

It is now a night of waiting
quick footsteps
cold coffee.

Have you seen tracers firing into the night sky, are they like red ribbons?



02/04/2023
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A liwuli is a poetic form deriving from South East Asian rhetorical traditions. It consists of 3 stanzas:

• the first stanza contains exactly 31 syllables in the form of a prose poem, and should be phrased entirely in terms of instructions.
• the second stanza consists of 14 syllables, and is broken into 3 lines (the length of each line is up to the writer as long as its 14 syllables).
• the third stanza consists of 19 syllables, broken into as many lines you want. the third stanza should be phrased entirely in terms of questions.

When properly executed, it is a very beautiful form.

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The Strawbs - The Winter Long

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© cheong lee san ( dsnake1 ) 2023