do i really care

Apathy. Maybe that was the plan.

photo by dsnake1



do i really care


do i really care
today
as i pack a lunch
from the coffee shop
in a styrofoam box some rice
and meat dripping with grease,
the stall helper bored,
working 12 hour shifts.
maybe i will watch the parade
on tv later
raise a can of beer
to the guys standing in the sun
anyway it's all the same these years,
some songs
politicians waving
smiling
a show
of military strength
but there's an ache in the chest
that i cannot put a pulse to

because

you go out in the streets
in the sun and rain you see
the elderly collect used cardboard
& empty cans for a meal.

would they care for the flypast, the fighter jets?
the choppers, the tanks, the feu de joie?
they laugh and curse and wait for another day

and only when the national anthem comes up
do i try to hold back the tears.



written 09/08/2016
revised 06/10/2018
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Julia Westlin - The Sound of Silence (acapella) [ original song by Simon & Garfunkel ]

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© 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
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“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

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© cheong lee san ( dsnake1 ) 2018