heels

This poem is one of the earliest (if not the earliest) picture prompts I tried when I started to go online. It is so old I forgot about the written date, probably in 2005. 😮

photo by Yogendra Singh at Unsplash



heels


Okay, i don't mind the bad hair wig,
even the blood red lipstick
the tiny tiny black tube top
and the oh-so-short leather skirt.

you need someone to play a vamp
in some silly stage show

but the straw that broke my back
was these heels.
why must they be in red?
i quit!


2005?
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Rosemary at Poets and Storytellers United would like us to write about the colour 'red'. The picture above is not the original picture prompt for this poem. .

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"How can you live the high life if you do not wear the high heels?"

—Sonia Rykiel

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© cheong lee san ( dsnake1 ) 2022

the city sheds its skin like a snake

This is a picture prompt from The Sunday Muse, prompt #168. Okay, I know it's a wee too late to post there.

image from The Sunday Muse



the city sheds its skin like a snake


change
you can see it
slowly surely
like the way dead skin cells
fall from the body
old houses
fall down
for steel monoliths
the way peasants
bow to kings
and
you are back in the city
it has changed
it has not changed
much
now we look for
a good cell signal
and the cafes
the way the signs
change their fonts
and the friendly old waiter
who serves you no more.

you can feel the sudden
rain that falls on you
cold as ice.

more broken asphalt
detour signs
they are still digging roads
to pile in more cables
to power
warehouses and schools,
penthouses and tenements
you sidestep orange cones
and puddles
the foreign workers in
luminous vests clawing
at the road in excavators
the smell of tar
rising from the summer road.

you can feel the city
shedding its old skin
like a snake.



21/07/2021
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Shared at Writer's Pantry #81 at Poets and Storytellers United.

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I love my city, even though it crushed our little shanty home and made it a container port. Now I like it's tree-lined streets, streetlights that work, 24-hour convenience stores, and air-conditioned malls to escape the heat. The whole city seem like a theatre, us brisk walking to the subways, the traffic lights changing red to green, the mother pulling her crying child along is an actor, the boys pushing a ball at the basketball court are living their dreams. And even at night the city never sleeps.

- dsnake1

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© cheong lee san ( dsnake1 ) 2021

dark side of the moon, part #3

what an early morning walk through the neighbourhood can do to you...

photo by dsnake1



dark side of the moon, part #3


adjust your eyes to the night awhile. the long line of street lights, they are zombies coming out to play.

do not touch that empty plastic bag rolling, flailing across the zebra crossing. do you feel any wind?

no flowering trees around, but a scent of frangipani? and that lady just ahead, is she waiting for a taxi?



2018, or thereabouts
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"ashes
swirling
swirling
at your
bare feet"

-dsnake1, glimpse

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© cheong lee san ( dsnake1 ) 2020

dark side of the moon, part #2

imagine what a messed-up chair top can inspired...

photo by dsnake1



dark side of the moon, part #2



we have to land, she says. we have to jettison some stuff. the fuel, some cargo.
but the people down there, the villages?
fuck the villages, she says

and she runs her ferrari right through the lights...


20/10/2018
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this piece partly inspired by news of supercar drivers behaving badly...

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Rolling Stones - Paint It Black

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© cheong lee san ( dsnake1 ) 2020

autobiography of a reluctant scarecrow

A picture that shouts "prompt!".

photo by Jim Semonik at pixabay



autobiography of a reluctant scarecrow


Say, do you know a place for a good bath? No acid, no sulphur, no coca cola. Some WD40 welcomed. Nothing fancy. I have been standing in for those damn scarecrows for the past ten years maybe. They went to town for a drink, chase some barmaids, eat some steak, promise to be back by ten, and never came back. The sun mocks me, sending its best cavalry of sharpened lances, the moon just laughs, sometimes so hard it chokes stars. Last heard, the sheriff found turfs of straw that reeked of alcohol on the interstate. I think it is time to move on. Say, do you know a place for a good bath?


26/03/2019
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“Would it save you a lot of time if I just gave up and went mad now?”

― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

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© cheong lee san ( dsnake1 ) 2019