black sheep

Numb with disbelief, sometimes.

image from morguefile.com



black sheep




i am a sheep
i whine
i fear when
         the next meal
             will not come
i really dread
         the sky falling
             clouds and all
i could not
         use it like
             a blanket
             anymore
i may not
         pick myself up
             from a fall
i see my
         tired feet
             slouching on
             dry asphalt
and i am
mumbling what costs have skyrocketed
but who listens?
who understands?
and when we had the chance at the poll booths

we threw it all away.


29/07/2016
**********

---

“Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.”

― Leonardo da Vinci


Chao Chuan [ 趙傳 ] - I'm a Small, Little Bird [我是一隻小小鳥]

---

© cheong lee san ( dsnake1 ) 2020

gangster movie

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

- Mary Oliver

photo by Sammy-Williams at pixabay



gangster movie


The pool hall is dark except for
the lights at the beige tables.
Two very bulky military police
guys push open the doors
and saunter into the hall
their eyes sharpened
for army deserters
their polished helmets
gleaming in the dim lights
their .45s automatics
in their holsters.

Boys, keep drinking your beers
don't get us into trouble.
The chatter dropped to a whisper
the clatter of ivory balls stopped
as they walked across the hall
steely eyes fixing on every face
every twitch of taut muscle
every curl of cigarette smoke
and there and then
i felt like a useless extra
in a gangster movie.



written 29/04/2009
revised 30/11/2012
revised 06/07/2021
***************


Note the revisions. A very longish poem came to this...

---

SiM - The Sound of Breath

---

© cheong lee san ( dsnake1 ) 2021

what are you doing tonight?

The night seems long, and there is no place to go.

photo of a Kyoto street by dsnake1



what are you doing tonight?


the half eaten dinner
is still in the styrofoam box
on the table

perhaps the rice is too sticky
maybe the cook had a bad day
like me

stub out the nth cigarette
sitting in the darkness listening
for a heartbeat

the blue curaco in a tall glass
with borzoi vodka and ice cubes
cools nerves

i light incense to her at the altar
call out her name, see the smoke
like farewells

i clean the dust and oil off
the gas hobs, as she had done
so many years

until the cold steel shines
and my sobs tremble and echo in
the silence

sitting in the quiet dark again
trying to figure out how the years
were wasted.

you will figure out surely
what you are doing tonight
the night answers

then i fire up the power amp
slip a disc into the player
sit back

and wait for Mark Knopfler
and his guitar to take us
to nirvana.


written lovingly 15/09/2007
revised slightly 23/08/2021
********************

---

Dire Straits - On Every Street

---

© cheong lee san ( dsnake1 ) 2024

September

She used to wear an anchor pendant on her necklace. Perhaps this is the one thing that is weighing me down.

There was once a prompt at Poets and Storytellers United to write about October. Sorry, my poem is about September.

photo by dsnake1



September


September seems like a meteor dropping from the sky,
once bright, then gone.

Like you too.

Remember we stand at the parapets of our block,
smoking cigarettes, bitching
about money and our jobs,
you a seamstress, me an odd-job labourer?

Life gets better.

But then you are gone, those memories hang
like van Goghs on my dusty wall.
Starry nights, irises, sunflowers,
cafes, tears and labour.
But I am too afraid
to follow you and so I linger
and I sit in dark corners
and wait for

September.



written 26/09/2023
revised 28/09/2023
****************

---

"what matters is that I still have
after all that has preceded
poems left
me left
and these walls that I have always
loved
in all the cities and in all the
places I have lived, these walls are still here and
my radio plays,..."

Charles Bukowski, luck from a kitchen

---

© cheong lee san ( dsnake1 ) 2024

daze

If there is a word to describe my 2023, it is "daze". Most of the months moved by like a haze, dysfunctional after boring months. Troubled by a rogue thyroid, lost weight, lost direction, time consumed by social media, most days is a snafu.

Then a stay of a month and a half in Amsterdam and the Netherlands somehow brought back some order. Ah, Amsterdam, the city of canals and bridges, bicycles and cyclists, cannabis and museums. The city woke me up to the beauty, and ugliness of this world.

From there, I followed the routes that Vincent van Gogh took in the village of Nuenen, where he stayed for some months at his mother's house, where he painted the watermills, windmills and people. Later I will visit the new, sleek museum in Amsterdam where most of his paintings are.

I made trips to the battlegrounds of World War 2, to Arnhem, to Groesbeek and Nijmegen, to look at mangled pieces of metal, to Anne Frank's house in Amsterdam, where a teenage girl just wanted to live a normal life, to try to understand the inhumanity of man to man.

I underestimated the cold in Amsterdam during November/December, coming from the tropics, and had to get extra warm clothing. I saw the homeless sleeping on the sidewalks, underpasses, and understand how cold they must have felt.

On the day I was leaving for home, at the airport, I saw heavily armed police and military personnel around. Discreet, yet visible, they are there because of a terrorist threat. There is more or less the same presence when I landed. The world has changed, and has not changed much.



01/01/2024
**********

from a wall mural in Amsterdam, Netherlands
photo by dsnake1



daze


"I will do it today."
"Tomorrow, it will be done."

And so, another year passes...


01/01/2024
**********

---

We do not cherish the hours until we worry about the nanoseconds. - dsnake1

---

© cheong lee san ( dsnake1 ) 2024

our old home

The prompt at Poets and Storytellers United asks us what conjures up "Home". There are perhaps many images that do that, and I would like to share this old poem (written and published here about a decade ago) about an old place I grew up in.

pencil sketch by dsnake1



our old home


looking out of the taxi from the viaducts
of the expressway

i saw the lights in the huge yards bathing the port
like day

the containers stacked as neatly as colourful
lego bricks

the cranes over them like metal brachiosauruses
breathing steam


once upon a time my cousin and i
catch catfishes

where the giant ships at the wharves
now berthed

not caring about the stings
or drowning


today as the last evening lights
scattered off

offices and warehouses ringed by a
chain-link fence

casting shadows and memories on a
concrete strip

there used to stand a house where I
called home.



15/11/2013
**********

---

"Tomorrow, we will be flying over the South China Sea
& home"

dsnake1 - lonely when away from home

---

© cheong lee san ( dsnake1 ) 2023

"Woman charged $608 for lobster la mian"

SingPoWriMo 2023 Day 3.

The prompt is to write a poem in Singlish. I will try. I speak it everyday.

photo by Pexels at pixabay



"Woman charged $608 for lobster la mian"


I never said that hor, it was in the news. Or some social media feed. Then if you look at the picture, the dish does look like a plate of vomit. The eater said one hor. Also cannot see the lobster. For that price? No wonder the woman kao pei kao bu. But never ask the price in the first place meh? Or look at the menu? Die die must eat here meh? I think some people are blur like sotong, or so rich till dun care. I wish I am rich liddat hor. Then can eat lobster noodle also. But liddat in the picture, I also complain one even if I got money to burn. Talking about money, that 600+ can fly budget to Oz and eat the lobster there. Lagi more fresh. Maybe can also throw in scallops, prawns and if you want, hum. (hum very expensive now, the char kway teow uncle told me). Okay lah, the kopitiam downstairs just renovated and open, let me see what I can get there. La mian?


06/04/2023
**********



Notes :

blur like sotong : used to describe a clueless person. Sotong is Malay for squid, which squirts ink to escape from predators. The ink makes it hard to see.
char kway teow : a stir-fried dish of rice noodles.
die die must try : something so great the person must try, no matter what.
hum : blood cockles.
kao peh kao bu : complain. Usually a big complaint. From Hokkien literally meaning 'cry father cry mother'
lagi : Malay word for more, greater or further.
la mian - "pulled" noodles, i.e. hand-made noodles.
liddat : like that
uncle : a male who is middle-aged or older, not necessarilly a relative and especially not well acquainted. The female form is auntie.
hor, lah, meh :(also mah, leh, siah as other examples) these are discourse particles occurring at the end of a sentence. It does not change its grammatical meaning, but how it is spoken changes the meaning or tone of the sentence, for example indicating annoyance, disbelief, amazement , etc.

---

CNA Insider - How Singlish Went From 'Cannot Make It' To National Hero | Singlish: Why We Talk Like That? - Part 1

(It's a bit longish, but interesting.)

---

© cheong lee san ( dsnake1 ) 2023