Her hair
Soft and smells
Like the warm caressing
Of brine

Filled with the gentle
Round edges
Of my being
My whole

Centered in the gaze
Of a child,
Trusting me to hold
Her.

She drinks me in
And I sigh.

Need we speak to understand? Or
let empathy exude from silence –
understood silence — not for the lack
of things to talk, but
the lack of words to describe
some degree
of what I think I feel.

What first sounds awkward and strange, can
soothe and heal; when finally
we understand how little we actually say
when we say.

Silence is not emptiness, but
what lies behind the dribble
and drool
of common place words, describing
common place emotions.

Enough of words –
Live!

Feel

I thought I felt something
when I imagined the possible joys of
sun, sea, sunflowers and chocolate –
or maybe.

I thought I felt something
when I saw you shivering in the cold
and then hugging you –
for warmth.

I thought I felt something
when you said those words –
and plastered your face on mine.

I thought I felt –
but I was too stupid,
to realise I actually did.

(composed in New Haven, CT, 1995)

Of memories
Of an egalitarian dream
Now lost
To the rush rush
Brush brush
Of tyres on roads
Slippers sliding
Uncles sighing
School
Children with ben10 Herculean
Bags of burden.

You said
You lived here once;
But the HDB blocks
Were plainer then,
More real.
Now they are old toothless
Ladies dressed in gaudy hats
With bubble push up bras;
And laced
With the poison
Of paint (leftover from some store but
Sold at the original price)
Thickened cosmetic
Layering
On an egalitarian dream.

They now have condos
Side by side.
Even flats
Have to catch up with the times.

You said
You work here now.
And I sit
Waiting at aziz’s dream
Sipping my Teh Halia — tad
Too sweet.

And he, aziz,
Sweat on brow,
Looks just as lost
As the uncles sighing
Children crying

And QE2
ghostly drifting
From flat to flat
Searching
For the colony of her dreams.

There was a war here.

The perenakan past, written in alabaster murals
And blue lined tiles

Against the neon future
Of bright KTV lights and
young
girls.

NHB signs
Of everything nonya
(and a long time ago)

Clash
With Vietnamese sentimental pop
Blaring through china made
Speakers.

I eat my Pho Dac Biet

And it was good
With mint leaves and a raw egg
and lots of balls.

The straits times proclaimed the war
On sleaze had been won.
Yet
The battle for its soul
Has just begun.

In the same space
Only physically
Momentarily

I try to look into your eyes
Staring into a page.
We are trying very hard
To ignore each other.

This is only a means to an end
Do not expect kinship
In this metal tube
From east to city hall

We sit stand
Silent
Cocooned in our invisible Walls

I smell you though
And hear your thoughts

And you stare back
In your dark mascara eyes
Calling out for warmth
As the announcements sing
In mono electric tones
Devoid
Of what this all leading to

I look at your leather clad toes
And wonder
What worlds you have walked and walking to

At city hall
We stop our musings
And walk on by.

Thick with broken rocks
From the quarry
Where you were born.

Teeming with life beneath
The placid green and blue.
Atop
Children screaming
Past on their four wheelers
And sand covered
Skateboards
Screech
To a halt under
The tree with ropes
Cast between each other
Like magic telegraph poles
A web
Of silent protest.

This hole in the ground
Fills
Up to feed
Ten thousand in the east.

A gaping wound,
A silent mouth,
Yelling
Silently
To the deep blue sky.

Little tablets
Of living tombs
Surround this
Bed
Ok
So it’s a reservoir
Of sunken villages
Drowned trees –

A life that was;
And the breeze passes over
In search of truth.

And the soft leaves drip
Like lifeless green napkins

Dressings on wounds of past
Then
You noticed the pillboxes
Peppered against the wall
Of green and brown

Someone must have died here.

Now the workers line
The shore
With their whiplash fishing rods
Tossing
For luck.

And children run amok
Wooden mazes
And plastic dinousaurs
All screaming –
Of the happy sort
I think.

And as the sky weeps
I hear them voices
Within the concrete bunkers
And lightly sitting
On old trees that have seen much
Wave their crooked arms in despair

Amidst the disappointed faces
Of children
Staring at wet BBQ pits
Knowing
Their weekend outing is coming
To an end.

Across,
The giant chimneys spew
Their blessings and petro
Chemical
Black gold.

The rain is black
And thick
Choking.

Now is a field
A Padang,
A field before the concrete Ionian
Columns reaching
For clouds that once was
A stream
A brook
Trickling to sea
Past the river

That once was
A heady sweatshop
Of coolies
Dreaming of home
And love.

I see you stand
In that empty green
That once was
The home of bugis princes
And chinese princesses.

You
Who have a forward trajectory,
Oblivious to what was
Is treading
On what was
Once a forward trajectory.

So kneel
And bite dust.

Yet undeniably, there is a sense of “soul” for this community we call Home. Something that is made by us, and yet apart from us, and which will survive us as individuals.

It invades our conscience everyday when we wake up and go to work, cursing either the MRT, or the CTE.  It permeates our thoughts and speech. It is the common consciousness that allows us to look at each other, and feel a kindred spirit, suffering, living, enjoying the same experiences.

That “Singapore Soul” is elusive. I write, knowing that this will probably amount to nothing. But I think it’s worth the time and struggle to pin this ephemeral, yet eternal, beast down. Else, we live uncomfortably with this stranger breathing down our neck.