Printing Money by Toh Hsien Min

As my dad used to say whenever he
thought we were spending all his thrift,
do you think I print money? I didn't really
know at that time whether to take him seriously.
I mean, I was six, maybe seven. My concept of
money extended to what I got for wanton mee
at school recess only, and everything else I
asked for knowing who would give it but not
what this person would do to give it to me.
One December, shopping at Isetan, he pretended
to refuse to buy me a die-cast Millennium Falcon,
and when I returned to that special aisle and shelf
in the toy department the last one was gone,
the absent shrine of a forgetful grief. My dad
unwrapped it, under the tree, for a boy who
still believed Santa Claus came down the chimney,
even though we had no chimney. Dad believed
in the deserts of hard work, years and years
with the same employer, saving money by
fixing the blinds and electrical extensions himself.
Never quite recovered when his firm let him go,
three years before retirement age. Now that I've aged
also, and the difference between a good year
and a bad year is a greenback hedge, I know.
My dad doesn't print money, but someone out there
does. It all revolves on being on the right side
of that ocean-equation, whether you're holding Treasuries
and knowing how to deploy the funds you haven't got.
Someone's got to lose, just as somewhere in the world
the stratonimbus plan a margin-call, and elsewhere
beneath molten sky unwearied Namibians speak again
of the season of dry water, stretching endlessly
before them, shimmering like silver, one remove
from the hardtack stop-loss of the ground,
that forgiving, unnourished, ageless ground.

From Whom The Bell Tolls by John Donne

"No man is an island, entire of itself;
every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less,
as well as if a promontory were,
as well as if a manor of thy friend's
or of thine own were:
any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind,
and therefore never send to know
for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee."

/from
Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, no. 17
(Meditation)
1624 (published)

Not Waving But Drowning by Stevie Smith

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he’s dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

The Facebook Sonnet by Sherman Alexie

Welcome to the endless high-school
Reunion. Welcome to past friends
And lovers, however kind or cruel.
Let's undervalue and unmend

The present. Why can't we pretend
Every stage of life is the same?
Let's exhume, resume and extend
Childhood. Let's all play the games

That preoccupy the young. Let fame
And shame intertwine. Let one's search
For God become public domain.
Let church.com become our church.

Let's sign up, sign in and confess
Here at the altar of loneliness.

My city, my canvas by Heng Siok Tian

How do I colour my city
with creatures busy in living?
Do I walk along as if on an errand
seeking a lotus pond afloat with enlightenment?
Do I go in search of orchid petals
to unfurl whorls for hybrid pollens?
Do I hurry along street plans and measure landuse
to draw lines and shapes for my canvas?

My city has no mountain ranges
to be unscrolled broadened brownness,
neither has she bushfires nor epic tragedies
but her sky can be
as dry and distant as a desert's.
My city has campaigns, policies and long-term planning,
has a reputation for drivenness
of a small country,
has shopping malls and more ...

Is my canvas
a surrealscape of
a slim city slowly coated with melting cheese
where there are crowns with broken legs,
jugglers balancing on shaky stakes,
children spinning on top of whales
growing up to be adults with briefcases
on top of flying clocks?

I want to hiss a snake out of a kettle,
drink it like coffee as steam scatters
that I may
frame with passing beatitude and mosaic wisdom,
my city, my canvas.

The Portrait of a Sentenced Library by Alfian Sa'at

So these bricks will be torn down
And books will still not have learnt
To spread their feathers and fly
Like pigeons from a shaken tree

So this balustrade will be dismantled
Perhaps reassembled somewhere else -
A conch paperweight by my head is a beach.
Each hour from a postcard Big Ben chimes.

This is the logic of nostalgia -
This is what I mean when I say
That my memory is selfish.
Who can guarantee that roaming

Through a tunnel I will find again
The Children's Section, where a boy walked
With 'the Little Prince' in his hands,
His smile the first line of a novel

Neither of us had read before?
One cymbal left in Chinatown.
Blueprints and forums and rhetoric ensure
That a firecracker makes no sound.

So the shattered glass of Van Kleef Aquarium
Still magnifies the eyelashes of students.
So the ragged screen of Capitol Cinema
Still shudders as a Pontianak drips black blood.

Only in dreams. Under separate stars.
I had one last night; of sitting at S-11
With the usual bunch of affectionate liars,
Skinny artists, red-eyed dreamers,

When suddenly a book appeared in the sky
Like a carrier pigeon that had escaped
From the ruins of the library.
It landed, without a murmur,

On my shoulder. I opened that book,
Expecting a cry for help, a refugee's plea.
What I found instead was this poem
That did not know how to end. Only when.

Morning Train by Alfian Sa'at

Why do you not look at each other's
Faces? Is the scenery that arresting,
One housing estate giving birth
To yet another copy?
Or the advertisements, read and re-read,
As if behind a slogan's promise lay
Hidden promise? Answer me:
Is that consciousness rising in you,
Dissolving your fatigue like a plastic sheet
Warping in heat, or is that simply
Sleep, draining away from you
Down to your soles, to the invisible tracks
Where the dew is dying? Where electricity
Is what pushes you to the borders
Of your own loneliness, against
The vulgar loneliness of crowds

Other National Virtues by Gwee Li Sui

I asked for teh tarek
Got half the glass in effervescence
Got food poisoning because
Half my mee's in its adolescence
Criticize, complain, condemn
With a hand over the abdomemn.

The players pant like pups
Think they are playing table tennis
The blundering referee
Is giving me tuberculosis
Criticize, complain, condemn
Throughout the National Stadiemn.

Sure, we may know we live
In a kind of modern paradise
But it's hell when we come to
Any bureaucratic exercise
Criticize, complain, condemn
All over on the referendemn.

Lines by Shirley Lim

The more is brought to light, the darker the breeding ground.

Proverb is the twitch of atrophy.

Poets bless the muse of insomnia at all times of the day.

Write it. Bolt it down with steel.

The paralytic style: never say a plain word when a rare one will do; never say a rare word when a plain one will do; never say a particular when another particular will do.

Coda: Language by Nina Cassian

My tongue - forked like a snake's
but without deadly intentions:
just a bilingual hissing.

The Way Things Work by Jorie Graham

The Way Things Work

is by admitting
or opening away.
This is the simplest form
of current: Blue
moving through blue;
blue through purple;
the objects of desire
opening upon themselves
without us; the objects of faith.
The way things work
is by solution,
resistance lessened or
increased and taken
advantage of.
The way things work
is that we finally believe
they are there,
common and able
to illustrate themselves.
Wheel, kinetic flow,
rising and falling water,
ingots, levers and keys,
I believe in you,
cylinder lock, pulley,
lifting tackle and
crane lift your small head--
I believe in you--
your head is the horizon to
my hand. I believe
forever in the hooks.
The way things work
is that eventually
something catches.

The Lake Isle of Innisfree by W. B. Yeats

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the mourning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.


Poetry Archive: W. B. Yeats reads

Reflection by Paul Tan

What is it about mirrors and mortality?
Is that why morning absolutions are best
conducted in the near dark? Each day,
you stare at yourself in this flipside world,
a necessary ritual in this rumour of normality.
Do you look for the obedient schoolboy
who deferred to elders and authority,
or reassure yourself that you are the same
person who went to bed the night before?
Do you measure the wiry whiskers,
detect new lines and count the hairs
that have broken away like weary leaves,
contemplating the great escape?
Or do you drown the awkward teen
who pursued perilous poetry,
the fit national serviceman with
the strained bravado and
search for some future self, half-fearing
the imminent portent, this age-old oracle?

Mirror by Sylvia Plath

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see, I swallow immediately.
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike
I am not cruel, only truthful –
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.

Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me.
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

A Particularly Hot Afternoon by Aaron Maniam

The mercury writhes
Creeps silently upward
Possessed by some distant ghost

That goads the winds to stealth:
Dry, desiccated leaves whisper, hiss
As if something must have gone amiss.

And nothing good can come of this
Needle-point heat. Not health
Nor plenty, nor any of the host

Of things that flood the mind as
As sigh escapes: spreads
Slick across the air. This heat

Is lustful; strokes the face
With the raw raking of just-
Cut fingernails. Physics goes bust

As I feel my skin contract
At that touch. Even a cloud's
Grey smile brings no comfort:

If anything, prompts a further
Convectional upheaving
Of an artesian temper provoked
And lashing out: then recoiling,
Then, heavy breathing.

Old Man Leaves Party by Mark Strand

It was clear when I left the party
That though I was over eighty I still had
A beautiful body. The moon shone down as it will
On moments of deep introspection. The wind held its breath.
And look, somebody left a mirror leaning against a tree.
Making sure that I was alone, I took off my shirt.
The flowers of bear grass nodded their moonwashed heads.
I took off my pants and the magpies circled the redwoods.
Down in the valley the creaking river was flowing once more.
How strange that I should stand in the wilds alone with my body.
I know what you are thinking. I was like you once. But now
With so much before me, so many emerald trees, and
Weed-whitened fields, mountains and lakes, how could I not
Be only myself, this dream of flesh, from moment to moment?

You're by Sylvia Plath

Clownlike, happiest on your hands,
Feet to the stars, and moon-skulled,
Gilled like a fish. A common-sense
Thumbs-down on the dodo's mode.
Wrapped up in yourself like a spool,
Trawling your dark as owls do.
Mute as a turnip from the Fourth
Of July to All Fools' Day,
O high-riser, my little loaf.

Vague as fog and looked for like mail.
Farther off than Australia.
Bent-backed Atlas, our traveled prawn.
Snug as a bud and at home
Like a sprat in a pickle jug.
A creel of eels, all ripples.
Jumpy as a Mexican bean.
Right, like a well-done sum.
A clean slate, with your own face on.

the lesson of the moth by Don Marquis

i was talking to a moth
the other evening
he was trying to break into
an electric light bulb
and fry himself on the wires

why do you fellows
pull this stunt i asked him
because it is the conventional
thing for moths or why
if that had been an uncovered
candle instead of an electric
light bulb you would
now be a small unsightly cinder
have you no sense

plenty of it he answered
but at times we get tired
of using it
we get bored with the routine
and crave beauty
and excitement
fire is beautiful
and we know that if we get
too close it will kill us
but what does that matter
it is better to be happy
for a moment
and be burned up with beauty
than to live a long time
and be bored all the while
so we wad all our life up
into one little roll
and then we shoot the roll
that is what life is for
it is better to be a part of beauty
for one instant and then cease to
exist than to exist forever
and never be a part of beauty
our attitude toward life
is come easy go easy
we are like human beings
used to be before they became
too civilized to enjoy themselves

and before i could argue him
out of his philosophy
he went and immolated himself
on a patent cigar lighter
i do not agree with him
myself i would rather have
half the happiness and twice
the longevity

but at the same time i wish
there was something i wanted
as badly as he wanted to fry himself

archy

Variations On The Word Sleep by Margaret Atwood

I would like to watch you sleeping,
which may not happen
I would like to watch you
sleeping. I would like to sleep
with you, to enter
your sleep as its smooth dark wave
slides over my head

and walk with you through that lucent
wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
with its watery sun & three moons
towards the cave where you must descend,
towards your worst fear

I would like to give you the silver
branch the small white flower, the one
word that will protect you
from the grief at the center
of your dream, from the grief
at the center. I would like to follow
you up the long stairway

again & become
the boat that would row you back
carefully, a flame
in two cupped hands
to where your body lies
beside me, and you enter
it as easily as breathing in

I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
& that necessary.

Variations On The Word Love by Margaret Atwood

This is a word we use to plug
holes with. It’s the right size for those warm
blanks in speech, for those red heart-
shaped vacancies on the page that look nothing
like real hearts. Add lace
and you can sell
it. We insert it also in the one empty
space on the printed form
that comes with no instructions. There are whole
magazines with not much in them
but the word love, you can
rub it all over your body and you
can cook with it too. How do we know
it isn’t what goes on at the cool
debaucheries of slugs under damp
pieces of cardboard? As for the weed-
seedlings nosing their tough snouts up
among the lettuces, they shout it.
Love! Love! sing the soldiers, raising
their glittering knives in salute.

Then there’s the two
of us. This word
is far too short for us, it has only
four letters, too sparse
to fill those deep bare
vacuums between the stars
that press on us with their deafness.
It’s not love we don’t wish
to fall into, but that fear.
this word is not enough but it will
have to do. It’s a single
vowel in this metallic
silence, a mouth that says
O again and again in wonder
and pain, a breath, a finger
grip on a cliffside. You can
hold on or let go.