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.

On the Ning Nang Nong by Spike Milligan

On the Ning Nang Nong
Where the Cows go Bong!
and the monkeys all say BOO!
There's a Nong Nang Ning
Where the trees go Ping!
And the tea pots jibber jabber joo.
On the Nong Ning Nang
All the mice go Clang
And you just can't catch 'em when they do!
So its Ning Nang Nong
Cows go Bong!
Nong Nang Ning
Trees go ping
Nong Ning Nang
The mice go Clang
What a noisy place to belong
is the Ning Nang Ning Nang Nong!!