Majulah Singapura

April is the cruellest month,

Breeding saints out of dry, dead air,

Heavens from untrodden, no-man's land.

I stood at the doorway, blessed, unable

To speak, as fire rained down upon me, my dry,

Raw bones, sublime form. I shrieked and began to cry.

Till these very bones wiped them dry.

Tears, tears… whose Almighty wrought from wine

And said, Let there be light. And at once there was light.

A spark from a jungle's twig that set it ablaze.

A crowd's domino supernaturally moved, all men as well.

I looked up into that jungle's trees.

She smelled like trees.

Nails under a sun radiate an elegance of poetry.

So do the concrete, hard-earned pillars and columns

Of modern man and capital. Our poetry writes of trees

And tanning suns as well,

Bright gardens, bigger domes, by-the-bay bags and shoes

And suits and rings and Ferraris and résumés

All paid for, taken care of,

By a singular, gold-plated, coated, card,

By the same hand,

That cast the vote.

Hush, Boy. Yesterday

It was Damuddy's party, and tomorrow

It will be yours. Under the sweltering sun of godlike craze

Your bones will be picked. See the silhouette of the trees.

She smelled like trees.

The trees that build a nation. Filled in palimpsests

Turned stone, records wrought in gold,

In un-apocryphal Scripture, in writings bold,

But blank.

The cows came jumping out of the barn.

I the poet, a grey, gold tonic that smells like

Golden lemon tea, and tastes like strong,

Scented, subliminal golden lemon tea,

Spinning shimmering swirling.

A vortex of colours. Follow that rainbow;

Whoever poked fun at rainbows and their

Multiplicity, (gasped, colourful, vibrant sin!)

Of colours;

Whoever, all the more at the sacred summit of the sky,

Whose expanses have indeed been touched,

Molested, disturbed – in the name of a partial science –

But whose form then again, like old Bertie

Takes on a myth, for the gates to the universe – the real,

Unhuman one – are closed and locked.

God is a Saint.

Like the April Fool he ceases to mean,

Except in to mean's surface.

The centre of narrative, the origin of humankind,

Of identity – that is where He resides.

She put her arms around me again, but I went away.

Mother and Sister and Virgin alike,

I, too noble, too sinned, for their care of angels

And of sin. Nobleness is of a queen.

And of king is expected a crown and sceptre,

And an iron fist, a strong, hardy, foolhardy power.

The fist that rules,

That shakes the hand of common folk,

That capitalizes and consecrates,

That celebrates Christmas.

You don't want your hands froze on Christmas, do you.

Hands that rule wealth and the voting slip count.

And so do yours. Presumably those that Truth mount.

The pinnacle of the vote is the sky.

This script is not an April Fool.

Onward Singapore.

Thy alms free men yearn for more;

Where do I belong.