Letters from Home

Letters from Home

I live at the main street
Begging for another chance to gamble
Alone with many other
People. Darkness was a robe
I picked up from the drain.
I embrace it, the one-size-embrace-all; like
Everyone does. It’s strewn everywhere but
Everyone fights to be a proprietor, flourishing swords of lucre, fending off
Competitors. As for
Me, it’s also all
I can afford to don, since
I squandered
My hoard of time and exchange away to the
Passers-by who look no different than
Me.

I live at the main street and
I’m not any cleaner than it is.
It’s wide and crowded with faceless
People, but
I enjoy
Their company.
People pity me once in a while and drop
Me a rotten stick or some dark fabric to prop
Myself up or to patch the holes that
Rats chew in the dead of the night.

But everyday there’s a flash of light-
The postman dressed in white who delivers me
Letters from home. I’ve
Never opened any one of them
But now my
Blackened nails move to
Peel the side of an envelope.
It tells me:
Darkness is the uniform of the modern parade;
It’s not too late to start playing for keeps. I
See a narrow alley across the street. I
Follow it.

~tc

Spirit

Spirit by Switchfoot

Spirit, fall fresh on me

Spirit, fall fresh on me

Hear my cry, fill my life

I won't need anything but You.

I've found all that I want, all that I longed for in You

I've found all that I want, all that I longed for in You

Wasted time, is when I'm far from Your truth

I've found all that I want, all that I longed for in You

Spirit, come be my joy

Spirit, come be my joy

Be my song, fill my lungs

I won't need anything but You

祷告与赞美 06/08. 

Blood Test

Blood Test

The clock stares at me staring at the words.

There's a swelling in my heart.

Apparently, it tells me what I see is

Easy to take. "Take it easy,"

It says, with the conducive thumping of a hammer

Whose head is scourged with a rotting rust.

The nails are driven into paper

With torturous leisure. My heart brims with

The blood of the futility of thought.

The screaming flakes of rust make brown the desk

Like coagulated blood. "Bear with the sight,

You'll find something to write." I flinch at the incantation

And look again at the paperthin lady

Pregnant with death; the stench of 

Putrefying blood strangles the pit of my palm.

It loses grip. It succumbs to pungent grip.

It suffocates my throat. "Have a sip of water."

The blood liquefies and flows,

Annexing the concrete ground underneath

Infiltrating the pores of

My sweat sickened flesh trembling with every blink 

Of her fixed gaze.

The bones of my arms arch in paralysis; I see that

She has more than two bloodshot eyes.

There is a swelling in my heart, the cancerous growth of failure.

"Pens down."

~tc

Value-time's Day

(11:57pm, 13-2-08)

(At the rooftop of some obscure place)

Boy (whispers) : My love,

Girl (in the warmth of his arms) : Yes dear?

Boy: You are… (deep breath)
My moonlight in the ravines,
The apple of my eye.
You’re my lily in the sunshine,
And the star that lights my sky!

Girl: Aww… (adores wide-eyed, beaming) mmm go on…

Boy: Hahaha!

(panics)

Er…
You are… (deeper breath)
The green leaves in my winter,
The durian on my tree.
You’re the soil and I’m bacteria
My culture shall grow in glee!

Girl (giggles uncontrollably) : Mmm go on...hee…

Boy (subtly performs ‘YES, I’M THE MAN.’ gesture):
You are
The dandruff on my pillow,
The earwax in my ear.
You’re the chocolate on my marshmallow,
My eyebags and my beer.

Girl (dubious) : Wha-

Boy (this is too easy):
You’re the lemon in my lemonade,
The soap that cleans my groin
You’re the blanket when I drool in bed
And my wallet’s ten-cent coin!

You’re the angpao-

Girl: Oh just shut up and kiss me.

Boy: Oh. Okay.

And somewhere as a distant clock strikes twelve, the stars are once again the only witnesses for yet another happy couple.

14th February ("Valentine's Confession" edited)

Are these flowers here for me?
Is that a diamond ring I see?
Am I who I seem to be?

I long to see my bride within
Your bright and gentle redness clean
If people had a heart for me
Then we could fly between them free

Like signatures that coincide
with diamond doves and joyful brides
Like promises that come to verve
From black and white to redness serve
How noble are these chains of love

And when I saw the two aspire
A feather through a silver ring
I thought of how the rest conspire
For just a moment’s preferencing
I wish my short-lived day of birth
Would last till heaven’s fall on earth.

What if today can unbind me?

Love at Second Glance

Some people say that this was how love was made,
Not our common notion of made, not for what price can be paid
But the core of it all, is what I articulate
is that maybe love is just a hormone secreted from day to day.
No no, you don’t-know desperados, love was never ever made,
It rests in the form of a golden planet not quite far away!
Its brightness in the gloomiest nights never seem to fade,
not especially in the darkness, where it can be made.
(Yes now I refer to upper lines of fiscal masquerades.)
Cattle dung! cry our geniuses with dangling crosses
(who never get laid…
not ‘till they wed)
Love is in Corinthians, what more has to be said?
Salesmen preach of spring, sponge and latex gadgets
But I reckon it exceeds the covers of the harem beds
It drinks not wine but spit and spite
It’s not endocrine and it is despite
I’ve seen its lines and squares and appetite
and what it offers is truly divine
So what about love at first sight?
Somebody said God made us in pairs long before time
and when there was earth He threw us inside
a mix and match of search and find
with Him to pronounce where it honestly resides.

~tc©

Here's a triple-treat for those of you who still visit this patient page-patient who has but one leg in the coffin. Happy Valentines' amigos; make love not war; spread Jesus!

The Road Not Taken

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Zeitgeist 2008

Zeitgeist 2008

Let’s hope
today doesn’t grow wings
Or we’ll have it drenched in the oil of labs and jabs
So his feathers get stuck,
Stuck.

Then we can exchange their love and sweat and blood
For the vapour of a fashion statement
Then tear a yawning hole

In their chiding pockets
We’ll patch it with a cloth of apology,
A forgetting needle, and never an obedient thread.

Carry us to the skies,
O beloved chemicals.

And let’s fluctuate
Like the tides and the waves and the crowds
Get caught within
And caressed to follow the mainstream fellowship
We’ll end up somewhere
Flooding the streets with an acrylic red.

I’ll return home later, later
I can.
What’s a gushing surge of foam and water against
A grain of sand?
I can.

Who needs blueprints for eternity?

~tc©

Dare You To Move by Switchfoot

Welcome to the planet
Welcome to existence
Everyone's here
Everyone's here

Everybody's watching you now
Everybody waits for you now
What happens next
What happens next

I dare you to move
I dare you to move
I dare you to lift yourself up off the floor
I dare you to move
I dare you to move
Like today never happened
Today never happened before

Welcome to the fallout
Welcome to resistance
The tension is here
Tension is here

Between who you are and who you could be
Between how it is and how it should be

Maybe redemption has stories to tell
Maybe forgiveness is right where you fell
Where can you run to escape from yourself?

Where you gonna go?
Where you gonna go?
Salvation is here

I dare you to move
I dare you to move
I dare you to lift yourself up off the floor

I dare you to move
I dare you to move
Like today never happened
Today never happened
Today never happened
Today never happened before

Is this the New Year or just another night?

The Blues by Switchfoot

Is this the New Year or just another night?
Is this the new fear or just another fright?
Is this the new tear or just another desperation?

Is this the finger or just another fist?
Is this the kingdom or just a hit n' miss?
A misdirection, most in all this desperation

Is this what they call freedom?
Is this what you call pain?
Is this what they call discontented fame?

It'll be a day like this one
When the world caves in
When the world caves in
When the world caves in

I'm singing this one like a broken piece of glass
From broken arms and broken noses in the back
Is this a new year or just another desperation?

You're pushing till you're shoving
You bend until you break
Till you stand on the broken fields where your fathers lay

It'll be a day like this one
When the world caves in
When the world caves in
When the world caves in

Is nothing here worth saving?
Is no one here at all?
Is there any net left that could break our fall?

It'll be a day like this one
When the sky falls down and the
hungry and poor and deserted are found

Are you discontented?
Have you been pushing hard?
Have you been throwing down this broken house of cards?

It'll be a day like this one
When the world caves in
When the world caves in
When the world caves in

Is there nothing left now?
Nothing left to sing?
Are there any left who haven't kissed the enemy?
Is this the New Year or just another desperation?

Does justice never find you?
Do the wicked never lose?
Is there any honest song to sing besides these blues?

And nothing is okay
Till the world caves in
Till the world caves in
Till the world caves in