Creating Rainfall

Wisps of thought, strands of time

Moments of snow that spill sublime

Gales of pride, breezes that blush

Crossing paths in a clouded mind

Trembling snowflake, confident hail

A frozen tear where thought derails

From slippery tongue and flurry wit

Vapours of guilt shall haste entail

Temperate design, tropical scheme

Escape spontaneity with watery sheen

Sentiments crystallised, affections stored

What might it be but a torrent of dreams?

Showers of wrath, drizzles of love

A deluge of judgment from the heavens above

Behold - the rainbows of imagination!

Hope the prism, faith the dove

Every cloud a silver lining

Every sun a golden crown

Every sky precipitating

The lands, they thirst for what comes down

tc©

Creating Sunshine

you summon tinder

midnight tendrils approach

a coil of parched broken wood

meek and beset in gloom

power and life encased

usurped and dethroned

bolt shut by wind and rain

that paints your skin

your departed hide

a parasitic white

twitches and flakes like falling talc

chilblained limbs

clutch air claw flesh caressed by icy blades

your work is judged

the sky an eye

you stare back

its pupil a chasm

you grip your flint

black and insurgent

the gales contend to

lacerate your knife

and you strike

metal against stone

a dazzle of spark and cinder

a lustrous display of orange and white peacock feathers

an explosion of hope and life

tc©

Less Than 15 Minutes

Know the truth. Know the Gospel.

Valentine Afterthought

I think I've quoted this before, but let me do it again.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alternation finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove:

Oh, no! it is an ever-fixéd mark,

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not time's fool, though rose lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come:

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Sonnet 116, "The Marriage Of True Minds"

William Shakespeare

"Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless."

~Ephesians 5:25-27

Brothers, don't get married so that we can stop pursuing women. Get married so that we can perfect the pursuit of the same woman over a lifetime.

Happy belated Valentine's!

Reader Response: Cry, Baby

"You go to bed now. What you want is a good cry."

This opinion had nothing to recommend it but the general consent of mankind. It is universally understood that, as if it were nothing more substantial than a vapour floating in the sky, every emotion of a woman is bound to end in a shower.

Joseph Conrad in The Secret Agent

Few people have actually seen me shed tears before. General consent of mankind, perhaps. I wonder what Conrad thought of Woolf.

And, sometimes I really wonder what it'd be like if Mum had a daughter.

Quake Queries

Here is an interesting read:

What does the world owe Haiti? Beyond the moral imperative to help save the country there is a practical incentive. Natural disasters - earthquakes, storms, floods - are unavoidable acts of God. But it's possible to build societies, from New Orleans to Port-au-Prince, that can weather them. Doing so would save lives and the tens of billions of dollars that are spent every time a fragile community gets wiped out. "The world can't afford more of these disasters," says Roger Bilham, a seismologist at the University of Colorado. "It's worth investing in these problems now, while we can." Haiti's buried were victims of poverty and neglect, not just the quake. But we owe it to the survivors - to people like Michaud Jonas - to help build a Haiti that will never again be so vulnerable.

Extract taken from 'Aftershock'

TIME Magazine, Feb 1 2010 Issue

What really is the difference between a moral imperative and a practical incentive? To most, solace from a guilty conscience sounds like necessary relief. Then again, why might there even be guilt in the first place?

What might be an 'avoidable' act of God?

What becomes of the 'tens of billions of dollars' that are saved when Port-au-Prince capably resists the next tremor with sound infrastructure in what seems to be a seismogram of the future?

"Surely the world can't afford more of these disasters," unless it plays litigant to an economy of judgment spurred by a currency of wrath. Does it?

What is the real message that is meant to be transmitted by all of this? Is there even one?

The quake queries, and swallows her throat for the first time in a few decades. Difficult, perhaps painful, but interesting indeed.

The Perfect Visit to the Doctor

(At the clinic two days ago)

Dr. Lee: Hello! Come, sit down. So what's wrong with you today?

Me: (meekly) Very, very bad throat.

D: When did it start?

M: (peace sign)

D: Two days ago...wah really cannot talk arh?

M: (nods pitifully)

D: (scribbles) Any fever?

M: (wolverine sign)

D: Three days ago...now stopped?

M: (nods)

D: Okay. (scribbles) Open your mouth. (prepares flashlight)

M: (gapes in pain)

D: ...AIYOH!!! How can you get something like this!?!?

M: ...

D: Aiyoh aiyoh aiyoh...so many ulcers pok pok pok all around your tonsils and your throat...must be so painful!!!

M: (thinks: And this your idea of sympathy...?)

D: Aiyoh come, come to the mirror let me show you...

M: (meekly) Uh no it's okay, scaring myself once is enough for me already.

D: Aiyoh...I want to take picture of this leh...

M: (blank face)

D: Okay never mind. Don't worry don't worry. I'll give you strong antibiotics to bomb all the ulcers. Bomb bomb bomb all of them! But aiyoh...how can you get this kind of thing...your friend spread to you right?

M: (shrugs)

D: Wah, hope you don't spread to me. Come, let me take your temperature.

M: (rod goes under tongue)

D: 37.0. When was the last time you took panadol?

M: (wolverine sign)

D: Three hours ago. No wonder only slightly feverish. Okay, this is very, very bad tonsilitis. You must know, with this kind of inflammation, you can only expect that your fever will keep rising and falling.

M: (shakes head and sighs)

D: Don't worry arh. The antibiotics will bomb all of them. If after a few days it's still like that arh, you come back here. I'll give you that one.

M: ...which one?

D: (points to ass)

M: (thinks: Ass shot) Okay...

D: You want MC or not? I give you 7 days MC.

M: (smiles and shakes hands and heads)

D: Sure? But you must have plenty of rest you know. Okay?

M: (nods)

D: Okay arh, that should be it. (scribbles vigorously) I'm so sorry you kenna such a thing arh. Don't worry, it'll all be over soon. See you next time!

M: (thinks: No thanks. Bye.)

(At the receptionist)

Receptionist: This is for fever and pain, take four times daily after food, these are the antibiotics, take three times........yep, that's it.

M: (holds up the bottle of mouth gargle and performs awkward chemical mixing gesture)

R: ...oh dilution! Yes, sorry. One is to one dilution. Then you can just gargle. Once in the morning and once at night.

M: (nods)

R: Okay so that'll be 45 dollars.

M: What!!

R: Er...oh because she gave you a strong antibiotic that's why it's so expe-

M: (meekly) No no that's not the point...never mind. (hands her $50 bill)

R: Here's your change. Thank you and take care!

M: (waves goodbye and thinks: 45 bucks. What a joke.)