Short Poetic Essays
May 17 2024
Newspaper I have read from newspapers. I hold one at this moment and its papery rustle reminds me of the rectangular spread of the newspaper on the kitchen table. In the softer mornings, when the sunlight mixes in with the swivelling mist over my father’s hot coffee in a blue mug. The little specks of Coffee-Mate which cling to the tip of his tie, as the moment spent with him everyday. Bartering sections as we read, and laughing, when some columns stopped at a word and he’d make me guess the next probable word. But like life, the snippet continued on pages and we’d hunt together. The excitement to go shop for a special container every other year as it rusted, a cylindrical mailbox; to replace the old one. To hold the curled body of black, white and grey from rain and dirt. Our little race to get to it first on a Sunday. The children’s edition may have my poem. I knew my father will clip it in his diary with the others.
May 18th 2024
When I stay still…. it smells of lingering agarwood. smoke of the spirits used for silent prayers. I stay still to see the sunlight, through the glass window, no longer pure. Elements of the sky are coming to me! to see me, and ask me, how much have I loved; the floor, the rugs, the walls in this elegant cage? I stay still and remember when I was awkwardly eleven and had gazed such a morning light, had asked myself: How many years have I lived with this Sun? wishing I’d be free one day. hoping I will stay still and have a moment with the Sun. Now I am older and stay still to have a moment with the same Sun in a new cage, which is beautiful.
May 19th 2024
Title: The house was quiet and the world was calm.
Poet: Wallace Stevens
Source: The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens (Alfred A. Knopf, 1954)
May 20th 2024
his life
the raw umber air trapped.
the azurite water above the head.
the crimson fire lost.
the malachite earth blackened.
Elements for survival, colours of his life.
June 21 2024
I didn’t want to share this
I wanted to slip into a mist and be absorbed by the fog edging the hills.
I wanted to be gone, sunken down, like the Dark Queen.
I did not slit my vein.
I did not scrape your car with our house keys.
I did not throw your things out
nor break your mother’s teapot.
I just cut-off—
myself from your limb.
but I still want to make clear soup for you when I hear that you are sick.
I want to gently stroke your eyebrows and check your body heat.
your fever is my repentance.
I want to make sure you sleep and dream.
and smile at my face when you wake up.
but I turned away, so I don’t see your body drop.
I cannot return.
I know you’ll just be fuelled by the wrong love
Of rage and push away my skin.
I still want to make things happen to you.
Hate is worldly and we see it everyday.
Mercy is from heaven and we don’t see it.
so what do you want?
