1957

The scent you wear moves in lines 
From your apartment into mine
You act like you don't know me 
My god you tempt my anxious mind


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Soaring, transcendental, liquid, breath-taking. 

Summer camp

'Whitewashed minds. Delicate old men with nondescript faces. And all these people. So tired, you had to lie flat on your stomach & bury your face in grass but it was alright because you were young & beautiful. I was there too. I opened my eyes & saw only green & for a few minutes or hours or days, my world only existed in one magnificent colour, how I wished it was turquoise instead but then you said we are miles from the sea & the only blue I ever wanted was in eyes. Take me seriously, because the lights are fading & time is wasting away & it all comes down to this: I will love you if you let me. If you love me, let me know.'

(October 2012)

More Haiku

(I)
The cold begins to wane
& flowers wake from slumber
so new & alive

(II)
On a clear morning
A blade of grass battling heat
goes drowsy with sleep

(III)
Tea with the first drafts
& the town becomes vibrant
turning red with leaves

(IV)
Frost creeps in slowly
I am yearning for the day
when light meets darkness

And God knows

Fred Astaire's the man for me!

Everything looks different in rain

Like life, I am unhinged, as large
In an apartment high above
with streaked windows like doors
This dream becomes solid as
the ground I stand on
Lick my fingers clean of an unconscious song


Shadows lengthen & shorten
till stars are punched out in the sky
hands against hands
and so we go
on ships that sail only across bedspreads
Maps.


Joyful,
so we are joyful together,
lovers will be the same forever.

The tide is going home.

Going for a music festival is nearly always a tiring affair; the waiting, the jostling with a sweaty throng of people, and standing for hours on end. It hardly seems worth the effort, and there always comes a point where, out of frustration & pure exhaustion, I inevitably question the reason I came at all.

But then there is the singular moment that comes, unpredictable & sweeping as a tidal wave, a moment so elusive and mysterious that up till now, I feel ill-equipped to describe it. It comes, strong & tactile & palpable, & then ebbs away as if it were a dream. It is the electric moment where everyone stops whatever they are doing, the shoving or screaming or slugging beer or making out, & the air becomes filled with something that I can only describe as the spirit of harmony. It is the moment where in the three-minute space of an otherwise ordinary song, a thousand individuals are transformed into a single body with a solitary pulse.

And this is the beautiful thing: In that instant, no one cares if you are singing off-key or if you don't know all the words or how different you are from the next person, because all that matters is that a piece of music has brought us together like no one & nothing ever can. Sometimes, in the spirit of it all, I take a look around & nearly say aloud to no one in particular, What a strange world we live in. I want to be present in it all. It is then when I realise what a song can do, & suddenly remember why I always come back.

Away with the Lights!

This is a brilliant work of art. I've never loved We Were Evergreen more. Once in a while there's a band like this that emerges, whose music is so exciting that it challenges one lyrically & artistically, and We Were Evergreen is one of those bands. What's even more exciting is that after five years of touring & the release of several EPs, We Were Evergreen is finally recording a full-length album this spring! I couldn't be more excited.

As an unsigned indie band though, Michael, Fabienne & William need loads of help from fans. And now it's possible. It's pretty amazing to me, how lesser-known artistes can make use of this age of technology to create art music, like how Amanda Palmer of The Dresden Dolls managed to raise over a million dollars in a month for her first solo record. It's so easy for musicians like these to just dissolve or disappear altogether due to the lack of funding, and I believe that there's a certain responsibility that music lovers have to ensure that this never happens, particularly to the bands that we love & that inspire us.

Through this self-started kickstarter campaign, you can donate as little as one pound to help fund We Were Evergreen's recording as well as get really wicked band merchandise such as autographed EPs & posters. Great deal, aint it? Look at it this way: a couple dollars is really a small investment for the great music that lies ahead :)

Shift

Sorry if I've been neglecting this space. We've moved!

Meatball pyramid

My sister and her husband decided one day that they wanted a baby. 

'Are you sure?' I asked her. 'They are a lot of work & your nipples will get as big as hubcaps.' 

'They will not,' she answered. 'We're going to start trying right away.' 

Six days later, she called me again. 

'Guess what?' she said. 'I'm pregnant.' 

'Are you sure?' I asked. 'Maybe you just ate something that was dead too long.' 

'No it's true.' she assured me. 'The pink dot says so.' 

'It's impossible,' I said. 'Take another test.' 

'I've taken seven,' she asserted. 'Seven pink dots says you're going to be an aunt.' 

'What did you do?' I asked her. 'Put your ovaries underneath your pillow last night & wait for a visit from the fertility fairy?'

Funniest book I've read all year.

Paris, 1899

A continuation from here. 

Take time & imagine

A landscape, like hands, warm

& a plane melting into clouds

silently & beautifully as we watch

from down below,

Rose.

Imagine

A scene, like a film, unfolding

enfolding, embracing

tasting like mulled wine, in my mouth

on an autumn day

Cold tongues licking cold ice-creams

A divot, in the glass, in the kaleidoscope, in eyes

Colours aflame

Don't look,

see.

People in graceful waves

These houses must be made of paper, I'm sure

Buildings transform into

shades,

& well

There are a hundred ways to look at the city

but I like my view the best of all.

By the river

the birds cry out,

& the river begins to sing.

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A lot of the time, for me, poetry comes out of a single moment of intense emotion & flows out as if it were seamless dialogue between people. The greatest instance of this happening was in Paris last year, on a three-week-long backpacking trip with two dear friends. I remember we were sitting on the left side of the River Seine, taking photographs & savouring salted caramel & vanilla ice-creams that we had bought with the last of our money. Paris, in all its romanticism & sepia tones & language with its elegant twists & turns, is an inspiration in itself. I remember that it was very cold & the wind was very harsh (even though it was summer) & we were all laughing at the irony of eating ice-cream in such freezing weather, & the very posh & reserved Parisians were looking crossly at us but we didn't care & laughed anyway, & it was all very beautiful & at that moment I started making leaps into my notebook & scribbled masses of words, lines, stanzas. It was just a pity, to not capture that single moment in time on paper, if you know what I mean. I sent it home on a postcard to my family the very next day.

There's a lot that goes into the process of writing poetry, the conscious or unconscious aspect of it all, that's become very interesting to me. Over the course of this semester, I've realised that writers basically fall into two groups: those who sit down & dedicate a portion of their day to writing & mulling over ideas, carefully constructing poems over a duration & creating masterpieces & inspired projects. While I respect these people very much, it's an attitude that I can never hope to emulate because as said before, most of the time, inspiration for me comes from an image or an atmosphere, & transforms itself into a poem or a song. To be honest, it sometimes feels like I'm cheating, like I have snatched the line from thin air & made it my own...