Thoughts on approaching Kallang by Sharlene Lim

There is something exhilarating about bursting
out of the tunnel and into blinding sunshine. A
sense of breaking
free from the suffocating darkness, of going
from uncertainty, the unknown,
to brilliant and sudden clarity.

A metaphor for something, I'm sure.
And while everyone squints, blinks, disgruntled
by the displacement, I smile
with eyes half-closed against the glare,
but still able to see:
the shimmering surface of the river redolent under the sky
and feel the smooth, almost
undetectable ascension of the
tracks, which mirrors
unconsciously, all the time,
the quiet vein of
joy rising in my heart.

(love song, with two fish) by Grace Chua

(He’s a drifter, always
floating around her, has
nowhere else to go. He wishes
she would sing, not much, just the scales
or take some notice,
give him the fish eye.)

(Bounded rounded walls,
she makes fish eyes
and kissy lips at him, darts
behind pebbles, swallows
his charms hook, line and sinker.)

(He’s bowled over. He would
take her to the ocean, they could
count the waves. There,
in the submarine silence, they could share
their deepest secrets. Dive for pearls
like stars.)
(But her love’s since
gone belly-up. His heart sinks
like a fish. He drinks
like a stone. Drown those sorrows,
states emptily through glass.)

(the reason: she said
she wanted)
(and he could not give)
a life
beyond the
(bowl)

In Our Schools by Gilbert Koh

Some are Special,
or Express. A few are
Gifted. The others
are merely Normal
(a polite life).

All are classifiable,
like chemical compounds,
lists of Chinese
proverbs,
or lab specimens of dead insects -

preserved, labelled,
pinned by a cold
needle
through the
unfeeling thorax.

The Schoolgirl Kills Herself After Failing An Exam by Gilbert Koh

She jumps from the tenth floor of a housing block
into the brief wild terror of freedom, dies and transforms
into twelve paragraphs of newsprint in the Straits Times,
cool and objective, black and white, verifiable facts only.

We are told that her classmates are "shocked".
And that her parents refuse to comment. We know that
she scored 41 marks for her last exam paper, a fatal result.
A teacher describes her as a "quiet, hardworking girl".

We feel obliged to pause to reflect. We wish to search
our conscience. She was only eleven, we remind ourselves.
There must be others like her. There must be another way,
we suspect, for children to grow up in this country.

But yesterday's news is quick to slide into the grey of memory.
She will become another incidental casualty. We turn the page.
We forget. Again we trip and fall head first into the future,
down into the depths of a national urge to never stop excelling.

Without You by Gilbert Koh

I'm riding on a speeding train,
elsewhere, non-existent,
in transit between cold station lights.
You're a thought, just a thought,
in my head, and outside blackness is
screaming past the window.
There are people here, passengers, faces meaning nothing
hands eyes strange footsteps mouths
speaking words collapsing
here and now and all this while
all this distance between us
is closing in swiftly.
I am here with this need
for you, and I can't hear
can't see, for me there's only me
not even me now that I am
without you. When this train arrives,
you'll be there waiting,
a thought in my head come alive,
and true. But in this moment,
I'm still riding on a speeding train,
moving fast, and you're a thought,
no more, nothing more,
and I'm alive, suspended,
hurtling through the blackness,
nowhere without you.

Lesson Idea:
Compare with songs titled "Without You"
- Without You by Nickleback
- Without You by David Guetta
- Without You by Mariah Carey

Accident by Gilbert Koh

  And I,
       gazing at stars,
stumbled over you,
               tripped
           and
       fell painfully in love,
couldn't get up
          for ages.

Warning to a Lover by Gilbert Koh

Every time you try to change me,
We run the risk I might.
Two questions darkly cross my mind,
So let them cross yours too -
Could you really love another me,
And would he, you?