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?

Don’t Mind Your Language… By Stephen Fry

Don’t Mind Your Language… By Stephen Fry For me, it is a cause of some upset that more Anglophones don’t enjoy language. Music is enjoyable it seems, so are dance and other, athletic forms of movement. People seem to be able to find sensual and sensuous pleasure in almost anything but words these days. Words, it seems belong to other people, anyone who expresses themselves with originality, delight and verbal freshness is more likely to be mocked, distrusted or disliked than welcomed. The free and happy use of words appears to be considered elitist or pretentious. Sadly, desperately sadly, the only people who seem to bother with language in public today bother with it in quite the wrong way. They write letters to broadcasters and newspapers in which they are rude and haughty about other people’s usage and in which they show off their own superior ‘knowledge’ of how language should be. I hate that, and I particularly hate the fact that so many of these pedants assume that I’m on their side. When asked to join in a “let’s persuade this supermarket chain to get rid of their ‘five items or less’ sign” I never join in. Yes, I am aware of the technical distinction between ‘less’ and ‘fewer’, and between ‘uninterested’ and ‘disinterested’ and ‘infer’ and ‘imply’, but none of these are of importance to me. ‘None of these are of importance,’ I wrote there, you’ll notice – the old pedantic me would have insisted on “none of them is of importance”. Well I’m glad to say I’ve outgrown that silly approach to language. Oscar Wilde, and there have been few greater and more complete lords of language in the past thousand years, once included with a manuscript he was delivering to his publishers a compliment slip in which he had scribbled the injunction: “I’ll leave you to tidy up the woulds and shoulds, wills and shalls, thats and whiches &c.” Which gives us all encouragement to feel less guilty, don’t you think? There are all kinds of pedants around with more time to read and imitate Lynne Truss and John Humphrys than to write poems, love-letters, novels and stories it seems. They whip out their Sharpies and take away and add apostrophes from public signs, shake their heads at prepositions which end sentences and mutter at split infinitives and misspellings, but do they bubble and froth and slobber and cream with joy at language? Do they ever let the tripping of the tips of their tongues against the tops of their teeth transport them to giddy euphoric bliss? Do they ever yoke impossible words together for the sound-sex of it? Do they use language to seduce, charm, excite, please, affirm and tickle those they talk to? Do they? I doubt it. They’re too farting busy sneering at a greengrocer’s less than perfect use of the apostrophe. Well sod them to Hades. They think they’re guardians of language. They’re no more guardians of language than the Kennel Club is the guardian of dogkind. The worst of this sorry bunch of semi-educated losers are those who seem to glory in being irritated by nouns becoming verbs. How dense and deaf to language development do you have to be? If you don’t like nouns becoming verbs, then for heaven’s sake avoid Shakespeare who made a doing-word out of a thing-word every chance he got. He TABLED the motion and CHAIRED the meeting in which nouns were made verbs. New examples from our time might take some getting used to: ‘He actioned it that day’ for instance might strike some as a verbing too far, but we have been sanctioning, envisioning, propositioning and stationing for a long time, so why not ‘action’? ‘Because it’s ugly,’ whinge the pedants. It’s only ugly because it’s new and you don’t like it. Ugly in the way Picasso, Stravinsky and Eliot were once thought ugly and before them Monet, Mahler and Baudelaire. Pedants will also claim, with what I am sure is eye-popping insincerity and shameless disingenuousness, that their fight is only for ‘clarity’. This is all very well, but there is no doubt what ‘Five items or less’ means, just as only a dolt can’t tell from the context and from the age and education of the speaker, whether ‘disinterested’ is used in the ‘proper’ sense of non-partisan, or in the ‘improper’ sense of uninterested. No, the claim to be defending language for the sake of clarity almost never, ever holds water. Nor does the idea that following grammatical rules in language demonstrates clarity of thought and intelligence of mind. Having said this, I admit that if you want to communicate well for the sake of passing an exam or job interview, then it is obvious that wildly original and excessively heterodox language could land you in the soup. I think what offends examiners and employers when confronted with extremely informal, unpunctuated and haywire language is the implication of not caring that underlies it. You slip into a suit for an interview and you dress your language up too. You can wear what you like linguistically or sartorially when you’re at home or with friends, but most people accept the need to smarten up under some circumstances – it’s only considerate. But that is an issue of fitness, of suitability, it has nothing to do with correctness. There no right language or wrong language any more than are right or wrong clothes. Context, convention and circumstance are all. I don’t deny that a small part of me still clings to a ghastly Radio 4/newspaper-letter-writer reader pedantry, but I fight against it in much the same way I try to fight against my gluttony, anger, selfishness and other vices. I must confess, for example, that I find it hard not to wince when someone aspirates the word ‘aitch’...

What Teachers Make by Taylor Mali

He says the problem with teachers is

What’s a kid going to learn
from someone who decided his best option in life
was to become a teacher?
He reminds the other dinner guests that it’s true
what they say about teachers:
Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.
I decide to bite my tongue instead of his
and resist the temptation to remind the dinner guests
that it’s also true what they say about lawyers.
Because we’re eating, after all, and this is polite conversation.

I mean, you’re a teacher, Taylor.
Be honest. What do you make?

And I wish he hadn’t done that— asked me to be honest—
because, you see, I have this policy about honesty and ass-­‐kicking:
if you ask for it, then I have to let you have it.
You want to know what I make?
I make kids work harder than they ever thought they could.
I can make a C+ feel like a Congressional Medal of Honor
and an A-­‐ feel like a slap in the face.
How dare you waste my time
with anything less than your very best.
I make kids sit through 40 minutes of study hall
in absolute silence. No, you may not work in groups.
No, you may not ask a question.
Why won’t I let you go to the bathroom?
Because you’re bored.
And you don’t really have to go to the bathroom, do you?
I make parents tremble in fear when I call home:
Hi. This is Mr. Mali. I hope I haven’t called at a bad time,
I just wanted to talk to you about something your son said today.
To the biggest bully in the grade, he said,
“Leave the kid alone. I still cry sometimes, don’t you?
It’s no big deal.”
And that was noblest act of courage I have ever seen.
I make parents see their children for who they are
and what they can be.

You want to know what I make? I make kids wonder,
I make them question.
I make them criticize.
I make them apologize and mean it.
I make them write.
I make them read, read, read.
I make them spell definitely beautiful, definitely beautiful, definitely beautiful
over and over and over again until they will never misspell
either one of those words again.
I make them show all their work in math
and hide it on their final drafts in English.
I make them understand that if you’ve got this,
then you follow this,
and if someone ever tries to judge you
by what you make, you give them this.

Here, let me break it down for you, so you know what I say is true:
Teachers make a goddamn difference! Now what about you?

How Falling in Love is like Owning a Dog by Taylor Mali

First of all, it’s a big responsibility, especially in a city like New York. So think long and hard before deciding on love. On the other hand, love gives you a sense of security: when you’re walking down the street late at night and you have a leash on love ain’t no one going to mess with you. Because crooks and muggers think love is unpredictable. Who knows what love could do in its own defense? On cold winter nights, love is warm. It lies between you and lives and breathes and makes funny noises. Love wakes you up all hours of the night with its needs. It needs to be fed so it will grow and stay healthy. Love doesn’t like being left alone for long. But come home and love is always happy to see you. It may break a few things accidentally in its passion for life, but you can never be mad at love for long. Is love good all the time? No! No! Love can be bad. Bad, love, bad! Very bad love. Love makes messes. Love leaves you little surprises here and there. Love needs lots of cleaning up after. Somethimes you just want to get love fixed. Sometimes you want to roll up a piece of newspaper and swat love on the nose, not so much to cause pain, just to let love know Don’t you ever do that again! Sometimes love just wants to go out for a nice long walk. Because love loves exercise. It will run you around the block and leave you panting, breathless. Pull you in different directions at once, or wind itself around and around you until you’re all wound up and you cannot move. But love makes you meet people wherever you go. People who have nothing in common but love stop and talk to each other on the street. Throw things away and love will bring them back, again, and again, and again. But most of all, love needs love, lots of it. And in return, love loves you and never stops.

Totally like whatever, you know? by Taylor Mali

Typography from Ronnie Bruce on Vimeo.
Totally like whatever, you know? by Taylor Mali In case you hadn’t noticed, it has somehow become uncool to sound like you know what you’re talking about? Or believe strongly in what you’re saying? Invisible question marks and parenthetical (you know?)’s have been attaching themselves to the ends of our sentences? Even when those sentences aren’t, like, questions? You know? Declarative sentences—so-­‐called because they used to, like, DECLARE things to be true, okay, as opposed to other things are, like, totally, you know, not— have been infected by a totally hip and tragically cool interrogative tone? You know? Like, don’t think I’m uncool just because I’ve noticed this; this is just like the word on the street, you know? It’s like what I’ve heard? I have nothing personally invested in my own opinions, okay? I’m just inviting you to join me in my uncertainty? What has happened to our conviction? Where are the limbs out on which we once walked? Have they been, like, chopped down with the rest of the rain forest? Or do we have, like, nothing to say? Has society become so, like, totally . . . I mean absolutely . . . You know? That we’ve just gotten to the point where it’s just, like . . . whatever! And so actually our disarticulation . . . ness is just a clever sort of . . . thing to disguise the fact that we’ve become the most aggressively inarticulate generation to come along since . . . you know, a long, long time ago! I entreat you, I implore you, I exhort you, I challenge you: To speak with conviction. To say what you believe in a manner that bespeaks the determination with which you believe it. Because contrary to the wisdom of the bumper sticker, it is not enough these days to simply QUESTION AUTHORITY. You have to speak with it, too.

Decision by Udiah (witness to Yah)

There are only two possibilities
God the result of imagination
Or God the Lord over all creation
With supernatural abilities

Considering the liabilities
The former, a finite observation
The latter, spirit rejuvenation
With its infinite capabilities

Choosing the former one has to reason
What's wanted is some final solution
An end to it all with no life ahead
I choose the latter for a new season
Trusting in God as my resolution
Gaining promised eternal life instead

Poetry & teenagers

Poetry is a good fit for teenagers, she feels, because it "seems like a way to convey a person's emotions, and because teens seem to be going through so much with exams and relationships that they need to be able to put it down somewhere". Meyer feels similarly. "I think that teenagers like writing poetry to let out their 'teenage angst', or to write about things they wouldn't have otherwise known much about. When you write a poem in the point of view of someone else, you have to put yourself in their shoes, and feel everything that they would have felt. It gives you a unique view on events, and I don't know if other teens feel the same about it as me, but it is certainly why I like to write poetry. As for reading poetry online… I think that it gives teens reassurance that other people their age feel the same way as them, and are going through the same emotional changes."

Chanced upon an article on Guardian about the renaissance of poetry in this cyber age - that poetry is a good outlet for teens as they're experiencing changes and need to pen things out in order to cope. They let out their emotions, and write about things that fellow teens understand too.

Movella is a community in which people contribute their writings.

Lesson idea: 
- Get students to think of something they want to blog about. (Fights with friends, misunderstandings, study stress, physical changes, family unhappiness, or even contentment, satisfaction, appreciation of life if they are able to)
- Instead of ranting onto a blog, write it into a poem. Use the afore taught devices and structures to guide.
- This will cultivate a habit of writing succintly and to use the best vocabulary suited for their emotions.

Eating Poetry by Mark Strand

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.


The librarian does not believe what she sees.
Her eyes are sad
and she walks with her hands in her dress.

The poems are gone.
The light is dim.
The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.

Their eyeballs roll,
their blond legs burn like brush.
The poor librarian begins to stamp her feet and weep.

She does not understand.
When I get on my knees and lick her hand,
she screams.

I am a new man.
I snarl at her and bark.
I romp with joy in the bookish dark.


Source: poets.org

Lesson idea: 
- Get students to bring a character to school. Can be an action figure, can be a stuffed animal, anything that can be animate
- Ask them to write from the perspective of the character and what they would do with poetry.

My Shadow by Robert Louis Stevenson

I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,

And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.

He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;

And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.

The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow—

Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;

For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball,

And he sometimes gets so little that there's none of him at all.

He hasn't got a notion of how children ought to play,

And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way.

He stays so close beside me, he's a coward you can see;

I'd think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me!

One morning, very early, before the sun was up,

I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;

But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head,

Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.

Singapore Poetry by Wong Yee Hua

I won't write about those rainy days
or kampung ways or rainy nights -
I won't write about pretty Singapore
or her beautiful shore or the wonderful sights -
I won't write about long taxi queues
our orchids' hues or litter fearas -
"There isn't much else to write about!"
shouted one more doubtful volunteer.
- We'll pitch our skills to think of more
  to answer those so-called desperate calls
  and let it be Sincerely Yours!

Deathrow by Dinesh Senan

How strange that they
who incarcerate me
and shame me as a dog
should tomorrow do what I had done
and yet not feel remorse?
Why should I die?
I killed, I know, I had a cause
but so have they; they claim
that scum like me should be removed
my life be wrenched from me.
How cold the thought
that tomorrow I should be dead.
I will fight the hangman there
or will they have denied me
self-defence
by binding my arms
and hooding my eyes,
forcing meek submission?
How I admire my fellow Man
so high above the savage world,
all civilised and polite
and caring
and
tomorrow I will be dead
at their hands?
But,
I'll never kill again -
I've learnt my lesson, please,
Oh God
I swear I've learnt.
Dear pen
don't fail me now - they come.
The marks I leave
will outlast me
I envy  you, foul pen.
Don't let me die,
don't kill me,
you animals,
        please?

The Wait by Sakina Kagda

The satay sticks
sizzle tenderly
on the coals
wafting a fragrance
mingled in spice
the impatient wait
for turn of service
on gingerly perches
on cold round slabs
salivery glands
activated, hyper
watching, fascinated
the hands
dextrous like
a blackjack dealer's
spreading pack
of satay sticks
on the grill
fanning, oiling
with such finesse
watch, stretch,
oil, snatch.
Suddenly
hordes of ice-water boys
buzz like bees
spilling out all together
'Mahu Minum Apa?'
'Cola? Boleh? Tolak?'
Eenie, meenie, Mona
with whom to order
Okay -  ice-cream soda
'Lekas bawa'
satay sauce
is hot lah!

Festivals times four by Sakina Kagda

Celebrations times four
blithesome specialty of Singapore
ambience of Christmas, Hari Raya
Deepavali and Chinese New Year
Amaranthine charm
gastronomic variety
Cakes, kwachis, love-letters
in biscuits, oranges, satay
Idli Tosai and minum air,
garner and reciprocate
ang-pows and hampers
garniture and garrulity,
generic smiles
corals and  yamsengs
chanting and abolutions
jargon and jesting
gaiety, companionship
of many amalgams
mingle, twangle, jingle
decorate the day
dress the night

A Wish by Chua Mui Yim

A wish,
A promise of something to come.
A hope,
       an expectation.
It wakens, enlightens,
       warmsthe heart.
It  lives - eternally.
It lies without fail upon some human  breast.
Yet it dies too, for some;
and when  it does,
life  becomes a mere desert -
                too real, too inevitable:
                no more an oasis;
                no more a prospect.
Just a  misgiving,
                a misfortune,
                a turn of fate.
A human tragedy.