Five Poems by

 

Cyril Wong

 

 

 

 

No Walk on the Beach

 

 

Injured sand, cajoling waves.

Such jazz

of unfinished things.

The air is full of horses—

when what is seen

cannot be corralled.

The hardened heart

is schist, is shit, is shaft

of shadow, is none

of these things.

Bridges collapse

between sight and thought;

between the clangour of me

and the silent, unwavering horizon.

 

 

 

 

Unlived

 

 

Fibonacci haiku

of a snail’s shell

emptied out by birds

I weigh in my hand

like guilt or memory.

Sky fades to sea

like the mindlessness

of conservatism

into the mindlessness

of political correctness.

Clouds remain astonished

narratives of lives

unlived, whittling themselves

down to less than nothing.

 

 

 

 

Hands

 

 

Such sandy,

shifting

ground

an ocean of thinking

slides, swings,

stands on

is more infinite, surely,

than what it holds

like slippery

but cupped hands

to night and day

rotating

like a singular

eyeball in its vast socket.

 

 

 

 

Cove

 

 

The sea is a trillion commas,

keeping what it does not love

for long enough to let us

forget what we lost.

Regurgitate. Regurgitate.

Being an oasis to myself

in this wilderness of rock, sand

and bobbing children’s heads

happens out of time.

Someone is yelling for somebody

to stop running, to walk

instead from here to there

and everywhere

before stopping, a capitulation.

 

 

 

 

Beatitude

 

 

The life of desire

is a circus of the senses.

Under a tent of subjectivity,

such difference between wind

or sand in my eye. Discomfort

or pleasure. To exist before.

Beyond. Blessed regress

or transcendence. Ocean

of sound is no sound at all

when heard for long enough.

Salt on my tongue after a swim.

Elephant children climbing

on top of each other reek of fart

and barbecue. Blessed humanity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cyril Wong is a poet and fictionist in Singapore.  His last book was Infinity Diary, published by Seagull Books in 2020. 

 

 


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