QCE52B NIE Lit 2018

When my father dies and comes back as a dog, I already know what his favorite sound will be: the soft, almost inaudible gasp as the rubber lips of the refrigerator door unstick, followed by that arctic exhalation of cold air; then the cracking of the ice-cube tray above the sink and the quiet ching the cubes make when dropped into a glass. Unable to pronounce the name of his favorite drink, or to express his preference for single malt, he will utter one sharp bark and point the wet black arrow of his nose imperatively up at the bottle on the shelf, then seat himself before me, trembling, expectant, water pouring down the long pink dangle of his tongue as the memory of pleasure from his former life shakes him like a tail. What I’ll remember as I tower over him, holding a dripping, whiskey-flavored cube above his open mouth, relishing the power rushing through my veins the way it rushed through his, what I’ll remember as I stand there is the hundred clever

Tonight I can write the saddest lines. Write, for example, 'The night is starry and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.' The night wind revolves in the sky and sings. Tonight I can write the saddest lines. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too. Through nights like this one I held her in my arms. I kissed her again and again under the endless sky. She loved me, sometimes I loved her too. How could one not have loved her great still eyes. Tonight I can write the saddest lines. To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her. To hear the immense night, still more immense without her. And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture. What does it matter that my love could not keep her. The night is starry and she is not with me. This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance. My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her. My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer. My heart looks for

You ask for a poem.  I offer you a blade of grass.  You say it is not good enough.  You ask for a poem.  I say this blade of grass will do.  It has dressed itself in frost,  It is more immediate  Than any image of my making.  You say it is not a poem,  It is a blade of grass and grass  Is not quite good enough.  I offer you a blade of grass.  You are indignant.  You say it is too easy to offer grass.  It is absurd.  Anyone can offer a blade of grass.  You ask for a poem.  And so I write you a tragedy about  How a blade of grass  Becomes more and more difficult to offer,  And about how as you grow older  A blade of grass  Becomes more difficult to accept.

Singapore you are not my country. Singapore you are not a country at all. You are surprising Singapore, statistics-starved Singapore, soulful Singapore of tourist brochures in Japanese and hourglass kebayas. You protest, but without picketing, without rioting, without Catherine Lim, but through your loudspeaker media, through the hypnotic eyeballs of your newscasters, and that weather woman who I swear is working voodoo on my teevee screen. Singapore, what are these lawsuits in my mailbox? There are so many sheaves, I should have tipped the postman. Singapore, I assert, you are not a country at all. Do not raise your voice against me, I am not afraid of your anthem although the lyrics are still bleeding from the bark of my sapless heart. Not because I sang them pigtailed pinnafored breakfasted chalkshoed in school But because I used to watch telly till they ran out of shows. Do not invite me to the podium and tell me to address you properly. I am allergic to microphone

pity this busy monster, manunkind, not. Progress is a comfortable disease: your victim (death and life safely beyond) plays with the bigness of his littleness --- electrons deify one razorblade into a mountainrange; lenses extend unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish returns on its unself. A world of made is not a world of born --- pity poor flesh and trees, poor stars and stones, but never this fine specimen of hypermagical ultraomnipotence. We doctors know a hopeless case if --- listen: there's a hell of a good universe next door; let's go