Boey Kim Cheng. Clear Brightness. another poet (our finest), teacher, father, and son of singapore we’ve lost to another country and sanity.
your lines echo in my mind again and again as around this city i walk and walk and walk. thank you, i am eternally indebted for the easing of loneliness. and the music xx
yesterday i fell asleep on a bus again it was the mid-afternoon a single decker and besides and beside me there was another masked man and the driver heading downtown again.
i had just eaten a full meal in public again the aircon was unnecessarily on full blast arctic in the tropics the rain was abating.
nothing was happening there was no news again but the hum and whine of the bus engine that skidding, slip-sliding, ice-skating sound of fat wheels on wet tarmac that as X and emmylou taught me is worth pretending like it's the ocean “coming down to wash me clean, to wash me clean baby, do you know what I mean?” as we go from boulder to birmingham again.
when we crossed merdeka bridge “i dreamed of 747s over geometric farms dreams amelia, dreams and false alarms”
little did i realise then that CCTV streetlights captured me thinking the lions were still missing before i almost missed my stop and arrived at a meeting.
my glasses fogged and after two years of rigged solitaire somewhere, a boy was falling out of the sky Again “and the hardest part is knowing i’ll survive”
