On Turning Ten by Billy Collins

The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I'm coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light--
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.

You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.

But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.

This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.

It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.

The Panic Bird by Robert Phillips

just flew inside my chest. Some
days it lights inside my brain,
but today it's in my bonehouse,
rattling ribs like a birdcage.

If I saw it coming, I'd fend it
off with machete or baseball bat.
Or grab its scrawny hackled neck,
wring it like a wet dishrag.

But it approaches from behind.
Too late I sense it at my back --
carrion, garbage, excrement.
Once inside me it preens, roosts,

vulture on a public utility pole.
Next it flaps, it cries, it glares,
it rages, it struts, it thrusts
its clacking beak into my liver,

my guts, my heart, rips off strips.
I fill with black blood, black bile.
This may last minutes or days.
Then it lifts sickle-shaped wings,

rises, is gone, leaving a residue --
foul breath, droppings, molted midnight
feathers. And life continues.
And then I'm prey to panic again.

Catch by Robert Francis

Two boys uncoached are tossing a poem together,
Overhand, underhand, backhand, sleight of hand, everyhand,
Teasing with attitudes, latitudes, interludes, altitudes,
High, make him fly off the ground for it, low, make him stoop,
Make him scoop it up, make him as-almost-as possible miss it,
Fast, let him sting from it, now, now fool him slowly,
Anything, everything tricky, risky, nonchalant,
Anything under the sun to outwit the prosy,
Over the tree and the long sweet cadence down,
Over his head, make him scramble to pick up the meaning,
And now, like a posy, a pretty one plump in his hands.

Neighbours

During Hari Raya she knocks on my conscience,
I knock on her door and I give her cakes.

She says she likes them and gives me
Sweets with gelatine inside. I throw them away.

Poor woman, doesn't know how to make cakes.
Her children eat Maggi after school everyday.

That's why the elder one is in Normal stream
And the younger one can't spell her name.

If I was her age I wouldn't be wearing shorts at home.
No shame, she doesn't know how to hide her womanhood.

When the children are naughty and I beat them
I close the door: I hear she's a gossip.

But she beats her children harder than I do
What to do her children are like that.

I once hear her scream she wanted to kill herself.
These people never value their own lives.

Other times I see her I smile and she smiles back
And her children smile and call me auntie.

But in our hands we hold with fists clenched tight
The keys to our homes, each night we slam the bolt shut.

                                                            

                                                                                       Alfian Sa'at

Little Boy Crying

Your mouth contorting in brief spite and
Hurt, your laughter metamorphosed into howls,
Your frame so recently relaxed now tight
With three-year-old frustration, your bright eyes
Swimming tears, splashing your bare feet,
You stand there angling for a moment’s hint
Of guilt or sorrow for the quick slap struck.

The ogre towers above you, that grim giant,
Empty of feeling, a colossal cruel,
Soon victim of the tale’s conclusion, dead
At last. You hate him, you imagine
Chopping clean the tree he’s scrambling down
Or plotting deeper pits to trap him in.

You cannot understand, not yet,
The hurt your easy tears can scald him with,
Nor guess the wavering hidden behind that mask.
This fierce man longs to lift you, curb your sadness
With piggy-back or bull-fight, anything,
But dare not ruin the lessons you should learn.

You must not make a plaything of the rain.

                                                        Mervyn Morris

The Doll - Hilary Tham

Mother said:

“I cannot afford to buy one but I will make you

a doll.”

2 Popsicle sticks

crossed and tied with string.

2 eyes with brows pencilled in.

A quick stroke of another pen

made a scarlet smiling mouth. Then

a dab of glue and cotton wool.

2 scraps of cloth from the sewing

basket, with lace tacked on.

And Doll was fully formed, with

a change of clothes to hand.

Doll lived under my pillow for years.

She did not meet the porcelain doll,

the plastic dolls on our street.

They had real hair, hands with fingers

and toes on their feet.

The Last Dollar – Hilary Tham

Growing up in a dirt lane of shacks,
far from the brick mansions of rich
relatives, I did not feel poor.
After all, our house had a zinc
roof and a real cement floor.
We had a father who worked, a mother
who managed to feed us a little
vegetable with rice
even at month’s end
when neighbors’ children
ate gruel.

The nuns at school asked for help
with the fair to raise money
For The Poor. In a glow of goodwill
I volunteered (it would only cost a dollar)
a gallon of black sea-grass jelly
to make drinks to sell.

Mother cried when I told her.
It was the end of the month
and her last dollar was for food.
She gave me the dollar and we ate gruel
that week, the first time I knew
mothers can cry.

I Remember, I Remember – Thomas Hood

I remember, I remember
The house where I was born,
The little window where the sun
Came peeping in at morn;
He never came a wink too soon
Nor brought too long a day;
But now, I often wish the night
Had borne my breath away.

I remember, I remember
The roses red and white,
The violets and the lily cups--
Those flowers made of light!
The lilacs where the robin built,
And where my brother set
The laburnum on his birthday,--
The tree is living yet!

I remember, I remember
Where I was used to swing,
And thought the air must rush as fresh
To swallows on the wing;
My spirit flew in feathers then
That is so heavy now,
The summer pools could hardly cool
The fever on my brow.

I remember, I remember
The fir-trees dark and high;
I used to think their slender tops
Were close against the sky:
It was a childish ignorance,
But now 'tis little joy
To know I'm farther off from Heaven
Than when I was a boy.

Seventh Month – Cyril Wong

August: time of death, a path opens
to the past like a wind through grass,

the way lit by sparks, flaming paper.

Yet rituals only displace our desire
to mourn. Let us remember the dead,

but more importantly, persuade them
to ensure no harm may visit us.

We leave a row of chairs for the ghosts
to take our places for just one night.

Wayang actors hide their exhaustion
behind painted faces, dusty cymbals

trailing the bright arc of their voices.

We think how the dead would take this –
foibles of a life sung by archetypes,

reduced to grave, inflated gestures.

Would they grumble to each other
in their seats, complain of a lack

of synchronism between the music
and the action, the noise of traffic

eating into their illusion of narrative?

When it is finally over, would they
linger to gossip amongst themselves

about those who moved on to the life
to follow, sighing upon the mention

of the ones who have chosen to stay?

Past Midnight – Boey Kim Cheng

I turn the light on to see if i am still there
the bulb creeps to life, resentful
at being roused to work. The dreary repertoire
which a discordant band went through a dozen times
during a neighbour's funeral, is stomping
in my head. I hum a classical tune, summon
the words of a sentimental song
to expel the stubborn band. The blaring trumpets
cut them down with a single blow

Life is perpetual unrest
inthe housing estates. the endless knockings
the stampeding feet, the hurricanes of bad temper,
the eternal television, the thrashing bodies,
the endless rituals of life and death
where is the point of stillness
mature art directs us to?
my mind veers crazily.
i turn the light off.
the bulb goes on burning inside.

In Church

"And now to God the Father", he ends,
And his voice thrills up to the topmost tiles:
Each listener chokes as he bows and bends,
And emotion pervades the crowded aisles.
Then the preacher glides to the vestry-door,
And shuts it, and thinks he is seen no more.

The door swings softly ajar meanwhile,
And a pupil of his in the Bible class,
Who adores him as one without gloss or guile,
Sees her idol stand with a satisfied smile
And re-enact at the vestry-glass
Each pulpit gesture in deft dumb-show
That had moved the congregation so.

                                                                          By Thomas Hardy

First Day at School

A millionbillionwillion miles from home
Waiting for the bell to go. (To go where?)
Why are they all so big, other children?
So noisy? So much at home they
Must have been born in uniform
Lived all their lives in playgrounds
Spent the years inventing games
That don't let me in. Games
That are rough, that swallow you up.

And the railings.
All around, the railings.
Are they to keep out wolves and monsters?
Things that carry off and eat children?
Things you don't take sweets from?
Perhaps they're to stop us getting out
Running away from the lessins. Lessin.
What does a lessin look like?
Sounds small and slimy.
They keep them in the glassrooms.
Whole rooms made out of glass. Imagine.

I wish I could remember my name
Mummy said it would come in useful.
Like wellies. When there's puddles.
Yellowwellies. I wish she was here.
I think my name is sewn on somewhere
Perhaps the teacher will read it for me.
Tea-cher. The one who makes the tea. 

                                                                 By Roger McGough

You Fit Into Me

You fit into me

like a hook into an eye

a fish hook

an open eye

By Margaret Atwood

SF - David Lehman

SF stood for Sigmund Freud, or serious folly,
for science fiction in San Francisco, or fear
in the south of France. The system failed.
The siblings fought. So far, such fury,
as if a funereal sequence of sharps and flats
set free a flamboyant signature, sinful, fanatic,
the fire sermon of a secular fundamentalist,
a singular fellow's Symphonie Fantastique.

Students forget the state's favorite son's face.
Sorry, friends, for the screws of fate.
Stage fright seduces the faithful for the subway fare
as slobs fake sobs, suckers flee, salesmen fade.
Sad the fops. Sudden the flip side of fame.
So find the segue. Finish the speculative frame.

[Qian Ling]

The Table and the Chair - Edward Lear

Said the Table to the Chair,
'You can hardly be aware,
How I suffer from the heat,
And from chilblains on my feet!
If we took a little walk,
We might have a little talk!
Pray let us take the air!'
Said the Table to the Chair.

Said the Chair to the table,
'Now you know we are not able!
How foolishly you talk,
When you know we cannot walk!'
Said the Table with a sigh,
'It can do no harm to try,
I've as many legs as you,
Why can't we walk on two?'

So they both went slowly down,
And walked about the town
With a cheerful bumpy sound,
As they toddled round and round.
And everybody cried,
As they hastened to their side,
'See! the Table and the Chair
Have come out to take the air!'

But in going down an alley,
To a castle in a valley,
They completely lost their way,
And wandered all the day,
Till, to see them safely back,
They paid a Ducky-quack,
And a Beetle, and a Mouse,
Who took them to their house.

Then they whispered to each other,
'O delightful little brother!
What a lovely walk we've taken!
Let us dine on Beans and Bacon!'
So the Ducky and the leetle
Browny-Mousy and the Beetle
Dined and danced upon their heads
Till they toddled to their beds.

[Qian Ling]

Learning the Bicycle - Wyatt Prunty

for Heather

The older children pedal past
Stable as little gyros, spinning hard
To supper, bath, and bed, until at last
We also quit, silent and tired
Beside the darkening yard where trees
Now shadow up instead of down.
Their predictable lengths can only tease
Her as, head lowered, she walks her bike alone
Somewhere between her wanting to ride
And her certainty she will always fall.
Tomorrow, though I will run behind,
Arms out to catch her, she'll tilt then balance wide
Of my reach, till distance makes her small,
Smaller, beyond the place I stop and know
That to teach her I had to follow
And when she learned I had to let her go.

[Qian Ling]

After love - Maxine Kumin

Afterward, the compromise.
Bodies resume their boundaries

These legs, for instance, mine.
Your arms take you back in.

Spoons of our fingers, lips
admit their ownership.

The bedding yawns, a door
blows aimlessly ajar

and overhead, a plane
singsongs coming down.

Nothing is changed, except
there was a moment when

the wolf, the mongering wolf
who stands outside the self

lay lightly down, and slept.

[Qian Ling]

Circle - Howard Moss

Now are we saying goodbye?
I think so but can't be sure.
The last phone call but one
Left everything up in the air.
When you called last, did you mean
What you said when you said you meant
To say that this call would be
The last if I didn't call?
In fact, I'm not sure at all
If you called or I called you back.
And did you say "goodbye,"
Or I say "good night" and you
Say "Do you mean ‘good night'
Or ‘goodbye'?" I think it was you.
And what were you trying to do
When you said, "You said we're through?"
How could that be since you
Were the first to bring it up?
I don't think it's what I said,
Though you keep saying I did.
In any case, now that you know
That you know what I meant to say,
Why don't you say what you mean?
I mean if you mean to say
That the last call was the last.
I think that that would be best.
If something is finished, it's just
As well to get up and go.
If you're interested still to know,
I like a slate wiped clean,
And if you would pick up the phone,
I'd tell you what I mean.

[Qian Ling]

The Smile - William Blake

There is a smile of love,
And there is a smile of deceit;
And there is a smile of smiles,
In which these two smiles meet.

(And there is a frown of hate,
And there is a frown of disdain;
And there is a frown of frowns
Which you strive to forget in vain,

For it sticks in the heart's deep core,
And it sticks in the deep backbone.)
And no smile that ever was smiled,
But only one smile alone—

That betwixt the cradle and grave
It only once smiled can be.
But when it once is smiled
There's an end to all misery.

[Qian Ling]

Unveiling - Linda Pastan

In the cemetery
a mile away
from where we used to live,
my aunts and mother
my father and uncles lie
in two long rows,
almost the way
they used to sit around
the long planked table
at family dinners.
And walking beside
the graves today, down
one straight path
and up the next,
I don't feel sad, exactly,
just left out a bit,
as if they kept
from me the kind
of grown-up secret
they used to share
back then, something
I'm not quite ready yet
to learn.

[Qian Ling]