12 February, 2010

morning randoms

On a morning wintry weary
In the middle of the heat,
When sun is overcast
And the body just feels beat;
Soggy air and soggy clouds,
I'm swimming as I walk
Through humid steaming moistness
On a day where thunders talk.
The return of winter cool and drool
In an unexpected place
In summer's midst and dryness
For change in 30s pace.

Last night in lounge softly
A T.V series did so show
That if you closed your eyes and listened
The music would kindly tow
The story so you didn't need
To watch the episode through
And before the end you could guess
The final catch phrase too.

Chinese New Year has drawn nigh,
Tomorrow is the eve
And then I'll get to wear new clothes
And let excitement ease.
My umbao in my pocket,
The blessed elders' gifts
To help advance my future
And prosper financial rifts.
The fish come swimming by,
Calling out to all that pass
'Ensure your blessing is so much
That our leftovers aren't the last.'

Eyes a-weary, drooping
Though day has barely begun
Raindrops dripping from the trees
This day will not be sung.
From lecture to lecture
And tute to tute
Sagging, quote conjecture,
Let you practice be ever full
Using evidence-based gesture.

09 February, 2010

Ever

Ever by the misty glades
Through the humid mountain sprays
Ever by the leafy shades
Does sunlight filter in by rays.

Ever on the sandy dunes
Where the bravest dare not assume
Ever during day a whistled tune
May allow a show of plume.

Ever on the salty shores
Of lapping wavelets tickling little dorms
Ever knocking on happy doors
Or planting newer tiny gorms.

Ever on the path will wander
To and fro across the land ponder
Ever learning not asunder
And by this be growing fonder
Of the place given as a gift
Full of plenty and not a-thrift.


Playing by the lullabyes the cranky lobster wept. For upon his softer shell the coronet from afternoon had leapt. Now it dug into his skin, (for yesterday he'd shed) and glistened with pinkly-pin, a glowing lovely red. By and by a musslet came, a-weaving and a-bobbling, saw the poor lobster's plight and continued on a-robbing. Then swept by a silver bream a-glistening in the ripples, pulled and pulled but could not stipple the coronet of whipples. Hefty then a large foot stomped and there an octopus came after, chasing after running lunch and filled with inky laughter. Seeing then the lobster's plight, the octopus did pry, and with words of comfort left again to return with a grafter. Not trusting hungry foe, tired lobster crept into hidden hole. Deeper, deeper into the dark and still the coronet it bit, but then cooling water and lack of light made the thing submit. It crawled back up toward the door where octopus sat lurking, hoping for the easy meal it had seen a-murking. Up sprang coronet, shining fair, onto the octopus' neck, there it looped and drooped and bit down hard without a single care.

04 February, 2010

today

Today, I have nothing to say. Why? Because there is too much to say.

Few people bother to read poems these days and yet they teach us how to write them in school. They don't really teach us cool plays on words or really great puns beyond the cliched ones everyone knows. We have to learn about cinquains and haikus, but don't get taught the ballads or the sonnets. You have to go to university for that... and it can be boring unless you're really passionate about poetry.

I only write poetry, because it's interesting to see how my words will flow without much thought. Patterns emerge. Some more common, some less common, some boring, some without meaning. You understand. That's why this blog is unseen (besides the erratic posting). But that's fine with me, because that's how I want it to be. There, but unseen. A bit like an optical illusion. Hidden.

I begin uni soon. My last year. The hardest, most difficult, easiest-to-fail year. Next week in fact. Am I ready? I don't know much of the real world, but that's what school is for. It prepares you (or is supposed to) for the real world where people work and don't stay within the protected walls of definite rules. Society's rules are always changing. Always changing. What is rude to one is polite to another and vice-versa.

My problem is that I have not been taught some of the common courtesies used in today's society and those that I do not find important are all important to others. The world is strange.

It's funny how when a blog like this is written off the top of my head, it can be so awful. Makes me sound as if I grew up with English as a second or third language. That's why there's the poetry. You won't notice my hasty bad English so badly.

Australia, please teach your children proper grammatically used English before we have generation after generation with degenerating pieces (both poetry and prose, full of atrocious spelling and grammar mistakes) so commonly seen on internet sites and now in novels as well. Some of those people are over 30, some over 40. Many aspiring writers. Quite a few with awful English despite having grown up in an English speaking country.

I enter some primary and secondary schools now and the children can neither read nor write. They don't even know their times tables. Our education compared to many other countries of the world is awful and yet parents will complain that their children have too much homework, the work is too difficult. Kindergarten children in Malaysia and Singapore are able to tell me their timetables (albeit in terms of 'if X number of people have Y number of objects, how many altogether') when I ask them. Some Year 8's here can't even do that! Much less spell the word 'English' correctly.

Granted some are less adept at the language and slower in learning, but some are extremely bright... just untaught as yet. Untrained.

Now I've gone on a rant... And I said that I had nothing to say today. Honestly, some people.

Bring the cheeses to the pleasers
So the tasters can smell pasters.
Hide the wire in the lyre
Where the doters will catch the noters.
Count the apples
1, 2, 3
Spell the letters
A, B, C
Read the grammar
Colon-semi
Seed the learning
Period.

Teachers have some of the hardest work
At which some balk and others shirk
Yet the best will stay prepared to do
All that duty calls them to.
Responsibility doesn't let them leave
But holds them until they have reprieve.
Few truly notice their master pieces
Slow to form and growing reaches
But today I will acknowledge them
Their work, their heart, their academ.

Bad poems. I know.

03 February, 2010

take

With a mild time elating
To the hard held rhyme abating:

Can the fisherfolk tell of woe
When the seamen have cried of so?

'Ere the well placed game of shatter
Breaks the long held space of matter
So the beer-filled cans of batter
Shake the ever emptying platter.

What can portions do to focus
All the missons in the locus
While the fashions of the portal
Remain the honoured plains of chortle?

Card the missiles in the lie
Place the shuttle in the rye
Speak no more of broken reeds
And tell not glasses wearing tweeds.

Place the making in the battle
Churn the little wearing cattle
Force the gate among the wait
So that the rate will not be great.

Will the lay-man hear the whistle
Of the yodel in the thistle
Or the portens in the while
Where the broad leans over tile?

Bake no pie
Shake not lye
Cream no tie
In the sigh.

Take.