A trader's prayer

Credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena,
whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly;
who errs,
who comes short again and again,
because there is no effort without error and shortcoming;
but who does actually strive to do the deeds;
who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions;
who spends himself in a worthy cause;
who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement,
and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
(Theodore Roosevelt, Excerpt from the speech “Citizenship In A Republic” delivered at the Sorbonne, in Paris, France on 23 April, 1910)

Dreamers Far Away

Dreamers far away

Some place far and foreign my lover sleeps
She dreams, she dreams…
An unfathomable sea separates us.

I stand on a distant shore and wonder
Is she crying? Is she weeping
The tears which fill that sea?
Is she mourning? Is she grieving
For the death of her dream?

Can I help her?
Can I comfort her?
Does it matter what I say
To a strange girl I met one fateful day
And took affection to in a special way?

Some place far and foreign my lover wakes
The gulf between us widens.
I lie on my bed and wonder
Is she thinking of me?
Is she trying to forget?
Is she afraid of me?
Is she going to reply back?
And I sleep and dream…

Alone on my grey shingle shore
Cowered by the cold, howling, shrieking wind
Intimidated by the monstrous crashing surf,
I am bending down to pick up the shingles
And hurling them into that dark unfathomable sea.
Trying to bridge the ocean that separates us,
Trying to fill the vast chasm with small pebbles.

Yauming Chiam Winter 2013

Let me be your destination. 
Let me be your place of rest. 

Guide me to safe harbor,
I will pass the final test.
YMC June 2015

i like you too much to forget - 3

I like you too much to forget
Your silence is daunting
like sailing through a pitch black night
a  never ending darkness
No light, no compass
I look for you
But you do not answer.

The Scuba Diver

The Scuba Diver

Alone in a sea of strangers
Treading through the flotsam of Babel
Everyone talking,
Yelling, Speaking, Whispering
Squawking
A Noisy Gaggle of throats

But there is no one to talk to
My voice goes unheard
My words come back unanswered
Then I feel confusion I feel dread
(A shrieking, rising tide of madness confronts me.)

Bewildered I plunge into the blue depths
And the black beast does not follow.
I descend deep
Through my regulator
I suck in the cold compressed air
Down in the stillness of the oceanic womb
I hear my every breath

I feel my senses align
Alone in the depths
Down in the deep
I find the solace I seek
In this silent world
So alien to humanity
I am at peace.
Yau Chiam Raja Ampat 2012

I miss you and wish it wasn't so

17th January 2014 morning poetry

I miss you and I wish it wasn't so.
You are the pause in my sentence.
The dream I remember when I wake.
The flavor in my food. The pain in my ache.

I try and forget. But it is no use.
I am in my winter because of you.
Come back and be my Spring.
yauming chiam 17-1-2014 singapore

Stranger met

I met you

I met you at the busstop, the train, the street
You were waiting, walking, reading
We sat beside each other.
We walked pass one another
We exchanged glances briefly
You coyly smiled...
And time passed
Ever so
Slowly.
20th January 2014.

Date a literary girl

A Book Lover

Date a literary girl.
And she will take you to places you've never been.
Make love to a girl who reads
A girl who says she loves your library more than you :)
Kiss her on the lips as she reads intently from some obscure foreign novel.
Laugh as she brushes you aside and kisses you back absentmindedly and
With disarming distraction as she
Smiles and she runs her slender fingers curiously down your bookshelves.
Feel her excitement as she finds a book you love
And then she asks with delight to borrow it.
Because nothing is more extraordinary,
Nothing in the world could be more wonderful
Than a girl who loves my books.
YMC July 2013.

Sunshine

SJ: Sunshine

She lingers for awhile.
The Sunshine with a smile
But I feel her gaze drift.
There is a rift
Her boredom is palatable.
I coax her but it is useless.
She must leave.
My Sunshine with a smile
And darkness descends.

It is dusk.
YMC June 27th 2013

Adrift

Adrift in a vast sea
Alone in a small vessel
Afraid of the encroaching darkness.
Embrace your fear
Know no one lives forever.
YMC 2015

borrowed time

We don't own anything. We're only borrowing things for a time... even our youth... our bodies, our health. Everything we have we have only for a period of time. Ownership is just a fallacy that humans conjure up to avoid thinking of eternity.

wings - draft

I am walking down the concrete street
And I hear the thumping of a sound
That seems vaguely familiar.
A steady rhythmic sound
I feel the force of a wind
Behind my back, powerful
uplifting me
I do not feel my feet touch the floor
Oh my God I am flying
I feel the wings on my back
Making that steady rhythmic sound
Thumping - the beating of the air

The girl with the angel wings

I met a girl at the club. A girl with porcelain skin, and angel wings tattooed on her back. We talked a little bit. She came to support a friend. But she left early and her number I did not get. Damn. Now she flies through my dreams. A porcelain angel with tattooed wings on her back.

Love is short, forgetting is so long

if You meant her for me incline her heart to me.
otherwise remove this memory I have of her.
Her beautiful smile.
The memory of our witty conversations.
Remove them all
Let them fade like our footprints on the shoreline
Washed away by the tide of time.

http://experimentality.wordpress.com/

http://experimentality.wordpress.com/

Good writing here.

YM

Silence

When you stay silent
like the night sky
And your eyes glisten and
Glimmer like the distant stars
I will be here by your side
The lonely shore waiting
For the evening tide.

Where you go in the dakrness
of your night I am always here
forever waiting,
The Moon waiting for his bright Sunshine

My love is not like an echo
That demands a reply
I love you because I love you.
There is no other reason why

My heart is made of stone - morning poetry

Touch me there and see if I care
My heart is made of stone
I am immune to despair

(Stuff I write in the morning)

The Dead Soldier's talk by Ha Jin

The Dead Soldier’s Talk
In September 1969, in a shipwreck accident on the Tuman River, a young Chinese soldier was drowned saving a plaster statue of Chairman Mao. He was awarded Merit Citation 2, and was buried at a mountain foot in Hunchun County, Jilin.

I’m tired of lying here.
The mountain and the river are not bad.
Sometimes a bear, a boar, or a deer
       comes to this place
as if we were a group of outcast comrades.
I feel lonely and I miss home.
It is very cold when winter comes.
I saw you coming just now
like a little cloud wandering over grassland.
I knew it must have been you,
for no other had come for six years.
Why have you brought me wine and meat
       and paper-money again?
I have told you year after year
that I am not superstitious.
Have you the red treasure book with you?
I have forgotten some quotations.
You know I don’t have a good memory.
Again, you left it home.
How about the statue I saved?
Is it still in the museum?
Is our Great Leader in good health?
I wish He live ten thousand years!
Last week I dreamed of our mother
showing my medal to a visitor.
She was still proud of her son
and kept her head up
while going to the fields.
She looked older than last year
and her grey hair troubled my eyes.
I did not see our little sister.
She must be a big girl now.
Has she got a boy friend?
Why are you crying?
Say something to me.
So you think I can’t hear you?
In the early years
you came and stood before my tomb
swearing to follow me as a model.
In recent years
you poured tears every time.
Damn you, why don’t you open your mouth?
Something must have happened.
What? Why don’t you tell me!

By Ha Jin
This poem originally appeared in The Paris Review, #101, Winter 1986.

The Haircut
When we quarreled last time
you promised to give me a special haircut.
Yesterday you fulfilled your word
by shaving my head bald.
You could not straighten your body
and laughed until tears came to your eyes.
How proud you were
while telling your friends
about the masterwork at home!
Our daughter laughed too.
She laughed,
for her daddy’s head was shining like a bulb.
In fact, I also laughed at myself,
for when I lost my first love
I shaved my head the same way.
In our town everybody sighed and shook his head
seeing me walking in the streets
without my dark curly hair
except the girl I loved
who laughed and loved my haircut.
Ha Jin

It takes so long to forget

An embrace for a season may take a lifetime of winters to forget.
A kiss from a lover's lips makes an eternity seem like a short breath.
@ YMC October 2013

Why (draft)

I miss you
I wish I didn't but I do.
I remember we once met
We made love
And at some point after I fell in love with you.
It was our conversation, your company that touched my heart
The more I got to know you the more I wanted to be with you.
Perhaps the opposite was the same with you.
I don't know.
I don't know because you won't write back.
I wish you would say something
Tell me why
What did I do wrong?
Will I see you again?

Love is so fleeting
Forgetting takes so long.
You now seem like a dream I had a long time ago.
A good dream
But a dream that is fading.
Not a day goes by without my thinking of you.I browse through my memories like a child re-reads his favorite story book.
Mesmerized at the special pages.
Whispering out the words.
Memory is such a cruel thing
It won't let me forget you.

But I fear you are indifferent to my affection, even my being.