The House on the Hill

I wrote this poem back in Jan 2005 when I found this old abandoned mansion in Chancery Hill Road. The owner's son had moved overseas and was unable to return because he didn't do his National Service. 

The owner had passed away sometime in the 1950s leaving dishes in the sink to wash, clothes in the cupboards, photos of horse racing on the walls - apparently they were wealthy enough to own race horses, and old art deco furniture.

In 2009, the new owners had the place razed to the ground, nothing of the place remains now.

The abandoned house left a powerful impression upon me. And I wrote this poem shortly after I visited the place.

The house on the hill
stands silent and still
Its front door is locked
Its windows are open.
Old cupboards are inside
Filled with dusty dresses
And worm-eaten books
The old house waits
Waiting for master
Waiting for mistress
But no one returns

Singapore Balcony 1am Draft 1

Soft is the velvet night sky

Quiet is the black night air

A gentle breeze passes by

In silence we patiently wait for dawn

Random thoughts

On her epitaph, it was written: here lies a mother who gave her husband's inheritance to her children to strange men.

Descent 2

Alone in a sea of strangers
Trawling through the babel of voices
I feel confusion
I feel dread
A rising tide of madness confronts me

Then I descend to the depths
And the black beast does not follow
I hear my breath
In the stillness of the ocean womb
I feel my senses align
Alone in the depths

Down in the deep depths
I find the solace I seek
In this silent world
So alien to humanity
I am at peace.
Chiam Yau-ming 2012

Diving into the Wreck by Adrienne Rich (1973)

Diving into the Wreck by Adrienne Rich

First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone.

There is a ladder.
The ladder is always there
hanging innocently
close to the side of the schooner.
We know what it is for,
we who have used it.
Otherwise
it is a piece of maritime floss
some sundry equipment.

I go down.
Rung after rung and still
the oxygen immerses me
the blue light
the clear atoms
of our human air.
I go down.
My flippers cripple me,
I crawl like an insect down the ladder
and there is no one
to tell me when the ocean
will begin.

First the air is blue and then
it is bluer and then green and then
black I am blacking out and yet
my mask is powerful
it pumps my blood with power
the sea is another story
the sea is not a question of power
I have to learn alone
to turn my body without force
in the deep element.

And now: it is easy to forget
what I came for
among so many who have always
lived here
swaying their crenellated fans
between the reefs
and besides
you breathe differently down here.

I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
I stroke the beam of my lamp
slowly along the flank
of something more permanent
than fish or weed

the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and away into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.

This is the place.
And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
streams black, the merman in his armored body.
We circle silently
about the wreck
we dive into the hold.
I am she: I am he

whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes
whose breasts still bear the stress
whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
obscurely inside barrels
half-wedged and left to rot
we are the half-destroyed instruments
that once held to a course
the water-eaten log
the fouled compass

We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15228

(Commentary: I don't think this is a great poem about diving. But it does contain evocative images and descriptions which are pretty good; they ring true. And I'll try and use them in my scuba poems.

Descending 500m

Her cold embrace I seek
Her dark depths I do explore
Far beneath the breathing world I find solace
I am descending 500m

(I thought up the first line on the silent cab ride back to my flat, I thought of incorporating that into a different poem... then changed my mind and placed it as the header for a black poem about scuba diving, hint "black".)

Leaving

The sun is vermillion today... that sort of orangey red color when there's too much dust in the air.
The air is so dry.
I feel so dry, parched inside.
I gotta get out of here.

You know where I want to be?
In a place where I can wake up in the morning and go to sleep at night and NOT be hassled.
Not hear an angry word spoken against me.
Not be on my guard,
Not have to watch my words,
I don't have to explain myself
I want to be a place where I can be me,
And I am loved.
And its not here, thats for sure.