My name is Joshua

On Conditions

2010-11-18T08:17:00.000-08:00

A sudden fantasy about death under rails is upon me; the thought of slaughter at the hands of her machinery fascinates. I can feel the slow effect on me always- soul rotting, heart removed, dessicated. i blame her, and her putrid smells. this city in her adolescent spasms, not yet a woman, but old enough to be a window-shopped slut. she welcomes with short skirts and poorly furnished make up.

And yet i have been deposited within her midsts, not her under-developed bosom, but the cavity within her chest where her heart is supposed to reside. inside and inside i wander and search. where are the places that my parents once described? the culture that i yearn for, the peace that home is supposed to provide. in its place i find a longing for the crisp air of the Canterbury plains, the mysterious suburbs where my belonging now subsides.

I dream at night of train stations filled with ghosts. caricatures of caricatures of caricatures. carriages of living dead. it is my fault these vivid nights are upon me - in the day my mind fantasizes and conjures - this young lady from a bank coyly glances at me; i imagine her a fresh graduate yearning for the hedonism of her future and weighing the hours she will have to work against the material she'll be able to bring in. the old man on the seat in pajamas muttering to himself in dialect; lost in the midst of his past, neglected by its offspring in the present.

Always, my dream ends the same. Blank faces, row upon row of heights, bodies... empty vessels to be filled. i reach my stop. i reach for Beatrix's hand. but she is not here, and ever increasingly do i realize that neither am i.

Forever young [2]

2010-02-21T09:47:00.000-08:00

So here we stand, Youth at his most shallow, neither burdened with soured hope nor expectation, stagnant in enjoying this labour that has yet borne little fruit.

We have given much thought to no occasion, but rather on the slow decline of us, that generation so characterised by a media that we hold too dear, that bombards us gently in these methods pervasive and perverse. there is nothing righteous about the desensitization of morality, nothing decent about the tyranny of the majority - these dullards to whom the only reaction can be pessimistic humor, or cynical rage.

it is in these times we wonder: is there no standing to the juggernaut? to the corporations and the governments who wield control? oh how effectively they perpetuate Maslow's myth! - that without this you will never be safe.

Yet, this youth is seemingly at the cusp of its nameless epoch, no longer wondering if the moonless night will turn. For in this age where we are so closely connected, you can no longer use our differences to keep us apart!

For we are neither empty vessels to be filled, nor hate-filled revolutionaries. We are neither socialist nor democrat, religious nor atheist, artist nor engineer. We are youth, and we are searching for beauty, for truth and for substance. And ever increasingly, we are beginning to realise; that in this, we should have never been alone.

Say it sweetly and softly.

2010-01-19T01:49:00.000-08:00

and simply, this is how it ends.

allow yourself to feel, one last time, the weight of the load on your back. events so tiny and so vast that you have been witness to. the smiles and curses of your yonder journey. Take a moment for each, savour the brightness of the memory. for this is your kaleidoscope, these will reflect onto your world, no matter how dim or dark or deep.

remember to breathe, your slow inhalations down that stormy path, each breath a month,a year, every tear a sensation new for the first time.

and be brave! - always be brave. you may have grown from this gutter alone, entered the garden desolate, but like all beings grasped this impossibility and thrown it back. and in its place, hope sprang, as in dreams, for it is a dream, for you to have taken into your arms another, and another, and touched for a moment that shangri-la, that piece of truth that defies what rationale had hoped to accomplish.

Leave now, your shiny shoes on, ties and dresses bright like the flashes from the lenses. Leave now, and put yourself together. Step into the light. Remember to smile.

1.

2010-01-19T01:28:00.001-08:00

Holliday is bunched in a corner masturbating when Bud Wally walks into the top floor penthouse of the Holiday Inn. There is a peculiar mathematics to self-gratification, the addiction and subtraction of movement till the multiplication of pleasure increases and equates with what can only be described as finality.
Often there are errors, interruptions, but these are often redacted or ignored with the sheer mass of forced numbers. On the odd occasion the sum does not complete, and such it is here when Wally reaches into the left front pocket of his plain black Nike trekkers, pulls out a small snub-nose .45 magnum and pulls the trigger.

Desperation growing

2009-12-02T06:07:00.000-08:00

Oh and turn on the bright lights Joshua! there is patience, yes, and abstinence, but procrastination oh, that is a dirty word -

remember the fall, and the salty estranged sea.

2009-10-02T21:31:00.001-07:00

you must have character, Joshua, to live up to the person you can be. For this, above all your talents, abilities and responsibilities will forever define you, your happiness and your place in the world.

there is no such thing as luck.

Self interested bastard.

2009-09-02T21:25:00.000-07:00

All i have are questions, and no answers.

What is the meaning of this? there is rhyme, and rhythm to be sure - maybe some sense of higher joy. But underneath, and there is always the underneath, there in my cavern of insecurity and doubt, there will always be the fact that this is no beginning, and that all too insufferably soon there will be an end.

i cling to you, like a drowning man to a raft half sunk.

i am a cynic after all - i think of the words that i spoke before, and wonder at their loud half-truths. perhaps better to take you as my medicine, in these long small doses. but the conclusion seems inevitable, and all too clear from the onset- for these days i picture myself as an artist. and that is to say that i only care for expression of the self.

Adeline

2009-07-25T06:59:00.000-07:00

tonight i am giving in to the naysayers and the doubters, hearing their voices cloud up like steam. i want to say that i will fight this plague - but the rot has run deep! i look at them not as enemies, but as preachers, truth-tellers, against the uneasiness that overcomes. listen, they tell me, this is what is wrong, the crux, the problem, the solution all in one dramatic powerful masterpiece! already i hear the chimes ringing, the heady presenter in his melodrama gaze.

i think of you, and you, and you, and whimper on my yellow couch, of the conversations that we were always going to have. today it is easy to convince myself that i am evil. far harder for it to do any good.

Like a rolling stone

2009-07-23T06:44:00.000-07:00

And this is what keeps me up tonight, this subterranean fear that i am losing you [oh and the arrogance of that statement - as if i could lose you like a watch that i would have loved too much]. But this tidal wave of coldness has washed upon me, and only i can see it, sense it, because maybe, hopefully, there is no one who knows you really the way that i do.

I wish to say that i do not know why- when really i do. and all too clearly i know that time has taken its toll, when all too often i have broken your heart, with the endless progress of my senseless demise into adulthood. But what am i to do? i feel like a [to quote springsteen] one legged man punching in the wind. there is nothing here but me.

But this is the problem isn't it? this life of mine has taken upon itself to fufill the stubbornest of courses - one where i can only end up on top and alone. I wish to seek the change in the wind. I wish to run away and hide. But my direction has been decided.

I beg you now, measure me not by my moments - these things i cannot resist to do, actions that are consequential only to everyone else! but my regret, which is eternal and undying in its love of renewal.

and i am sorry, again, because i know that it is not enough. you are my heart, you are my heart, and without you i am......

I take myself too seriously

2009-07-16T04:35:00.001-07:00

And i remember, exactly a year ago. Sitting down to write something, and realising, in sudden shock, that there was really nothing wrong with life.

How nice.

Hopeful, and stutter free

2009-07-12T06:34:00.000-07:00

And tonight this strangest of ailments, the modern condition really gets to me. Tonight i see the yellow brick road. It strikes me now, that in bleak contrast to the frenzied ambitions of my university bound friends, all 5 years of my varsity experience have left me cynical to the machina of the capitalist system.

It is now impossible to survive spiritually without an opiate of some form.

---

Am I to become profligate as if I were a blonde? Or religious
as if I were French?

Each time my heart is broken it makes me feel more adventurous
(and how the same names keep recurring on that interminable
list!), but one of these days there'll be nothing left with
which to venture forth.

Why should I share you? Why don't you get rid of someone else
for a change?

I am the least difficult of men. All I want is boundless love.
- Frank O'Hara

Close your eyes and cry

2009-07-12T04:53:00.001-07:00

Quarterly Review

2009-07-03T10:07:00.000-07:00

advice for past-self
1. grow up.

2. stop living for yourself.

3. she's not the right one for you.

4. you can't grow when you're obsessed with the past

5. study hard

6. plan ahead

7. never start smoking

8. trust your instincts. in every area of life.

9. ignore your bleeding heart syndrome

10. do not kiss random girls

11. do not hook-up with friends

12. never fall completely in love with a stranger

13. never use old slang

14. your first girlfriend makes an excellent best friend [eventually]

15. write down all the stories you have in your head

16. learn to drink but not get drunk

17. always think of your family and friends first

18. never let your penis fall in love for you

19. don't trust overly-enthusiastic men

20. never play around with soft hearted women

21. never be the smartest person in the room

22. women that like men who are loud, attention seeking and insecure are worthless

23. there are many women like this

24. you will one day become loud, insecure and attention seeking

25. always trust your good heart

26. always forgive yourself

Custom

2009-06-23T18:44:00.000-07:00

Today i stare at the barren tree,
the overhang stoic through my window.
Modest Mouse turns slowly over two speakers.

Suddenly i am whispering welcomes,
camera cables in my little motel.

where do i go from here?
i remember his tears on the beach;
cold shoulders, the smell of salt spice.

i told him that day,
no fear - we are brothers,
there are things stronger than the staccato beat,
the slow whisper of her hair.

but i lie, also, even to you.
this is the strangest of customs -
denying our desires,
disabling our dreams;
we are lonely men, for we were selfish.

Beginnings/Endings

2009-06-21T08:53:00.000-07:00

looking outside the window right now, the sun is starting to set and the sky is a long perfect blue. what clouds that are left in the evening sky are gentle and seem to be slowly disappearing; almost as if awaiting the quiet arrival of the night.

melbourne and NZ are pretty similar places; one day you'll throw off your layers of outer clothing and stop drinking cups of hot milo and start really living in melbourne. no not living, experiencing.

im starting university on MONDAY! hahaa. im very very nervous about that right now. i always remember how my dad used to talk to me about going to university when i was in primary school. being an old boy of RI, he'd used to tell me how i'd get into raffles sec after primary school; then move on to RJC and finally to university. and he'd say to me in a very serious tone 'and now joshua, you know that getting to university isnt going to be easy, your going to have to work very hard'.

well we know how that whole raffles thing turned out didnt we? and it seems that my father was wrong, well at least a little wrong.

i feel like i havent worked hard enough to get into university, like my entrance has everything to do with luck and nothing to do with ability. which is scary, of course, because i wonder if i simply have the mental capacity to compete with these other older, smarter, more mature students.

on the other hand, the only thing that i can do right now is convince myself otherwise.

wow. it seems like nowadays my emails are getting longer and longer. maybe its because i havent started school and just have all day to BS.

naturally, you get the best of it.

hurr hurr,
josh
Fri, 18 Feb 2005
---

I remember writing this, vaguely, nearly five years ago. To Steph, of course, my long lost pen-pal. It seems like forever since then, a wide eyed 16 year old going to uni for the first time, still living with his family, still quietly terrified of the outside world.

In a years time i'll be in the army - a million miles away from the Singapore club, Christchurch, and all the people that seem so much to me. I do not look at this with trepidation, but rather with excitement; a new sun rising on the horizon. Already i'm making plans.

I wonder often, about the path that i took here. My first year i spent in denial, still a child in a context very much reserved for adults. My second and third years growing immensley, discovering a side to myself that i would have never forseen in all my youth. Josh the leader - Josh the life of the party. Last year was full of extremes; the joy of achieving with the singapore club, being with esther, compared with the numbness and ultimate devastation of my fathers death, and the messy breakup.

Its only now that i realise how much this place means to me. I spent most of my life drifting from country to country - always wondering when i could settle down and call a place my own. I am leaving now, again, but that doesn't mean that i will have left. It doesn't mean that this road won't lead me back here again. It was here that i grew up, it was here that the travellin' man found escape.

I wouldn't wish it any different.
--

We hung around til the final band
called "Escape is at Hand for the Travellin' Man"
you yelled in my ear this music speaks to me
they launched into "Lonely From Rock 'n Roll"
followed by "They Checked Out an Hour Ago"
closing with "All Desires Turn Concrete"

Those melodies come back to me
at times beyond our heartbeat
- The Tragically Hip

The New

2009-06-20T08:06:00.000-07:00

I can't pretend
I need to defend
some part of me from you
I know I've spent some time a-lying
- Interpol

And once you told me that we all have our demons - its how we deal with them that matters.

I need to think about where this is going.

On death

2009-06-19T09:19:00.000-07:00

It is likely then, that before the end of the year another member of this extended family will have died; the common denominator of their demise cancer, the extenuating circumstances irrelevant.

They have all passed on too young.

I sit here, and ponder my youth, which i am wasting, and my stupidity, which if does not lessen, then is ever increasing in at least my perception of it. I reach for a cigarette, and it seems that i fall further along with every violent inhalation.

Some say goodbye

2009-06-17T00:06:00.000-07:00

On bended knee is no way to be free
Lifting up an empty cup, I ask silently
All my destinations will accept the one that's me
So I can breathe...

Circles they grow and they swallow people whole
Half their lives they say goodnight to wives they'll never know
A mind full of questions, and a teacher in my soul
And so it goes...

Don't come closer or I'll have to go
Holding me like gravity are places that pull
If ever there was someone to keep me at home
It would be you...

Everyone I come across, in cages they bought
They think of me and my wandering, but I'm never what they thought
I've got my indignation, but I'm pure in all my thoughts
I'm alive...

Wind in my hair, I feel part of everywhere
Underneath my being is a road that disappeared
Late at night I hear the trees, they're singing with the dead
Overhead...

Leave it to me as I find a way to be
Consider me a satellite, forever orbiting
I knew all the rules, but the rules did not know me
Guaranteed
- Eddie Vedder; Into The Wild OST

today i want to run away. today i want to be free.

Ignorance is bloody.

2009-06-11T00:51:00.001-07:00

Women should have a secret language in which they communicate when there are non-women around. [lesbians included]

i don't want to know which guy you think is cute, how many babies you'd prefer, which colour chapstick is your favourite, or why you're sad that your crush has been ignoring you.

i'd prefer a special land, a place where the instant they begin yammering on about all manner of inane BS the lights go off, the music starts, and a man in a mask and chainsaw begins to sever limbs in musical fashion. oh a one two hand, a two three, head.... and so on.

i think i've been hanging out with the thai's too much. but then again, they resort to thai when speaking of anything i don't need to know.

how nice.

Slow Show

2009-06-09T08:41:00.000-07:00

Standing at the punch table swallowing punch
can’t pay attention to the sound of anyone
a little more stupid, a little more scared
every minute more unprepared

I made a mistake in my life today
everything I love gets lost in drawers
I want to start over, I want to be winning
way out of sync from the beginning

I wanna hurry home to you
put on a slow, dumb show for you
and crack you up
so you can put a blue ribbon on my brain
god I’m very, very frightening
I’ll overdo it
- The National; 'Slow Show'

Wet Dreams

2009-05-26T10:52:00.000-07:00

I wonder what its like, to be a good man loved by a good woman.

Maybe its a bridge too far for me.

I wonder why i'm so unconvinced as to my own moral worth.

2009-05-25T07:13:00.000-07:00

i know, i fucked up. again.

i'm sorry i didn't text or ask. that i acted like i didn't care. as usual i was too caught up in my own dramas [real or pretend] to do something.

the fact remains that i'm your brother, and i wish i could have been there to support you, to cheer you on.

but once again, i wasn't.

i deserve this guilt.

In the night i dream

2009-05-17T09:13:00.000-07:00

But no human can subdue the tongue; it is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.
- James 3:8

What a weekend.

2009-05-10T05:41:00.001-07:00

'you can criticise xxx, but you're just too afraid to see who YOU are'

and in her remarks i found the echoes of my fathers own hatred of my immaturity - his hard glances and quiet disappointment. the kids in my family grew up fast; but in some strange way we didn't grow up at all. our childish urges were left repressed, only to spill out and overflow from time to time, or in the presence of some unwitting, understanding lover.

i remember visiting him on his deathbed, crying as i asked of the impending. and he looked at me and told me not to cry - as if crying was for the weak, thinking that he would not allow me this, not even now.

and i didn't cry at his funeral, only watched, silent pictures moving on a reel.

its hard to admit this now, but for nearly all my life i ran a calculated campaign to piss my father off. to deliberately go against whatever he orchestrated in an attempt to prove that somehow i would not be like him.

now that he's gone, i wonder if i should've loved him more.

what an asshole i am.

Oh, inverted world

2009-05-06T06:09:00.000-07:00

and inevitably, here to write some depressing bullshit. this shit'll wrap around me in an iron vice throughout the night; i'll consume cigarettes with a vengeance, attempt to distract myself into cynical masturbation, exercise...

morning comes like salvation.

i need a subtle change in perspective, a gentle shift away from this reality. someone to crash into this leviathan, leave a green tree growing on a shell shocked world.

and while Solomon chose wisdom, Joshua chose conquest.

fuck this weakness. one day i'll have it all.

Rhododendrons

2009-05-04T16:37:00.000-07:00

So you want to be an artist, want to be a singer
Want to be remembered for what you could create

So you want to be a cowboy, ride into the distance
Never have to listen or answer to anyone

So you want to be a boxer, surviving on your instincts
Relying on your fists and the quickness of your wit

Are you bigger than these buildings and the grey around you?
Is your pain more worthy than everybody else?

Drunk again in the rhododendrons
-Bloc Party

Insomnia

2009-05-03T05:43:00.000-07:00

light a cigarette, cause i can't get no sleep
there's nothing on the tv,
nothing on the radio that means that much to me..

stay away, you've got nothing to do with this anymore.

MOVE

2009-04-23T08:50:00.000-07:00

josh oh josh oh josh.

stop looking back at the mistakes you've made.

why let them haunt you?

you've become so much more than you ever thought you'd be.

yeah you've hurt people. you've let them down.

but you're young, you're still learning.

concentrate on your strengths, nullify your weaknesses.

and always, always back yourself.

The new

2009-04-23T05:18:00.000-07:00

I had seven faces
thought i knew which one to wear
But I'm sick of spending these lonely nights
training myself not to care
- Interpol

I'm trying to give up on caring - to go back to that stage last year where everything was dictated by what i wanted for myself.

Esther told me that underneath it all she knew that i would always be a good person.

But it's so tiring.

Oh give me all my silver, and give me all my gold. Throw me a pistol for this heart has gone so cold.

On the other side

2009-04-20T03:19:00.001-07:00

what do i say to these things? that once i touched you, and saw delight spreading slow across your face. i can no longer try to deny this most important of things; that you meant something, but you are not anything anymore.

i try to look back now, and frame this moment we had together. i put it into a box, a sphere but these will all not fit. that which we had together was superfluous, liquid. just like the love we had i can no longer place it.

there are too many regrets for me to name now. this room seems colder without our laughter. and yet more alive for the honesty that comes with time. perhaps if i had filled the silences between...

but here i pause and breathe.

the only point of autopsy is to determine a suspicious cause of death; but i do not wish to know why anymore. the why is irrelevant when the here and now are empty - the tomorrow impossible. realise this and then, suddenly, you and it, opposing sides, equal, will touch and in this metamorphosis you have clarity, perspective, and emerge forth, free.

this process is not impossible, like birth, it is merely painful.

there are no lines to draw. there are no boxes to place. there is only then, acceptance, forgiveness, and now.

and tomorrow, tomorrow is freedom.

if you can fix me up girl

2009-04-18T08:21:00.001-07:00

some sweet girl like that - full of life, confident and secure.

oh she has a sweet smile, and not a thing in the past to haunt her.

and i could have saved you

2009-04-18T03:52:00.000-07:00

but i could only think about myself. like i always do.

veron. nadia. cheryl. esther.

how many more names on that list?

and today i told you to stay away - because i know you'd get hurt. trust me, you don't want to get involved.

i've never met anyone more manipulative, in control and deliberate than myself.

and i've never met anyone more depressed.

Free writing

2009-04-11T08:36:00.000-07:00

1.
i'm writing this because i have alot going on in my head - none of it about the dance party, which is supposed to dominate my thoughts right now. these things have suddenly come to mean so little to me.

2.
i'm beginning to wonder what kind of legacy i'm going to leave behind. it isn't arrogant of me to say this. i've spent a considerable amount of time and effort into creating one.

3.
am i a bad person? this is bothering me alot nowadays. i remember how i warned her that i was an asshole on our first date. that seemed to be an accurate prediction of my behaviour when we got together.

4.
nicole and esther are the only two people that i've really let in since i've been in christchurch. they're the only people who have seen the little boy in me, the silly looi who i protect with everything i have. the mature, cool josh is what everyone else sees; and he's what i'm turning into.

5.
i only ever consider what i want - and how to get it. everyone elses feeling are immaterial. i'll use you then i'll lose you. this part of me i hate the most - but is what comes naturally.

6.
i'm struggling with alot of guilt these days. a part of me wants to run away and blame everyone else. another wants to blame only myself. this is horribly tiring.

7.
i don't really know how to love people. women are attracted to the confident, mature version of me - the cocky asshole. i hate that guy. i'm really just a little boy who wants to love and care for everybody. but no one would ever want to be with him. someday i'm hoping someone's going to fall in lust with the former; and fall in love with the latter.

8.
i'm completely self-obsessed. i only ever think about i.

9.
it's the season of endings right now. i'm going to miss everything about nicole. her smile, the ways she laughs at me, the way she loves me. i'm going to miss esther too. talking to her, making her laugh.

10.
i'm drawing a line.

11.
You come here to me
We'll collect those lonely parts and set them down
- i wish that had been me.

honesty

2009-04-01T05:57:00.000-07:00

i think for my entire life i've been running away from the person i am.

i had no self-image but strangely enough was extremely self conscious.

since i was young my parents have always told me i had the right tools to do whatever i wanted to do - but i just didn't.

now i never understood that - it left me feeling like i wasn't good enough. i was just who i was, and somehow i didn't do anything to make them proud. that sucked.

so for a long time i was just drifting - the typical middle child; caught between the elder one who everyone respected, and the younger one who everyone loved. i had no self-esteem.

then they left here for singapore - a decision that i encouraged, and don't regret for a second. since then its been an amazing trip of self-discovery. i turned in extremes from immense insecurity, to depression, through to arrogance and confidence that bewildered everyone ever close to me. in the process i've made alot of friends, hurt alot of people, and loved a whole lot more. its been terrifying, beautiful and sad.

but its only this year, in the shadow of my dad's passing, of my cheating on esther and her dumping of me for teck, have i slowly allowed myself to respect my own feelings, my own heart, and go with what i feel, instead of only what i know. i've run away from what i've felt for long enough. its time to stand up for who i am - and that person is equally heart as mind as soul.

barack obama said that we are the people that we've been waiting for - at first this seems amazingly simple, but now that i think about it, it is one of the most profound things that i've ever heard spoken for the longest of times. that we can do more with what we are, that we don't have to wait for a hero to ride along and save us from ourselves. we are that hero, and only we can save us from ourselves.

sometimes i feel this call, this need. i tell people that i want to be a politician, and they smile at me and think i'm a smug self-centred slimeball who wants to overcompensate for his tiny penis with the eye of history and media on him. but what i want to believe - aside from all the doubts and insecurities - is that i have this call upon me because of love. its cheesy, yeah, but i've always been, and will always be a person that is driven by his heart. and there's this restlessness in me, this hunger to change things for the better. i want others to be happy, i want them to see that theres more to life than an endless trail of creating and chasing paper around. i love people, and all that they are - material things are immaterial to me. i haven't bought a new piece of clothing for years. i may not be as charitable as wilson, or as loving as nicole, but i feel that i need to do these things because of who i am.

my name is looi yung joshua. in chinese this means thunder courage. it will take all my courage and all my strength to be true to myself, to stand up for the things that i want, that i know are right.

2009-03-31T03:46:00.000-07:00

can we undo these things we've done?
i am a fool, simple - i only miss the things i've lost.

i have gone through life in extremes -
in utter confidence, complete arrogance,
or at a loss, this heart overwhelming

this 'now' phase has no hallmarks to it.
i have sunken here before,
peered through these murky depths.

there is guilt, frustration
and the silent fact that i want to find you again.

Alabaster skin and smoke

2009-03-26T04:30:00.000-07:00

do we ever really love?
or is this just instinct,
blind to its own improper purposes

we go through life as beasts
eating, fucking, living as though,
we are called to our own higher ends.
but we are no such priests.

i see people, through this bodies eye
but in my mind, they are merely constructs.
somewhere there is beauty, shame, disbelief
but in between, a great disconnect.
nothing is real within reason.

how we clamour for love, as orphans
i see her, red lips lush on alabaster
she is the great lie. with her i am free.

2009-03-15T06:10:00.000-07:00

she is giving me a blowjob, noisily. i smell her perfume, sickly sweet. her breath reeks of cigarettes. she is a whore, and i am sure that i am in hell.

i cannot do this, i realise, i cannot attempt to run away from the person that i am. Joshua is kind and gentle. He has a soul, and you cannot warp your soul to be the person that society wants you to be.

i send her home.

this is a strange part of growing up, realising that your life has boundaries. tonight i reached my limit. it is a sad place, and i do not wish to return.

Nicotine

2009-03-01T02:26:00.000-08:00

1.
breathe deep, this ash has a long way to run.
my lungs are filled with a black tar,
they are lined like the irons around a rapist.

2.
One moment you are sitting in space,
where distance is not measured by metres,
but minutes, until expectation became reality,
and i felt your fingers,
slowly.

3.
now i have entered this distinct thing,
this discordant hour.
i see the black road, the rusted cars,
feel the women for whom i taste nothing but
alcohol and cigarettes.

4.
my mouth is a liar.
he wishes upon me false things.
i wish to flush him out, cut the strings.
leave him a bloody mess on the carpet.
i will mime these things to you,
tell you my story with eye and hand
we will grasp all our beginnings,
but we will never see our end

Torture

2009-02-27T17:27:00.000-08:00

Sometimes at night, this blue frost warms to the pink body,
and scars erupt like flashfloods;
engulfing but not consuming, rending but not tearing.

The subtleties of my life, lived loudly,
the vulgarity of taking on the sun, these come to play on me.

Inevitabilities are now inevitable, these spirits we cannot escape from.

There are the images of a funeral, and the fading smell of perfume.

Turn on the bright lights

2009-02-21T19:33:00.000-08:00

I told kelvin, once, that sometimes it doesnt matter which decision you choose as long as you stick to it. That being committed and believeing in what you're doing is more important that what you're actually doing.

Oh how wise i felt that day.

Now i'm reaching a certain point, a crossroads, where these words are coming to haunt me. It is becoming so much more apparent that there cannot be two of me - one gentle and easily hurt, the other arrogant and abrasive. These two natures, one of the world, the other in the world, as my mother would say, are seperate and vicious. They are tearing me apart.

I can't carry on with the guilt i have about being the person i am. I need to commit to this project, this thing called me, imperfections and flaws, past and future. Only then can i have what i want, my just rewards from my hard work.

But i'm terrified of being that person, and everything in my heart struggles against it.

Give me a reason to believe that i can be more than what this world has to offer God. Because the clocks ticking, and the world, oh she's calling.

2009-02-15T18:15:00.000-08:00

"One day, a man and a woman meet -- two melancholy, lonely people. They like one another and secretly hope to join their lives together. All they need is the chance to be alone for a moment and say so.

Finally one day they find themselves unobserved in a wood where they have come to gather mushrooms. Ill at ease, they are silent, knowing that the moment is upon them and they must not let it slip by. The silence has already lasted rather a long while when the woman suddenly, "involuntarily, reflexively," starts to talk about mushrooms. Then silence again, and the man casts about for a way to declare himself, but instead of speaking of love, "on some unexpected impulse" he too talks about mushrooms. On the way home they go on discussing mushrooms, powerless and desperate, for never, they know it, never will they speak of love.

Back at the house, the man tells himself that he did not declare his love because of the memory of his dead mistress, which he cannot betray. But we know perfectly well: It is a false excuse he invokes only to console himself. Console himself? Yes. Because we can resign ourselves to losing a love for a reason. We would never forgive ourselves for losing it for no reason at all."

- Milan Kundera

Valentine

2009-02-13T04:26:00.000-08:00

i would like to divorce these things from you, endure them as parallel realities. it would be easier to wish upon us jekyl's and hydes, that we are seperate; ugly and beautiful, serene and manic. That some indivisible line that crosses over this body could, perhaps, hide us away from the truth, protect us from our own darker natures. this truth is inglorious. but we are one being, a soul, equally reprehensible and perfect, equally true and hidden. we cannot escape from these realities, we cannot tend to the false gardens of perfection and believe that there are no tumors beneath. this is what we are, this soul.

in love i had wanted to hide this from you. i would have believed in your nobler eyes. but we cannot be blinded to this. this was my mistake. For we are only human, if but for that second when i had believed that we were not.

2009-02-11T07:28:00.000-08:00

i wonder if its too late now.

random, i know.

but i do like talking to you too.

0.

2009-02-07T22:14:00.000-08:00

He is a young man, intelligent. Too much for his own good. This is the baggage that brilliance brings, this feeling of helplessness when things go wrong. There are some things that cannot be changed. But for Joshua this is unacceptable.

He lights a cigarette. The casket is old, but the body fresh. His father's face looks waxen from the treatment at the morgue.

The chapel is worn, well used. There are trees outside that sway gently, birds singing. There is only life here.

Joshua remembers when he was a child, how his father would come back from a day at work, always something in his hands to give. He could see the joy there, joy at returning to love.

He hates these memories, these little things. They don't bring him comfort from reality. Reality is cold and harsh, and Joshua embraces it. He wants to master it, to call it his own. There are no people in his world - just objects, just commodities to be used and taken, made and broken. He had been hurt before, until he realised that pain was just another currency to be traded in.

His girlfriend comes to him, thin pale arms reaching for his waist. He resists the urge to pull away. She is a simple thing, easily appeased with jewelry and promises which he never intends to keep. What do women want? Someone had once said - any excuse to get closer. He does not love her.

--

The world is a sad place. We work hard to be someone, to have things to call our own. This call we cannot reject. It is inherent, our human arrogance that only the vagrants and drifters escape. We look down upon them because we are afraid of casting an eye over ourselves.

You reach a point where you look at what you have, emotional, physical, spiritual, and you realise that its all for nothing. This is where God comes in, the afterlife, the infinite rewards of finishing what at most is hard, with petty pleasures that are fleeting. But we as a society have rejected God, casted it aside as a weak notion. We have embraced our arrogance.

And now, we have two choices, to struggle to reach the top in the hopes that there is something more, or to be content with mediocrity and pettiness, to be consumed with the inane facets of daily living. Both are hollow.

When i finish university i want to leave this place, leave the world for good. There is nothing here for me. I will travel the world at my own pace, i will indulge this cardinal sin of modern life - believeing that i'm better than this. Because in this life, i've lost God. And i'm still trying to find him again.

I don't wan't to become Joshua.

The Wrestler

2009-02-04T16:54:00.000-08:00

Have you ever seen a scarecrow filled with nothing but dust and wheat?
If you've ever seen that scarecrow then you've seen me
Have you ever seen a one-armed man punching at nothing but the breeze?
If you've ever seen a one-armed man then you've seen me

Then you've seen me, I come and stand at every door
Then you've seen me, I always leave with less than I had before
Then you've seen me, bet I can make you smile when the blood, it hits the floor
Tell me, friend, can you ask for anything more?
Tell me can you ask for anything more?

These things that have comforted me, I drive away
This place that is my home I cannot stay
My only faith's in the broken bones and bruises I display

Have you ever seen a one-legged man trying to dance his way free?
If you've ever seen a one-legged man then you've seen me
- Bruce Springsteen

And, maybe, some people just aren't meant to be free.

I Remember You

2009-02-02T20:19:00.000-08:00

Woke up to the sound of pouring rain
Washed away a dream of you
But nothing else could ever take you away
cause you'll always be my dream come true
Oh my darling, I love you

Remember yesterday - walking hand in hand
Love letters in the sand - I remember you
Through the sleepless nights and every endless day
Id wanna hear you say - I remember you
- Skid Row

Love this song. Especially the part when Seb Bach goes i LoOOOOoooOOVEEEEE YUUUUU....

heh.

Goodbye Singapore

2009-02-02T08:24:00.000-08:00

I arrived on the 26th of November, 2008. Arrogant, in control. It's been 2 months and 8 days. And now, i feel like a completely different person.

Singapore does this to me. Last year with my dad's passing, this year with Esther, Cambodia, work... All that i know today is that i want to kiss my mum goodnight one last time and tell her that i love her.

Goodbye Singapore. I'll miss you. You are everything that i am afraid of, but i need you, in these small doses.

Cusp

2009-02-01T01:37:00.001-08:00

there is a moment,
where the hard road becomes a precipice
pouring into your soul like gravity
and reality,
realities set in,
who we are and who we want to be are mirrors;
they are jagged and broken.

and we see, we saw
what we wanted to see - something different,
closer to the fiction than the writers would have made it,
but it could have been enough.

Now, as ever, i've come full-circle,
from desperation to despair
through dusk, dawn, deceit till
lust
like a lunatic, raving and wild
tore through the torrid timbers of the
idle what-could-have-been's, and oh!
how hollow, how hollow i am.

words never changed anything,
how i wish it were different.
these are the endings and beginnings that would have never left us, both.

Meet me by the lake

2009-01-30T07:44:00.000-08:00

Do you know about 'The System'? or 'The Game'? Know what a professional PUA is? If you have then you'd be joining a growing number of men who are turning to these things in ever increasing numbers, and ever growing desperation.

In the [rare] case you haven't, i'll explain it to you now. The System is a system, [with a glossary containing 'red flags', 'green flags', 'Interest level percentages..' and more] on how to meet, date, win over and sleep with any woman you want. So is 'The Game'. A professional Pick Up Artist, or PUA is someone a woman wouldn't want to meet in a bar. Or a cafe. Or the library. Or underwater. Anywhere in fact, where the exchange of any form of communication would be readily available. The 'professional' part is also factually correct. PUA's do live off women.

Turn to a feminist now. Tell her about these things. Watch her face turn livid and red, the whites of her eyes rolled up like a fat womans underpants. Hear her talk about how men think with our penises, and aren't worthy of sharing the planet with such pure beings as, well, feminists. The point in doing this would be for her to be absolutely correct - we men do think with our penises. Incidentally, they're connected to another vital organ - our hearts.

The heart provides the penis with the ability to function at its most important, intrinsic level - sexually. This is true not just physiologically, but psychologically as well. Ask any man who lost his virginity to a prostitute how he felt after he came. The answer is invariably the same- like shit.

The fact is, men want love just as much, or even more, than women. We aren't the cold, emotionless bastards you think us. No one is John Wayne, Rambo or The Terminator. We feel things - we just don't know how to deal with them. Which is why we bloack them out and our minds take over. In fact i would go so far to say that most men don't know how to deal with loss, don't know how to deal with rejection and don't know how to deal with emotions in general. These things - the 'System' the 'Game' - allow men to understand relationships in a context that most women wouldn't dare fathom thinking about, but in a manner that most men rule their lives- rationally.

Think about it now, rationally. You are male, 25, lonely. You masturbate twice daily. You go to bars, and parties frequently, but any women that you do have relationships with always end up leaving you. You have two choices - live in the never ending cycle of 'why did she leave me?' or pick up The System [get it all for $99!] and be in control! make HER chase you!

The choice seems simple. But it isn't.

I'll make a confession - i was that guy. The lonely one with the big heart. The nice one who wasn't special or different enough to attract someone who wasn't taking pity on him. So i gave in - i picked up "The System".

And then i met Daphne. Daphne had it all - smart, beautiful, great legs, and the most brilliant eyes i'd ever seen. We listened to the same kinds of music. We had similar upbringings. And i knew, i knew if i went after her with the same approach that i'd used before she wouldn't have looked at me twice. But i wanted her. So i used the System, and it worked - beautifully.

But there was a slight problem here - love. For me this was all a game. An exam, a test. Follow the proper instructions, memorize the formula's and you're there. A+ with a cherry on top and a kiss [with tongue] to boot. And all the while that she was falling for me, i was falling for someone else... Myself.

I'll stop things there. Needless to say she ended things when i cheated on her and she realised i wasn't special or different or interested in her at all. I was just a guy, reading a book, applying formulas. I was just a guy, thinking with my penis.

It was only after she left did i realise that i was in love with her.

But here comes Catch 22. If i hadn't used the System i wouldn't have gotten her. But i did - and she fell in love with the guy that The System wanted me to be. But that wasn't me. When she saw the real me, she ran. So was it worth it?

Some people are lucky enough to fall in love with the person that they're destined to marry when they're young. Most aren't. What the System and the Game do is allow men to turn the tables on women - by giving them to men. But this merely demeans them, turns them into subjects of desire when in fact, they should be the object of attention, the zenith of insurmountability. If we do this, we take away the mystery of love, the fanatical, almost religious pursuit of it that young men and women assume every day of their lives. If we do this we kill love, and another little piece of ourselves that we used to hold sacred.

As for Daphne? The answer is no. It wasn't worth it. In another lifetime, maybe, i would have fallen in love, first, instead.

The Heinrich Maneuver

2009-01-29T17:26:00.000-08:00

Well how are things on the west coast?
You keep it moving to your soul's delight
Now I've tried the brakes
I tried but you know it's a lonely ride

Today my heart swings

But I don't want to take your heart
And I don't want a piece of history
No, I don't want to read your thoughts anymore
My god

Well how are things on the west coast?
Yeah but you're an actress
And i don't identify

Let it come
'Cause I've got a chance for a sweet sane life
I said I've got a dance and you'll do just fine
Well I've got a plan - look forward in my eyes
Let it come.

But today my heart swings
-Interpol

Some undergroud shit for my home-boys in the A-town

2009-01-29T04:41:00.000-08:00

You cut me down to size
And opened up my eyes
Made me realize
What I could not see

Oh what good is it to live
With nothing left to give
Forget but not forgive
Not loving all you see

Are the streets you're walking on
A thousand houses long
Well that's where I belong
And you belong with me
Not swallowed in the sea
- Coldplay

2009-01-26T06:45:00.001-08:00

writing is overrated, i'm sick of my words.

nothing will change like this.

In the morning

2009-01-23T18:14:00.000-08:00

I see her eyes, like twin beacons burning, burning into the gap between darkness and soul. Fury has taken her to another place, planes higher than planes where we once were, where i held her close and told her the world would never come for us.

Is this betrayal? Or is this loss? Guilt perhaps, but i have never felt guilt before. She had come to me in the hour of the least expectation. She had left with the air pregnant and poised, this cup once full to the brim now empty.

I miss her. In the morning i traverse down concrete footmarks, next to the canal, it runs deep to the earth, scarring, twisting, winding. This is the place where i wanted to bring you, watch your hair waving in the sun like wheat, fields of grain over this vast monstrosity where i would have only seen your heart, instead of the madness.

But this is all a wish. This fever will pass soon, my hallucinations will fade. Your eyes will be replaced by anothers, and anothers, till one day when the sun is rising over the eastern hills and the wind blows like a quavering melody. I will remember, in the morning, the shiver of your breath in winter, the quaking of our laughter in the fall. That i was loved, and loved in return. That it was you i saw, and you were beautiful.

Vulgarity

2009-01-23T01:33:00.000-08:00

He sits, hunched, all of 20. Tall and tanned, fit with an easy smile. We walk through wooden corridoors, over and above the noise of the courts; he saunters ahead, easy with his rythms. The air is pallid and stiff.

The prosection tell us they have a good case, a signed admission of guilt. The judge is easy with his motions, cheerful at the thought of a quick trial. He laughs at us, chiding almost with his eyes. Hands flail at keyboards and notepads. We have no chance.

He tells me he wants to continue studying, mechanical engineering. Someday join the airforce. When all this is over i can imagine him laughing with his colleagues, enjoying a beer and a cigarette. That same smile played across rougher features. Lunch is a quieter occassion.

The older ones, they are unsure around him. Unsettled by his cavalier attitude. They only see contradictions - tattooed skin and track lines, sheltered family, well spoken but poorly educated. He has soft eyes and potential. I take him at face value, we are of the same age. We speak like friends, our tones unsubtle, jovial and unwise. Youths do not have the same cares. This is just a passing moment.

My boss is tired, obviously affected. He has children of his own. I wonder if he feels lucky, that they turned out okay, that he isn't subject to this most castrating of hatreds - he wasn't good enough, he wasn't around enough. The sins of the father. My friend has a father too.

He turns back to me, asks me when i'm leaving the firm. This, the first and last time we will ever meet. I read his file later, sifting through the ashes in my quiet corner of the office. There are choices, and there are coincidences, but ultimately there is only lady luck. She stares at me now, in the recess of my mind, somewhere along the marbled halls and rose gardens of this great city. I tug at my silk shirt, play down the lapel of my collar to the soles of my leather shoes. He is not so different from me, this friend of mine.

XX

2009-01-23T00:28:00.000-08:00

That conversation we were always on the edge
of having, runs on in my head,
at night the Hudson trembles in New Jersey light
polluted water yet reflecting even
Sometimes the moon
and I discern a woman
I loved, drowning in secrets, fear wound round her throat
and choking her like hair. And this is she
with whom I tried to speak, whose hurt, expressive head
turning aside from pain, is dragging down deeper
where it cannot hear me,
and soon I shall know I was talking to my own soul.
- Adrienne Rich

Finding myself again

2009-01-22T18:38:00.001-08:00

LAWS312-09W (C) Company Law and the Law of Partnership 22.00 Enrolled
LAWS317-09W (C) Family Law 22.00 Enrolled
LAWS321-09S1 (C) International Criminal Law 11.00 Enrolled
LAWS324-09S1 (C) Principles of Public International Law 11.00 Enrolled
LAWS330-09S1 (C) Intellectual Property Law 11.00 Enrolled
LAWS337-09S2 (C) Criminal Justice 11.00 Enrolled
LAWS359-09S1 (C) Trial Advocacy 11.00 Enrolled
LAWS398-09S2 (C) Legal Ethics 11.00 Enrolled

Well, thats that then. I'm extremely excited about getting into Trial Advocacy. Even if its at 5-7pm on a monday. Also I expect to meet alot of type 'A' assholes in there. We'll probably get along just fine.

For once i'm actually excited about the courses i'm doing! [After 4 years its about time] For those that don't know i've always [well for about the last year or so] wanted to be a criminal lawyer, defending rapists and murderers, paedophiles and con-men.

Also i only have one class from wednesdays to fridays at 12 or 1, and in semester two i get tuesdays off! Now how awesome is that.

I've been doing some thinking, as i've been going through this rather dark summer, and i've decided to lay down some rules for myself for the upcoming year:

1. Stop being a heartless bastard.

Yes josh, its true. You can be cold and arrogant when you want to. You look down on people with those slitty, single-eyelidded eyes of yours. Please recognise that other people have talents, skills and abilities. Allow yourself to be warm and generous once in awhile. You'll be suprised with the results.

2. You can't have everything.

Your mum was right. You can't have your cake and eat it. Remember the lessons of 2008, when you were running around with your girlfriend, ligers, the Club, studies, all the while trying to party as often as possible and be as popular as possible. As a result you become selfish, self-obsessed, attention seeking and mildly alcoholic to the extent that your closest friends and (ex)girlfriend are in various stages of hatred towards you. It took you 2 months to realise this. Don't let it take one drunken night to take you back to that place. It just isn't worth it.

3. Decide what you want and go for it.

Remember your Primary 3 teacher wrote on your report card? I do: 'Has much potential, but lazy'. THIS HAS BEEN THE STORY OF YOUR WHOLE LIFE! [with the possible exception of last year, in spurts] i know you josh, you do not respond to things that do not interest you. Decide what you want, who you want, and why you want it, then go out there and get these things. Some things [degree in engineering, professional modelling career] may be impossible, but there are so many things that you can do [lawyer, journalist, writer, jessical alba..] if you just find the desire and passion to do them. And trust me, it will be the most fun you've had in a long long while. WHY WAIT?

2009-01-20T19:29:00.000-08:00

Dear Pa,

How are things? When you were around i never asked you this enough. Now that you're gone i wonder about this more than ever. How's heaven? Mums of the opinion that heaven, for you at least, involves mee goreng, editing 'heaven weekly' and front row seats to every All Blacks match from now to eternity. If it does, i'd like to join you there some day.

When we last spoke you told me that you'd made your peace with God. Since you've been gone i haven't gone to church much. I guess in some way i'm still angry with Him for taking you away. But the fact that you were able to accept it gives me solace i guess. God, life and death are more real to me now. This scares me.

There are so many things that i want to ask you. How was it like to grow up having to take care of everyone? How did you cope with losing your father when you were still young? Most importantly, i always wanted to ask you how its like to live like a man. To succeed in life through hard work and determination, while keeping all your priorities in order. You always put family first, even though it must have been tempting to be selfish and enjoy things while you could. I will always respect that. I always wanted to learn that from you.

I made alot of mistakes last year Pa. I wonder if you know. I became selfish and angry, and i put myself before family, friends and loved ones. Did you know that you were the only person that i was ever truly afraid of and respected completely? I wish that i had told you that earlier.

I'm getting older now, Pa, i just turned 20. I wish you could've been there to tell me that i wasn't a teenager anymore, that i had to start living life responsibly like an adult. I'm sure you would have said something like that, and i'm sure that i wouldn't have listened. The weird thing is now that you're not around i can hear you louder and clearer than ever. The sad thing is i still haven't learnt how to listen.

I fell for someone this year Pa. I wonder if you would've liked her. She reminded me of mum sometimes, the kind of person who is all heart once you get to know her. But we're not together anymore, for alot of reasons. Sometimes i wonder what you would've said. You always knew how to comfort us when we were down.

Dan and Jie are okay i guess. Busy as usual. Dan's the star of his rugby team, and from what he tells me they are probably going to win it this year. I know you would've been so proud to see him lift the trophy. He's very responsible nowadays, sleeps early and studies hard. Mum is very proud of him i think.

Jie is working hard, as she's always done. Doing very well at uni. She misses you the most i think. We're becoming closer these days, she's really helped me alot. She cares alot about Mum too. I guess we're all growing and adapting in our own ways.

Mum still misses you very much. Its been more than a year now but you always seem to be one step away in her mind. She's trying her best to keep busy and be strong, the way Mum always is. She cares for us more than anything in the world. I guess its a mark of your character that you're still with her even now.

Life is scarier now without you Pa. Somehow before i always thought that everything would be allright in the end. Now sometimes i sit and wonder how i became the person that i am. I wonder if you would still be proud of me. But don't worry about us too much okay Pa! We'll be okay.

Anyway, i guess its time to go. I'll write you again sometime.

I love you and i miss you.

Josh

For the lady crying on the MRT

2009-01-05T05:45:00.000-08:00

you're raining now, tears,
like your purple sundress
flooding me over.
this is a vast and distant wilderness.

i've wondered.
is this how you feel?
smudge your mascara, smeared like
wasted chocolate.
don't despair.

i'll stare,
and for a moment maybe
this whistling train won't be too loud.
put your eyes on mine
hand off the bar, let go.

we'll walk this far, i swear
meet me in the backroom
where we can smell your lipstick,
taste my cologne.

don't cry.
this motion is temproary.
this is only despair.
it moves us; perpetual and
preposterous and perhaps
one day
we'll shudder to a halt
hear the screech on rails
devour us.

don't cry.
this is our time,
tonight.

5.

2009-01-02T10:43:00.001-08:00

The hall is old, the coffin new. Chee Wee knows two things well in this life. The first is death, and it is his shadow.

They insist on playing hymns, and this hits him the hardest. He watches from the back row, the tired wife weeping, sons quiet in the front. The pastor comes forward, full of purpose, his cross a golden sigil, his mantra uplifting.

'Lai Chee Wee was a good man'. he pauses now, steady in his gaze.

The more Chee listens, the louder Chee becomes.

'I knew him for but a short time, but i believe that he is closer to God now, away from the temptations of this world. Often in this life we don't understand why God does the things he does-'

Chee did.

'but we must keep on believing; we must keep on hoping. For our God is a God of mercy, a God of forgiveness, and no matter how hard ones heart has become, there is always a route to salvation. I believe this was the case for Chee'

And now for the personal touch. He enjoys this part, the personal connection, the buffonery of a person he'd barely known attempting to pontificate on what could only be a glimmer, or a passing laugh.

'Chee always struck me as a hard man, the kind of man who'd never give in to life, who'd always keep fighting. And thats what he was, a fighter, a survivor. But there was a softer side to him. In fact, on his last day on this earth, he'd given me his old record player.'

Chee thinks of the old man he'd visited in Chinatown. He'd told Chee the story of a king who'd once dreamt of being a butterfly, that the dream was so vivid that he'd woken and at once wondered if he was then, at that moment, merely a butterfly dreaming of being a king. Chee thought it profound. Only kings would dare dream of such things.

The pastor reaches down to the record player, red paint and brown brass, aluminum and steel and old glass.

The beauty of a controlled explosion is control, just as the beauty of terrorism lies within the terror. It wipes out the first two rows.

5 Songs for 09

2008-12-31T17:07:00.000-08:00

1. SAMS TOWN - The Killers/ Live from Abbey Road.
This version kicks the ass of the very boring, very Americana original. Brandon Flowers on a piano!

2. WATCH THE TAPES - LCD Soundsystem
LCD Soundsystem; my newest favourite band. A kooky combination of punk, electronic and pure crazy. Think MGMT but on less drugs. Or is it more?

Read all the pamphlets and watch the tapes
i get all confused when you mix up the dates....
woah!

3. ALL MY FRIENDS - LCD Soundsystem
Listen once- hate the repetitive piano. listen twice- hate the repetitive piano. listen thrice- fall in love. now set on repeat.

4. LITTLE MOTEL - Modest Mouse
Modest Mouse is emo for grownups. I'm a grownup. Are you?

It rained and its over a shooting star
Landed directly on our broke down little car
We fold and we had made a wish
That we would be missed
If one another just did not exist

Lovely.

5. GENIUS - Kings Of Leon
Ever get that dream where you're a southern rock'n'roll god, living it up in some untoward part of Alabama where the women are free and the drinks cheap? I do, every time i listen to this song. 2:49 of bliss.

Sympathy

2008-12-30T20:52:00.000-08:00

ugh. everything hurts now.

been vomitting and aching all over for the past few days. going to die soon i think.

saaaave me. i need sympathy from God.

sick on a public holiday somemore.

zzz.

Prostitute at Paramount

2008-12-29T13:37:00.000-08:00

I wonder if she knows,
flashy grin and bare tooth smile.
she shows me her scars;
like i've known her longer than
the time
it took for a blowjob and a line.

life story like a cigarette,
burnt it slow so we didn't regret
i never wanted this job.
take, take me away

telling me secrets, tell me lies
just keep me smiling, keep me alive
another drink maybe-
how about number 4?

this is supposed to be different.

eyes up, chin down
till i see the glistening whites
its the same now, just a whore
like every bad-dream woman
i've had before.

4: All i have are words.

2008-12-26T01:38:00.000-08:00

They settle into an easy rythm.

When it is over he turns to her and watches the quiet hairs on her neck, the small ones, so close that only he can see them. She turns away from him, expecting his arms around hers, his warmth whispering into her side.

'I love you.' And this is said roughly, almost with intent, but never with meaning.

'I love you too.' And they both wonder if the other is lying.

They look through the skylight, up to the tree which has suddenly become a backdrop for this part of their lives. He's read somewhere, about the stories of lives becoming lives - and suddenly he realises what a shame it would be for this to end now.

Joshua doesn't think this when he cheats on her.
He doesn't ponder the severity of the loss that he'll cause. It is only after, when the words have settled like so much dust, does he ponder what could have been. There were emotions till this; shame, fear, anger, regret. Things meant but not said. But now, in the dark, all he can feel is the pale moonlight, and the cigarette smoke, curling upwards.

Don't hate me

2008-12-23T07:38:00.000-08:00

What a night for a dance
You know I'm a dancing machine
With the fire in my bones
And the sweet taste of kerosene
I get lost in the night
So high don't wanna come down
To face the loss
Of the good thing that I have found

In the dark of the night
I can hear you callin' my name
With the hardest of hearts
I still feel full of pain
So I drink and I smoke
And I ask If you're ever around
Even though it was me
Who drove us right in the ground

See the time we shared
It was precious to me
But all the while
I was dreamin' of revelry

Gonna run baby run
Like a stream down a mountainside
With the wind in my back
I wont ever even bat an eye
Just know it was you all along
That had a hold of my heart
But the demon and me
Were the best of friends from the start

So the time we shared it
Was precious to me
All the while
I was dreamin' of revelry

And I told myself,
Oh the way you go
It rained so hard,
It felt like snow
Everything came tumbling down on me
In the back of the woods,
It was dark as night
Palest pale,
Of the old moonlight
Everything just felt so incomplete
- Kings of Leon

Running with ghosts

2008-12-22T22:51:00.000-08:00

white night find me in the heart of the sea
i've been trapped in the darkness
of an evil mystery

he come to me one night
and set my heart afire
oh white knight, white knight,
save me from his ire

for now i do not love him
nor does my heart begin to care
oh white knight save me
for i am still young and fair.

take me to the mountains
and take me to the sea
to the places where i shall hold you
and we shall scarcely begin to breathe

oh take me to a castle
where i shan't age and die
hold me close and whisper tight
for i can feel his ire nigh

oh white knight, white knight
you are my shining sun
you have saved me from my former love
a knight, all clad in white...

Six Words

2008-12-22T18:00:00.000-08:00

For sale: baby shoes, never used.

- Hemingway

XVII

2008-12-21T18:54:00.000-08:00

Rain on the West Side Highway,
red light at Riverside:
the more I live, the more I think
two people together is a miracle.
You're telling the story of your life
for once, a tremor breaks the surface of your words.
The story of our lives becomes our lives.
Now you're in fugue across what some I'm sure
Victorian poet called the salt estarnging sea.
Those are the words that come to mind.
I feel estrangement, yes. As I've felt dawn
pushing toward daybreak. Something: a cleft of light - ?
Close between grief and anger, a space opens
where I am Adrienne alone. And growing colder.
- Adrienne Rich

Chapter 2/3

2008-12-20T02:56:00.000-08:00

CHAPTER TWO:
CHEE WEE

If one observed from any distance, they could, as Chee Wee did, discover two nations. The first were born on a higher plane. They existed to serve themselves, to further their interests on a global scale. They spoke the international language, were educated in localities far beyond the reach of the unequal. They moved in circles, vast and powerful. Then came the second nation. They existed to serve the first.

Life is difficult. This is the basic premise of all things. You are born, by accident, into a context that you cannot control. Be it into the wealth of the upper crust, or the squalor of the unequal, you are faced with a set of pressures and responsibilities that are imposed by your situation. Within this you are benign. There are certain items, such as money, or power that act as lubricants. But in the upward struggle towards social equality the problem of the disaffected is simply that they are thus.
And so it was for Chee Wee.

A bomb is a beautiful thing. For Chee, manufacturing one required three basic elements. First, patience. Second hard work. Lastly, and most importantly, a sense of flair.

CHAPTER THREE:
JOSHUA

It had been a man last night. Not that he had any particular preference for them. This was merely the way it had turned out; a certain series of events had eventuated into the very real, very alive presence of a man in his bed. It had been fun.

This was, though, the cause of a previous chapter. Fun. A particular abundance of it had left him bereft. When he was a young boy, he had developed a certain fondness for rules; in order to limit what seemed to him a large and unwelcoming world. As he aged, so did his preference for rules diminish. They no longer seemed necessary. The absence of fear indicated a lack of a conscious need for decisons, and in turn guidelines to necessitate them. A smaller world meant a smaller conscience. Now there was only... fun.

The man next to him stirred.

'fuck off then'. this was said with a modicum of kindness. but most importantly control.

'aight, aight. i'm off. What's your name again?'

'Dave. Now.. goodbye.'

He left.

Joshua remembed his father, telling him proudly that the world was his oyster, that because of the achievements of the past the futures of the present would be secure.

Joshua agreed. The world was his oyster. Only problem being that he was trapped in the fucking thing.

Original thoughts

2008-12-16T19:32:00.000-08:00

long drags by the swimming pool,
the last remains of a sunrise
indie rock on a memory
stars fade into light.

Milk

2008-12-13T06:59:00.000-08:00

salty leave, salty leave

tell me the one about the friend you knew,
and the last good night that we toasted too.

salty leave,
stay for me, stay for me

we drank wine in the matinee
and the spotlight showed what i chased away

stay for me

she saw my comb over, her hourglass body
she had problems with drinking milk
and being school tardy
she'll loan you her toothbrush
she'll bartend you party

kill me, kill me

i called i called, but i cant get through
said he's on his own, but his own is you

kill me
- Kings of Leon

Esther

2008-12-12T09:55:00.000-08:00

this was the problem wasn't it? the impossible dream. we had 1.9 years to be together. and on november 31st we would break up.

but then i screwed up, i kissed a girl and i wasnt completely honest. but you didn't leave me. you didn't break my heart even though i'd completely broken yours.

so i've realised now, that theres only one way to go.

i am not going to leave you. i think about you standing by me through all that, and i realise how insignificant this is in comparison. even if i am being played, even if i am a fool, it is more important for me to stick with this, to believe in you and me.

you are the most singularly amazing person i've ever met. i told you that i would fight for you. and i will. i'm not giving up.

for the past i can only apologise. but the future we can only create. things will get better. circumstances will change. and somehow i think, this will all be worth it.

Do you want to smile for me now?

stupid.

2008-12-12T04:32:00.000-08:00

how could anyone be this stupid?

i cant believe i told you that. this isnt me. things are gonna change. theyre gonna get better. i promise.

Further

2008-12-02T09:28:00.000-08:00

What the fuck is this all about?

and you asked me why i had become arrogant and callous and cold.

i tried to explain it to you at the time, deliver a rational explanation of the pros and cons of living like a decent human being; and why i wasn't. i lied.

the truth is that that is me. i am an arrogant self serving bastard with a chip on my shoulder. but the past had made me who i am. i cannot change that. i will not beg for a second chance, nor will i suppress or deny my emotions.

and further and further you see, i'm running down the rabbit-hole.

don't save me.

CHAPTER ONE

2008-11-04T03:42:00.000-08:00

THE MEANING OF LIFE ACCORING TO JOSHUA

He would start often, with a theme like this. It seemed appropriate. This, after all, was the postmodern globe. He didn't have anything to write about. There was only the subject, him, and the object, his desires.

He penned a book once, a long rambing sprawl. THIS IS POSTMODERN LIFE - written in huge block letters. The title.

In other era's, he though, they had goals. Dreams of a better tomorrow. The oerthrow of a horrendous dictator. This now was to him the zenith, of all human civillization. Why else the copious need for satisfaction? Or the wonderous joy of over-gratuity. When mankind has developed a self-conscious need to be beautiful it can no longer enjoy the quiet pleasures of sin.

He had enough of conjecture however. Enough of this dirty 'hope' and 'change' that politicians referred to when pandering to the votes of the bourgeous and the ignorant. He had been born into a wealthy family, and was well enough off to not suffer. His childhood had been good, his life comfortable. He had neither sunk to the depths of despair, nor lept to the heights of ecstacy. He had begun his journey in destitude, but he was determined to end it with understanding. He was, all in all, the average man.

Dolldrums

2008-10-29T04:06:00.000-07:00

I love you. I'm sorry.

i'm sorry.

So much for morality

2008-10-25T21:10:00.000-07:00

When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle.
Then I realised God doesn’t work that way, so I stole
one and prayed for forgiveness.
- Emo Philips

Fear and Self-loathing

2008-10-25T05:46:00.000-07:00

It is late.

In the past i would make excuses - it is late, i am not feeling well, this is boring, et al etc. but in the now, this bright thing called the present, you hope that you are striving to be the best you can be; that someday you'll be the best human being there is. and you smile to yourself, that slow cheeky spread of the lips. invincibility is but a step away.

I am tired.

Now we all are tired- you know that, i know that. But what really matters is what this excuse hides. does it conceal the truth? that without this, without your pieces of paper, your tiny [modest] self-aggrandizing achievements, that you would be nothing. you've wondered it for far too long. soon enough the truth is just another excuse for a feeling that you can no longer supress.

Who am i?

Identity? i laugh at identity. this is the true opiate of the populous; that you have to be someone, something tangible, definable, describable to the world. josh the lawyer, joe the plumber, helen the politician. the longer you define in this way who you are the longer you believe the lies that you tell those that you do not trust. you are more than the sum of your parts. don't ask me who i am; find out.

What am i doing with my life?

Sleeping. now shut the fuck up.

My love, my love

2008-10-21T02:52:00.001-07:00

Come away with me in the night
Come away with me
And I will write you a song

Come away with me on a bus
Come away where they can't tempt us
With their lies

I want to walk with you
On a cloudy day
In fields where the yellow grass grows knee-high
So won't you try to come

Come away with me and we'll kiss
On a mountaintop
Come away with me
And I'll never stop loving you

And I want to wake up with the rain
Falling on a tin roof
While I'm safe there in your arms
So all I ask is for you
To come away with me in the night
Come away with me
- Norah Jones

Caring is creepy

2008-10-15T05:36:00.000-07:00

I think I'll go home and mull this over
Before I cram it down my throat
At long last it's crashed, it's colossal mass
Has broken up into bits in my moat.

Lift the mattress off the floor
Walk the cramps off
Go meander in the cold
Hail to your dark skin
Hiding the fact you're dead again
Undeneath the power lines seeking shade
Far above our heads are the icy heights that contain all reason
- The Shins

Goodbye

2008-09-09T01:06:00.000-07:00

Bend and shape me
I love the way you are
Slow and sweetly
Like never before
Calm and sleeping
We won't stir up the past
So descretely
We won't look back

The things that I've loved the things that I've lost
The things I've held sacred that I've dropped
I won't lie no more you can bet
I don't want to learn what I'll need to forget.
- Audioslave

You and i, both

2008-08-27T00:03:00.000-07:00

we 'll be measured in moments like these.

worst poem EVAR

2008-08-25T15:18:00.000-07:00

once there was a fat albatross
she had a slave
the slave was in love with the albatross
and vice versa

they ran down the pier
on a beach
and
kissed at the end
until they finally reached

the middle of the sea
where there was
only you and me

Chapter One

2008-08-17T02:56:00.000-07:00

stressed to fuck.

if not for you i'd probably have gone off the edge a long time ago.

thanks babe.

you're my saving grace

Therapy

2008-08-14T03:53:00.000-07:00

i'm so tired of my worthless causes.

of my balls, my fundraisers, my endless upon endless quest to be the ruler of something of anything.

im getting this ache again. this same tired sadness - that what you were looking for isn't here buddy, and it wasn't here anywhere close.

you ain't ever gonna find it

Once i was a rich man

2008-08-05T02:54:00.000-07:00

my father passed away, last year, on a date that i wish to forget. i remember my mother, repeating his name over, and over, louder until the repetitions become a hysteria that she would not stop. i am in the mattress next to his. i do not remember what i think. i do not remember what i feel. it is only now that i wish not to forget.

i dream of him today, rough smooth hands caressing my face. i feel like a child again, and now the dream turns to night, the hands tired and old, the voice chiding and distant. i realise that he is dead, that he is gone, that he cannot hurt me. i wake up and feel the tears on my cheeks. this shocks me most of all. i wonder if my guilt will stay with me forever.

i see the long blue canvas bag that they drag him out of the house in, the silent face of my brother next to mine. i wonder what he feels, my brother, if he dreams of my father too. my brother, whom i love most of all. i wish to protect him. but this is impossible, i know.

my mother is crying in her room - i am almost numb to this now, the pain that she feels. for my mind is free and i believe that it is all so simple. we can analyse the smaller patterns to discover the larger one. today the lesson is simple. my mother is merely a microcosm; everything ends in tears, in the end.

ESTHER HONG

2008-07-28T06:57:00.000-07:00

TURNS 18 TODAY

i love you babe!

Friends

2008-07-28T01:49:00.000-07:00

i had a pen-pal once.

well not so much of a pen-pal per-say, but something of an emailing/chatting buddy. she - and she was a she, as these things tend to be- and i met through a friend who was rather unsurreptitiously trying to matchmake us at the time. things did not appeal to us in that manner, so instead we wrote.

our emails were torrid affairs - full of references to this or that element of pop-culture/band, or some tiresome inside joke that neither of us fully understood or intended to. she edited the poems that i used to write - the ones that i can scarcely look at now without being unsure as to whether i should cry or laugh. and we told each other everything, which terrifies me now. but perhaps this was all part of the fun.

she and i corresponded regularly over the course of two years. we met only once, towards the end, a rather akward affair, facilitated by the same mutual friend who'd attempted to pair us in the beginning. at this point i was back on holiday from overseas, and she was about to leave for Australia. we both predicted that we'd have a long and lasting friendship. that someday we'd actually be friends in actual real life.

its been nearly three years since i last spoke to her. during that period i've attempted to contact her on several occasions, all met with the same akward silence. i'd arrive back in singapore for a holiday - with a new temproary phone number, or a borrowed sim card. always i'd ask if she was there - and always she would be. but then i would introduce myself and - silence.

these days i think about her often. she was the benchmark - the pillar that supported all joshua-friend screwups. and these seem to be occuring nowadays, more then ever. i wonder what i did wrong -why she won't speak to me anymore. but then again - maybe i'm not supposed to know.

to my babe

2008-07-21T16:54:00.000-07:00

I LOVE YOU!

just thought i'd let you know

St Patricks Day

2008-07-15T03:41:00.000-07:00

ah and to-day we're whimsical.
it is all joy and coffee cigarettes burning like
some summer fire over the
roof tops of an early born mattress coloured just like the dry
apricots you left in my
waste-paper-basket-bin or the
imprint in the one millionth last time
i told you goodnight, like
tomorrow, we never will
have a chance to properly ever say
or reveal a glimpse into
the tired ground that we've
tread on
and on
into the night.

these need no names

2008-07-10T20:17:00.000-07:00

the colour white;
and white is a colour, more than
any other radiant frequency could ever
be -
is composed of every other
colour
and please gloss over my seussian infirmities but
there is a point [and counterpoint]
to this whimsical nothing
which incidentally is clothed in black.

but a great digression has suddenly come upon and i
super-suppose that what i am trying to prove to
discuss and to re-postulate; is that

to see; to view;to perceive
of all as nothing and everything as
white
or black
would be to elephant-glue a
great clear picture of humanity over
two eyes and ears and a nose perhaps
like some kind of sheep skin wool
upon a fool.

Dedicated to me and you.

Nebula

2008-07-10T20:03:00.000-07:00

Do you enjoy your sight inside?

Disconnect and let me drift
until my upside down is right side in
society must let the artist go
to wander off into the nebula

Wander off into your nebula
see your nectarine of multiplicity
cum like orgasmatron on overdrive
wander in off to your nebula
your tangerine of electricity is ripe
and on a vine, so pick your prize

In little black book do I confide!
- Incubus