I Think Of You (1993)

I think of you, a bright gem in life’s treasury
A glistening shard of crystal, blazing luminously.
Every facet reveals visions clear, sublime
Abberates distance, fact and splinters time
River running, leaughing, paled by light
Should fall victim in autumn’s flight
Leave a wintry world wrought with grief
Desperate for a relic, aching for relief.
Drowsy, I’m drunk, emptied of you
Impaled by sadness, enchantment of rue.

The world is now a poorer place
Heaving sighs borned by wistful hearts
Hymns to whom was struck by grace
Strong, beautiful, unjustly barred
From time’s promise to relish, taste
The grandest tour of life should undertake
In a thousand minds where fantasies awake
For a quiet sojourn in your erotic race.

I mourn your leaving
And celebrate your gift
To have known you deeply
And bear that sting
That you, youth, should love and leave
Like a river running, drowning me…


30 October 1993

Dream State (1993)

my own private idyll, was one night spent with you
alone, dishevelled, shivering cold
no fire could ever warm this platonic soul
until you invade the quiet desert of solitude
no moon, star, cloud pierce the open silence
to smell your hair, taste your sweat and spit
feel your unshaven chin beneath
shovelling, withdrawing sweetness and seed
and lovingly embrace that gushing stream

running on empty, loneliness was peace to you
your embrace, kisses were passionate and bold
no lover, could ever imagine as you unfold
your vulnerable, slender, shape without lassitude
no words describe the beauty of that season
not any breath feel the joy of deliverance
to taste the salty hot gush as you come
shrilly, convulsing, where pleasure and soreness meet
feel your swollen pangs cleave
shivering, desiring a tight embrace and sleep
and breadth to breadth fall into another dream


1 November 1993
11.50 pm
Surfers Paradise

Death On The Sidewalk (1993)

1 am, West Hollywood


I cannot do justice, I know, to your passing.
It hurts crazily, to think, you are suddenly gone.
What? Dead – one so joyously alive, intriguing!
When beauty’s gone; dead on a bed of stone.

I think of your blonde head, yes, that fringe falling.
It seems completely, vainly insane, you should slip away.
Where? Gone – once glittering, burning, brightly blazing!
Where few trails have ever shone, melt and decay.

I miss the thought, the hope, I should see you again.
It stings wryly, that fact, your unfulfilled promises.
How? Done – your laughing eyes, thin lips stain
How handsomely adorned; a vision which fades, blurs.

I have long kept you in my heart, a niché in a wall of stone.
It moans of empty, ruined by an absent prospect of you.
Who? You – your youth, an autumn-spring, thrown
Who have taken flight of the earth, the River who flew…



30 October 1993
While at Surfers’ Paradise, Queensland

Sidewalk Jane (1993)

I am propositioned, constantly, for my company
I am liked, I supposed, for various parts of me.
There’s James, Leonard, Han, Jon and a few
Who think I notice, wish I knew
That they like me, and I, them too.

It’s silly, this game; appreciate me, appreciate you
When does it end, how I wish’d I knew
Yet there’s one distinct person within view
Who draws my attention, my fancies too
Oh, rather unbecoming to expect him to
Engage my stares and pension his cares
Heed my attention, brace for action
Our eyes across the room drew
Into each other’s, the spectre reveal
A deafening sensation, of wild abandon
Desire, pangs, for communion
Such as experienced by a rarer few
A consumate passion, utterly real.

Who cares for propositions, they mean nothing you know,
What with changing partners, passing to and fro.
There’s hope, faithfulness, trust and love yet
A surmountable task, a complete fiat
That I should love you, and let it be, at that.


26 October 1993

I Have Been Wounded (1993)

I have been wounded, Love, by thee
Struck ineffably, a promethean ecstasy;
To revel in company, ay, a pageantry
Unwound by time, a cursed infirmy.

Thus, ached and anxious I have longed your embrace
Kissed, desired, longed patiently to caress your face:
And, gently to slip and glide within these sheets
Healed, kissed, enjoin where beating hearts meet.
Am I, deserted, parched like aged paper
Longing, waiting, inks to illuminate;
Ruminate, sigh, until a time safer
In closed, company, love germinates.

I have been patient, indeed, for you
Struck silently, maintained a curfew;
In anticipation, yes, love is true
To receive your call, and come to you.

You, a wonder, a prophecy fulfilled –
A measure of eternity, time stilled.
As I hapless, think of you
Come afresh, pure, as morning dew –
A dainty drop, a generous cue
To fall, unabashedly, in love with you.



26 October 1993
JFT

Brent Fialka

apollo with gold-gleaming crown’d head proud above
those of men who plea storm crowd around stands
tall aloof as god not fiend if his sinewy fingers
sound summon weak spirits arise stand: declare
ourselves weaklings bound released by the wave of
his hand fear most his fiery-form grace a remedy
a bane to bend makes us clowns to fall down
exhausted from his games of god-man where
sickness mar feigned apollo abounds master
of muses send healing poetry-music which astound
weaves life’s fragile frabic then reigns discord to rent.



Letter to Brent
New Prince Takanawa Hotel, Shinagawa, Tokyo

1 September 1988

Will You? (1983)

will you, so fresh, so young
with eyes deep, distant, wide
wait patiently?
know, i where life has flung
a shell-hole to hide
waits painfully?


September 1983

on the maimed beloved, the Great War 1914

There (1983)

there – out to the end of the sea
where     lines of wave and cloud
freely     mingle in the failing light
there – shall my future wait patiently
where     past, present flings whirl about
and fall from the greatest height
into the oblivious abyss of
deep… sweet night


September 1983
Pulau Tekong
Reflections while sitting on the breakwater at the reclaimed land, watching aircraft lights over Changi Airport.

CAMBRAI (1983)

CAMBRAI


in silence you sit
your form, gentle, young and fresh
will you mourn?

the leaden times will not let go
the painful aches of love
but wither will you run?
or yield to the heart’s bright sun

will you walk me by
and hapless cast your eye –
watch flesh and earth weave
the fabric of mine grief

so hum me a tune as you walk sadly by
think not of my foul wound as mangled i lie
forget me, lady love – as i silently die


14 September 1983

(reflections of the Great War 1914, of the Fallen)

He's A Life Quickly Spent (1984)

he’s a life quickly spent
walk gently, do not run
thus all distances end
let’s not run

venture he does, let it last
wise, thrifty, a life planned
time swiftly shall pass
understand

in life’s every stride, decide
disappointments, fallen
perchance snared by hidden pride
plays silent

simply himself he’s all free
snug, easy, plays along
loyal, honest, wills to be
Eye of Storm.


August 1984
Pulau Tekong Camp III

On thoughts of a friend (Sgt Chua)

Even The Longest Day Finds An End (1984)

even the longest day finds an end
time’s cruel stride builds then rent
the fabric of hope once woven by hand
to be spun again, when?


therefore strive now for the distant
images of your aspirations to materialise
into reality



August 1984
Pulau Tekong Camp III

Some handwritten notes:
I realise how easily, how often we imagine the most wonderful goals to achieve but if these cannot be accomplished with the resources and tools at hand it as as well as building a castle in the air.

Timeless (1984)

Timeless Our Problems Flow
One Speaks But Who Listens?
One Cries And Who Knows?
Hear O Man, Do You Dare
Silent-suffering Bear?



1984

Load! (1984)

‘load!’
i pressed the magazine in
the hands of my wife gave in
and gladly gripped
          the open lips (of my gift)
that touched the heart of all belief.
readily i put my hand to her
and drew her warm steel near
my cheek to rest on her butt
eyes to pierce through her heart
i breathed and let go gently
aimed into the hart standing free
‘i’d squeezed burnt metal into thee!’
a crack and thump, splendid symphony
a cry of love, instant fatality
this soul of mines speeds on fine
twisting air in an arc of line
bursting through with certain weight
the orgasmic groans quickly fade
          her chambers fume with infernal air
          another round is there
          through her proud sights i stare
          fiercely aim with greatest care
          thrust my stud into her piped frame
          then feel a grip most tight
          my spirit, passion, incensed, inflamed
          comes as fire in an arc of flight.




1984 Trainfire exercise, Rifle Range III
Pulau Tekong

O Paradise You Seem So Far (1983)

o paradise you seem so far
distant as the farthest star
o life how illness quickly mars
wrecked with pain, thoughts of death, etcetra

let me mingle with there, vain liberty
let me soak in thy soothing sea!
lights blink and vanish upon your face
like lonely thoughts in a vast space

casurinas before me stand
so bold above the camp
a life beyond these woeful men
mocked by the wind which you bend
i may be hurting no one knows
you are boring until the wind blows


9-11 May 1983

Secretum Meum Mihi (1978)

a narrow pathway though it be
it leads us to a glorious sea
of light and immortality

heaven’s eye agaze on men
the earth bears a tired friend
the two here are bound as one
their love becomes the eternal sun



I wrote this on a fullscap sheet, during class in 1978. I remember it was in the afternoon, and instead of doodling, I found my mind wandering slightly. It was in Anderson Building, which now stands as part of the Singapore Art Museum. In my mind’s eye, I saw an image of the sky like a circle of clouds gathering around a brilliant source of light, and the shafts of light piercing through it, towards me. I sketched this as well, and preserved it for some time, before that sheet, along with the first scribbles were lost.

That It Is So, I Wonder (1983)

that it is so, i wonder
why days come and go, ever
these pines litter upon the ground
leaves fall to heap around
revel to the bugle call
yet nothing really happens at all

unable to communicate
my nature easily break
unable to contemplate
beyond experience of fate
belief in God who’s dead
or probably just late

what use a will to live
(to struggle, survive
     is to deceive)
hopeless I state
‘life is a gift’
am i wrong or
just dead afraid.



9-11 May 1983
Written while confined to the medical centre sickbay at Pulau Tekong Camp I

The White Sands Reach Far Out To Sea (1984)

the white sands reach far out to sea
rolling bunds upon sun-beaten lee
how far out the horizon seems to be
grey against cliff-face and fallen scree

but on this gloried sand i walk now on
the noon sun lighting a heated storm
the glare burns fiery in my eye
as they wander up the sky

young voices echo in the weary mind
distant drones of machines at work
and rustling leaves, quickly fade
into the lapping mournful waves

such happy sights of the mind’s eye
quickly, too quickly these die
men’s thoughts are mortal too
o bleached sands am i like you
seemingly happy but found so dry


25 April 1984
I wrote this in the afternoon, after a short walk from Camp III when was stationed at Pulau Tekong’s Infantry Training Depot.

According to a handwritten note scribbled on the original fragment, it was written “on the reclaimed land off Pulau Tekong used for long distance training runs”, and dated, 25 April 1984. By this time, I was half way through my national service, which was to end within 11 months time. At this time, it was already clear to me that I might not succeed with my own plans to “sign-on” the Air Force as air defence communications officer, and get a scholarship. The sight of aircraft taking off and landing at Changi Airport from the breakwater of the reclaimed land is impressive, and inspiring, especially in the evenings where the airport lights are the brightest in the southern horizon.

No Idea How Bad It Gets

4.30 pm

I feel like I've lost control, off the verve of things, like playing Playstation with a joystick that's not responding, no matter how great your faith or will might be. You think, what and whom should I blame for this. Are things just pre-determined, the matrix of cause and effects, or plainly chaos. It doesn't matter what model you want to work with and hypothesize, because ultimately, there's a heart still breathing, lungs still squirmming for air, and a mind that's pulsing with an electric train of thoughts. Then you realise that I might be in a world that doesn't share the ideas and ideals that have shaped this life of mine. What if. It is like the Twilight Zone, minus the theme. But I am awake and I can figure out that they can take all they want, even whatever dignity that's left and any other semblence of value. It's already nothing to me, really. That's what it feels like to be in the game, where the joystick doesn't work, and the rules and programs don't matter any more. But it's not running on automatic. The gaming program is still awaiting the move. It is anticipating strategy which might not be forthcoming from this player. Does it think? Does the game think: how fuzzy is the logic. Does it operate on logic. What sort of ethos dictate its mind? Aristotle? Kohlberg? Even so, thinking does nothing. I think... So What? It is an illusion to assume therefore "one is". It seems to be getting really bad and maybe more Prozac will make the difference. Maybe statins? Maybe a barrage of valium mixed with histamines, alcohol and some caffeine. It will be the new Singapore Sling, now. I think I am missing the point. So I decide to get out... and bike for 25 km, average speed a casual 22.4 km, and just watching the world go pass. Then I realise, the speculative truth, in a rather tantalizingly real way. In just letting it go, and letting life be, and cease all the struggling, I seem finally at peace. I know this, because the pedestrian and jogger on the wrong side of the track or a couple of elderly folks chatting mid-track in a bottleneck, all does not upset me the least. Instead, I slow down, and calmly negotiate the straight path past, and hardly does my dear heart beat hasten. It is another thing when we lose the frenetic for the uncertainty of wide open options. By twilight I am home, the bottle of water on the bike frame untouched, and un-needed. I felt refreshed again, and mindful, of each breadth, no longer a floundering effort, no resistance. I had no idea how bad it got, until I realised I really wanted to get up a high floor and get in more fresh air. The thought was just not thick enough to cut it. It would have be something people do when completely out of their minds!

Fall Like Rock To The Bottom

1.38 pm I could have sworn I did not expect it. But it’s been coming some time already. It’s not right to be blogging some things outright, and probably feels fine if it’s under some cover of anonymity. But these are plain facts. Oh boy. Just looked around the envelopes and papers expecting my attention, you know. The mind immediately leapfrogs into the futures ahead, and immediately you have a sense of numbers going exactly where you know they ought to be. It was no panic attack. Not breadthlessness. But a lucid conscious state of being, like entering into a whole new scenery you have been expecting and know exactly what it’s going to feel like. You can’t escape reality. It’s jumping from fantasy back into the real world. Cool dosage. Then your head and whole body feels gravity. Everything is otherwise very fine. Thoughts are beginning to seep back in, like an endless train. You think about all the things you have thought about and the plans are simply unfurling as you had planned. It is exactly like an Escher artwork, or some other modernist art, that is a view within a view, within a view. Let me make this clear, there is absolutely no confusion. But you know something is seriously amiss. I feel the weight of my being pulling my mind down, closing in slightly on itself. In an instant, I find myself giving in to grief, then acute sorrow, and the pain hits you like a stray dart that finds its mark in you. You know it’s too ridiculous to be true, but inside your mind, there is this urgent urge to connect with the intensity of the moment. No fear. No tears. Just a stinging split second of a moment, and the fabric of sanity is separated for you to feel. Just to feel. Suddenly, I am thinking again. How did it all come to be like this, so desperate, so aggravating, so insanely wrong? The manic sense of falling, of entering into an abyss, of being in some depressed state seems so unnatural. In that instant, stupid and trivial thoughts interrupt the pain. What will they find. How long before they know. The house will be clean, the mess will be mostly in files, computer memory and papers here and there. Get rid of the books, and DVDs. Do I delete the same stupid stuff I just downloaded to view? Or, hell with it, they will clean the mess and like all respectable people, it will be swept under the shroud of discretion. Do I leave a note. What should it say: sorry? Why? At that thought I am fully cognizant that it will not happen. I was acutely aware that the whole idea was simply and plainly against every concept I had lived for up to this moment, and you can betray your whole existence on just doubt. I was past doubt. I wondered why. Then I remembered, I could not feel the aloneness of being totally forgotten and alienated. I could still sense the love that held me to this uneasy embrace. It is like you can’t understand death if the spirit still lives. The spirit was stronger. With that I felt comfort and leaned back. The air felt very cool, and very comfortable. Fresh, too. It felt as if I was on some boat out in the open sea, in the bright afternoon, within the shade of the cabin, or in some cool cabin out among the hills, in the deep woods. I felt asleep. 2.20 pm I found myself alive, not breathing. There was no involuntary sense of breathing, and I did not know it then, but I knew I have always been a candidate for sleep apnea. I could feel the swirling in my head, like some sort of mental buzzing, and spinning and my limbs are soft and relaxed. Nothing wanted to move, and I felt like I was inside my own consciousness, conscious within being conscious, like being in a dream of your own dream. My chest was too relaxed to be breathing, and I could now feel my heart rate picking up, and the body feeling desperate. I could slip into this dream if I go this way, no further that way, yes, down that way. But I feel fresh air tugging at my and before I could think further, my racing heart is galloping away, and I slowly feel my limbs limber and awakening. I sit up. It is very strange. What happened. Then I felt hunger, like a strange siren welling up a music from the recesses of your own physical centre. It became very compelling. The brown rice should almost be ready, I think, as I prepared it even before all this happened. Funny as I thought what would they have thought if they found the brown rice remnant in the cooker… With familiar flair the garlic cloves were chopped and ready, and then an onion. The cabbage in fine strips. I got the canola oil hot, dipped the chopped bulbs into a frenzy fry as they oozed their caramel flavours into the air, and then twisted open the can of corned beef. Best before date, 2008. Just then I wondered what year this was. In a short instant, I got the corned beef softened, and lopped in the cabbage. Half an hour later, feeling more composed and slightly in equilibrium, I sat down and eat the brown rice with the corned beef and cabbage in my blue porcelain bowl. I looked out of the window… 3 pm Hell, this is the best time of the day. Then I recollected the weird experience. At that moment of falling, suddenly it occurred to me that I was thinking several thoughts simultaneously. I was experiencing a whole host of comfort thoughts from my childhood, including some silly story I read when I was probably seven or eight. It was a Muffin book: there was this girl who had a dream. When she awoke, she noticed that what she saw in the dream was in her drawing book. She then drew flowers. When she slept, she was among the flowers. It went on. There was a lighthouse, a house in the hill… and in one eerie experiment, she drew a boy in the house. She met him, but he was trapped in the house. They became friends and she realised that there was nothing more she could do, and after this, it would be destruction. She drew terrible things into her dream, and the boy disappeared… I can’t tell you the ending, but what still haunts me is the dreamscape. My own dreamscape is something which I have recorded several times over. It is the afternoon, in what is just like a Kodak moment, with grassy hills of bright green dotted with little yellow flowers of wild herbs, ablaze in the sure light of the 3 pm sun. Then as my eyes turn outwards through my own window, I see it is exactly the same sunlight which is now dancing on the leaves of the trees. This is a good time to depart. Heaven, as my soul would recognise it, would beginning with a landing in this place. Perhaps, too young I had fed on a steady diet of scenes from Little House on the Praire or was so impressionable as to have stolen an image from the Kodak advertisement with Paul Anka’s timeless voice in the background. Cheesey. But I think the sort of Hollywood heaven we all seem to first know, may have been the product of our own times. Anyway, I find myself accepting the fact, that I have fallen into the deepest deep, where there is no apparent measure of an end, but all you can feel is the ceaseless falling and the velocity you pick up, and within that realisation, the density of your own soul. My imagination got fired. I felt focussed about where my energies needed to go and prepared tea, while I set the newspapers and laptop up. The scissors to cut the appointment ads, and ballpoint pen to mark the date of the ad for reference, and a plastic folder to put these in, should I be contacted, I could reference which advertisement it was from and promptly research. It feels totally afresh. I was surprised at the lack of a déjà vu, for I have been sorting out interesting appointment advertisements for some five consecutive years. Got some calls, some queries but all to a frustrating and disappointing naught. Nothing. The only prospects I ever really had coming, was when someone made a recommendation or got me hired on a strong personal reference. Except for my very first full-time job in Singapore Airlines as flight steward, I have never successfully had clinched an appointment through correspondence. It is an exercise in futility. That was what make me hit rock bottom. Feeling utterly worthless and still trying. Simply because the effort was supposed to account for something. But after all this time, nothing still. It is as if some charm or fate is determined to extinguish my being from the cycle of this life. But some other power makes me stay. It is as if my own destiny is no longer in my hands. Yet, if I my own convictions might have blinded me, to have faith and to believe when in fact there is nothing to hold on to, nothing to suggest that things may yet be. I am being taught a serious lession about life. And that secret is beginning to unfold in untold ways. There is a mystery unfathomable, veiled and so secret, but its presence alone banishes fear. 4.09 pm

40 Winks and First Thing In The Morning

The connective world of networks and servers are dominated by a cycle of access peaks and maintenance time-outs. You know this because your are online everyday, and you would have noticed that at certain hours your host server simply won't cooperate.

Then you are forced to experience this other aspect of globalisation, where the cycle of life and recreation on the other side of the globe or several time zones away are entering into a frenzy of access and you are simply timed-out by a peer computer.

It is blatant and true. And when that happened last night I decided that I had tried long and hard enough with all the patience of a Trappist monk or a zazen practitioner, with equanimous detachment and stoic zeal (ironic, right). That it is finally time for those 40 winks, and first thing in the morning, I would head out and try again.

So I have, and was again logged out, and could not upload some pictures (just that), but time and tide turns out to be on this sunny side of the world now and as America switched off, the rising sun now rose above the oriental hemisphere.

It just tells you that the majority of Internet users are day-time, at work and via the office, and we know from reliable conjecture that it is not just dedicated, securely encrypted business lines.

So, the sheep is out agraze, and the world now turns and I am again abuzz with the banal realisation that I am just a swanky blinking light in a maze of galactical proportions of highspeed connections. Those 40 winks were the best.