Kianseng Ng


Seeing

You gave me kestrel eyes and now
I see the horizons beyond the bend
of the globe. I see midnight infinity
with midday clarity. I see the night-
sky and I know which stars
have died because the speed
of my sight is greater than the speed
of light. I see places so far
away that the zodiac seem as near
as the pictures of a travel
guide. I see that last place
in the sky where eclipses are metaphors
because the sun behind the crystal-
ball of my mind throws not shadow
but more light on the moon
of my imagination. Because I see further
I travel further than a cartographer's
pen. Any place that cannot be imagined
is imaginary, any place that can
be imagined is not imaginary,
it is a space-station I will soon star-
trek to in my satellite spinning.
And this is my diary, each entry
is not a man's small step in the pages
of a log-book but the heart's giant
leap in the orbits of the universe.


Whispers Of Silence

old men playing chess
games are won and lost
without the creasing of brows

in tousled garden
where tall lalang runs amok
petite bonsai blooms

last call to board plane
at the back of jostling crowd
nun without luggage


Delusion

I'm a Van Gogh who does not
cut off his ear. My "Sunflowers" master
piece: A last supper portrait not graced
by the cord of a Mona Lisa
smile, hybrid colours and mutant lines.
Like Van Gogh I have a butterfly
mind, flitting, fragile, yet most beautiful
when set against the backdrop of a "Starry
Night".


Paranoia

I am fearful of some things, the woman
who is a shadow of her cosmetics, the man
who has two shadows, the Pandora box
of my cupboard where the skeleton of my
hope is kept, the mannequins who spy on me
through the binoculars of the glass window.
I'm glad I do not have claustrophobia,
agoraphobia, acrophobia.


An Old Master

"Mona Lisa, Mona Lisa, men have named you.
You're so like the lady with the mystic smile.
Do you smile to tempt a lover, Mona Lisa?
Or is this your way to hide a broken Heart?
"Sung by Nat King Cole, 1950

I am climbing up to chapel
ceilings, scaling refectory walls.
I am recalling renaissance
wizardry to frame your Mona
Lisa fire. I am making
a mystic smile. I am drawing
dreams that dance at door-
steps. I am immortalizing the face
that is love's patented prison.
I am adding last supper
colours, burnished brown of clenched
fists, Good Friday red
of a heady wine. I am working
on a cornerless cloth, nailing
it to the stars, moons, suns,
hanging it on the wall
of my left ventricle. I am painting
you on the canvas of my mind.