Just put everything you want to burn
into this pile of detritus and unlearned
individuated human being, who has struggled to return
to his roots, his truths, the shoots that should be at the centre of his being
dragging him down, into history’s last gleaming.
And now he stays in Kampong Glam.
It’s like just asking for the flames to start
building, emerging, conceiving of a turning
of the Roda Mundansa itself, faster and faster and faster
until all that is left is chalk, and smudged concrete,
and peeling alabaster.
When we go walking on Sundays,
I think you know who really is the master
of anything that moves, and struggles, and even dares to fill the world with laughter.
But then, when we go talking in all ways,
I find that I am completely wrong.
I start to hear another song
that asks me about this Stranger-Gay.
That worries me about what he might learn some day
about just how fast a match can catch fire,
once one applies the right taste
to its head.
I am left, standing by the roadside, wondering what next needs to be fed.