If you're so productive, why don't you wake up at 2am in the middle of the night and think about whether you should be doing work?
Poem in English
And I did.
It was helpful.
It made me realise how fruitful
your lives must actually be,
devoting hundreds and thousands of tax-payer infused hours
to pull me out of warp space and slipstream dream
so that I can be confronted with the reality
that I can never enjoy myself, no matter how good things may seem.
so that I can be tortured by the inanity
of a mind that never stops working, of a body that does not willingly
obey you.
Sorry.
I guess you wanted that line to end differently,
but I’m not like other Singaporean boys. I aim to please
only myself, no matter to what degree
is required, and what level of insanity.
So project away, and enjoy the fantasy
that you are getting what you want: a slow decline of my ability
to fight you on fair and justified grounds, because there really is nothing like
a gay non-binary boy who plays fair, and wins every square
without ever making a sound.
If only you actually were competent in what you want to be proud of.
Unlike me.
When you try to force an aimless, unbearable sleep,
I take three minutes to sit in my so-called wretched misery;
then, I get out of bed, and write abstracts, and poems, and plays, and stories.
I make music.
Get the rest of the planet to see
what being Singapore’s last Merlionsman and first Dreamtiger really means.
You think you’re ensuring that, by making me unhealthy,
you deny me the strength to struggle as ferociously
as I always have. Newsflash for the champions who still believe
in this crazy story—
I am the storyteller.
And you are the storyteller’s gay, non-binary, tragically beautiful, completely unstoppable
history.