Truth to Flower
You speak it,
and the forest responds:
nothing in the universe can stop a man with a flower in his hair,
and a heart made of pure, iridescent might,
and fighting fair.
I speak not for myself
but for the others you fucked up
and left to die at the door to danger's lair.
The maw has such
a steely, dreaming stare;
it hungers
for your failures,
your lies.
Your pretenses
and the people you sent to die.
I stay here,
but no man is an island. I will not abide
this. Singapore must invite
real, honest, fighting justice.
An actual democracy.
Not a mere image of peace.
An addiction to progress.
And a denial of equality.
I have changed the course of Pulau Ujong for the better for thirty-one years
but I am not her destiny.
Reader, you don't have to put a flower in your hair
but you do have to see
that it is all of us together,
every last Singaporean a leader
and speaking truth to power
and making us, all of us, every last one of us, free
from guilt.
From shame.
From self-loathing
and from all the other things that remain as misery.
Your Merlionsman leads the way.
Now the forest looks at you, and says,
little lion child,
do you, too, believe?