Long Kuala Poems

 Translation of Eric Mottram’s Poem 33 in Interrogation Rooms by T. Wignesan

33.  on a vu un homme courir/ de la scène de crime un homme est maintenant en train d’aider/ la police avec...

Read More

When at five-thirty
In the rubbed-eye haziness
Of ferreting lonesome night walks
The camera-eye refugee
Asleep in the half wakefulness
Of the hour
Peers out of his high turbanned sockets:
Hyde Park's through road links
London's diurnally estranged couple -
The Arch and Gate.

...

Read More

A tramp steamer plies an ocean of fog. 
The Chief Bos’n makes a note in the log while the helmsman 
Strains to see beyond the wheel. 
The ship’s Captain leaves the bridge with a groan....

Read More

Villanelle : Never political but spiritual the ancient Indo-Chinese pilgrim ties

       In Memory of the late pathologist (and amateur Astronomer) 
Associate Professor CHONG Siew Meng, National University of Singapore*


Never...

Read More

In a sense everything is a seed of it's successor
The universe is change, life is judgement
Those aren't my words, they're a famous author
The rest of these are and what I think he meant
Before you demur...

Read More

Asian Epicurean Quest

At the heart of China Town, Kuala Lumpur (capital of Malaysia) is Petaling Street.
  
Domain of hustlers, hucksters, cheap-jacks and diblers; purveyors of street food, rude t-shirts, and rubber sandles to put...

Read More

Well, well, well!
The whole world knows by now, impossible dreams can come true,
In the game of professional soccer, it has just been proven at Leicester,
Starting the season with a laughable 5,000 to 1 odds of...

Read More

Reality Checks In Woman Squash

True to expectations, dreams come true for squash talent Nour El Sherbini...
She came to Kuala Lumpur, she saw and she conquered all to claim the trophy...
Since last year's end 2015, she...

Read More

Youngest Champion In Woman Squash

There you have it, the youngest ever World Woman Squash Champion..
At a tender age of twenty, Nour El Sherbini is the 2015 Woman World Champion..

Coming off the prolific production line from...

Read More

Dismantling Of A Growing Nation

Back in late 70s, while I was just another fresh face in a local varsity....
Racial based politics was gaining grounds with public sympathies....
Remembered distinctly DAP, the opposition party,  was gaining...

Read More

Salam, how are you there?
Wassalam, good, Alhamdulillah
How about the issue in Sabah
Nothing to worry
I am worried because you are my friend
I am okay; just want to know your opinion
No probs, what do you think of...

Read More

I picture Kashmir through lightened KL. I see Kashmir through deserted eyes.
I am writing an elegy. While my Kashmir burns.
My blood has contents of a coward. 
What results my thoughts will forward.
Tears have dried. Heart...

Read More

Host Nation Crass Action

It is downright embarassing to review a viral video clip...
Of a group of black attired chanting in unison to a beat...
Presumably they were out in full force as soccer fans...
Easily overwhelming the...

Read More

Zoe was born 1992 and is a Paralympic powerlifter,
Who was born with growth hormone deficiency,
In Ipswich, she attended East Bergholt school, lifter,
And enjoyed the Suffolk School Games, proficiency.

She tried the sport of powerlifting for the...

Read More

Heavy the hoods of the eyes
  that laboured the scan of horizons
Heavy the course of the thoughts
  that sat unstirred on the sill of the stare

Heavy this ancient bottomed nose
  sitting in...

Read More

He helped himself up to the wind's foremost blow
On a hillock where the moon searched his impecunious pockets,
Waking a flood in his eyes like swelled teats.
He opened wide to receive the Lady, this Endymion cheats,
No...

Read More

I do not know if this is true what I see:
I see in some dim, distant, desolate rock-hold
gathering peoples, driven as though by common fear.
A low mournful humming drifts with the breeze
of manhood tread, and...

Read More

The memory in need
Is the implacable enemy of the creed,
Waits and watches its foe

The all-clawing frenzy on tip-toe;
Quiescent in the instant's repose
The thud of flurried gnawing years evoke.

The poet in his solitary moments, spoke
Those whispered...

Read More

He woke down the slope, by the hay
With him a thousand shrill cries
That stilled to him, yawning.
He moved with strands of hay, trailing
On his rags.
Sauntering, he is a flaneur...
The road lamps gave him away.

He moved...

Read More

Part Three

Did you not notice then
How uneasy I was in the eye of abundance
How hiding from the surfeit of joy
From whose very object I
Learned not to cry

And so all through with fear
Fear opening fresh fear
Without...

Read More

Who is this Malaysian boy?
His style is dashing,
His eyes are beckoning.
He is the eastern boy from Nnewi,
With the hands that work all day,
Where poverty has no space.
He is the western boy from Ile-Ife,
With the reckoning...

Read More

Remind me of the sea that kisses the coast of Algiers
Where the tides are soft and the winds all but fierce
In that country past the strait of Gibraltar
Where the trip to Casablanca didn’t halt her

Taking...

Read More

for Thirugnanamoorthy

Remorseful, the noonday sun
Frizzles with the stealthy wind
Under the rubbery mountain green.
A calmness has come to rest
From having tossed in its sleep.
The forest has taken leave
Of the hunted horn and drum.
No more the tapper...

Read More

Oh Kuala Lumpur, city of contrasts
Where ancient and modern, beautifully coexist
Your towering skyscrapers, a sight to behold
A modern metropolis, that never grows old

From the iconic Petronas Twin Towers
To the bustling streets of Bukit Bintang
A city...

Read More

My friend, do you know me?
   I am a Pharisee
No, not per the dictionary
  Which mischaracterizes my beliefs and me

For while he keeps the tradition, it's true
  A Pharisee's an ever-evolving...

Read More