Poem about Poetry - Images
the only person who
cares to speak to us
only in images is Divinity
the dazzling sun he
is paying the respect
to each new day
with an illuminatioin
that can lift our spirit up
eyes, he is saying
how unique you are
a creature moulded
and beholden unto you
and unto you only
all the creatures
on land, in the sky, in the sea
he is saying there are
so many ways an idea
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poem by John Tiong Chunghoo
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A perfect Pearl
my run away desire
the devil asks me
to go out, to have fun
and above all - eat
this when i am
not at all hungry
in fact bloated
another day of routine
it is too early
for me
sometimes
noon is too early
for food
it is another day
the devil is drivng
at me with his
sharpened chisels
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poem by John Tiong Chunghoo
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Visit Malaysia Year Poem - Pulau Ketam (State of Selangor)
pincers, white fluffy flesh
red hot, spicy shells
under our white
plastic hammers
each leg, pincer,
carapace broken
licked clean
the two eyes
now jutting out of
the auspicious
light as flight
red orange shell
so cleaned up of life
so meaningless
and emptied
of existence
a loser of
the world
except for
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poem by John Tiong Chunghoo
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I live in Little India
dawn in Little India unfolds
from the sanctum of the Lotus
petal by petal of spiritually
inches and spreads around our heart as
as the sun rises from the palm
of the Almighty colouring the sky
with his shades of blessings
like the Hindu Gods blue,
green, red, and yellow on their chariots
screening the splendour of heavens
buddhist temple bell chimes right at six,
after the call of the mosque azan
when there is a hindu festival
the nearby shrine where Kali manfiests
the frightening scale of her character
a red blood tongue lengthy enough
to draw a thousand questions
from passers of her divinity
one of the few Hindu goddesses to whom
you can slaughter an animal to please her
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poem by John Tiong Chunghoo
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Lifestyle - Pressure
i feel unhassled and at ease with myself
the organic pomegranate and purple carrot juice
i just downed have warned my heart to
work without exerting pressure on me
note courtesy of wikipedia;
The pomegranate (Punica granatum) is a fruit-bearing deciduous shrub or small tree growing to between five and eight metres tall. The pomegranate is native to Iran and has been cultivated and naturalized over the whole Mediterranean region and the Caucasus since ancient times. It is widely cultivated throughout Afghanistan, Algeria, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Iraq, India, Pakistan, Syria, Turkey, the drier parts of southeast Asia, Peninsular Malaysia, the East Indies, and tropical Africa. Introduced into Latin America and California by Spanish settlers in 1769, pomegranate is now cultivated in parts of California and Arizona for juice production.
In the Northern Hemisphere, the fruit is typically in season from September to February.[3] In the Southern Hemisphere, it is in season from March to May.
Purple carrot:
Purple carrots (usually orange inside) have even more beta carotene than their orange cousins, and get their pigment from an entirely different class, the anthocyanins, these pigments act as powerful antioxidants, grabbing and holding on to harmful free radicals in the body. Anthocyanins also help prevent heart disease by slowing blood clotting and and are good anti inflammatory agents. These originate from Turkey, and the Middle and Far East.
poem by John Tiong Chunghoo
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Malaysiana - The Cultures in the Maidens
The maiden of Malaya is full of romance
Her hair curls and flows the way the Straits of
Malacca meets the Andaman, stretches of love that
sweep onto The Golden Chersonese
Seeds from afar as the desert plain of Arabia, the
land of Taj Mahal, Asoka - you see them dancing in her
ebullient eyes, magical eyes with lashes so long they
flip into your heart to remain in warm quarters you
could savour in the dead of nights
Her finely arched eyebrows sweep you through the
swathes and swathes of Arab sand where you remember
the Prophet and all his sayings
Layer upon layer of her young passion is played out by
the sand that swirls with the wind the moment it
blows, turning the clear sky into a miasma of her
desires
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poem by John Tiong Chunghoo
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Ode to Houses of Worship
my heart just refuses to be bound
i walk into the hindu temple
to savour the myriad manifestations
of the formless God, who can take any form
i walk into a buddhist temple
knowing that all the manifestations
wont help us one bit if we dont help ourselves
to heaven, nirvana, syurga, tiang tang
God can be a wine we lose our mind in
if we do not take him in the right way
whom we go to favours without fail
draining the blood of a thousand animals
in the mad scamble for favours in this sin laden realm
forgetting the task to liberate ourselves
buddha's wise dharma has brought us to our senses
that the soul is our responsibility and ours alone God or no God
and animals cannot walk us to God
if we dont even have a heart for them
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poem by John Tiong Chunghoo
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In January
i could walk carefree
in tokyo streets and lanes
in october, november and early december
in my T-Shirt treating it as spring but not january
when the temperature would suddenly take a dip
like an olympic swimmer with fiery ambition
plunging into the pool
the chill bites into the most sensitive parts
near the chest, setting the bodice trembling,
teeth hitting each other the way dad shunts his soroban beads
shaking like the winter breeze on and off, on and off
throughout the lanes and streets
laughters, songs trail the ears
on and off, on and off as the izakaya door
opens to either welcome or sends off some customers
the cold and loneliness of the streets
make these drinking houses
feel like a happy family where children and parents
crowd together for their nightly fun
january in tokyo could either be warm or cold
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poem by John Tiong Chunghoo
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A Chinese Cemetery
smoke trails the sky
over the cemetery
hell money burns
casting a misty layer
between this world
and the next
but not its reality
even after death
you need money
they reckon
stacks and stacks
they burn
every stack twenty million
everyone wants
their late next of kin
to be billionaires
to be rich
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poem by John Tiong Chunghoo
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Ode to the Umbrella
what inspired this poem
is mary poppins, the caring
British governor who carries
under her little pink umbrella
her warmth and the creme
de la creme of life lessons
and flies children into
home sweet home
every umbrella it has
become a metaphor to
carry off that great task
to make children laugh
warm and hearty as the
summer sky
japanese and chinese
traditional lacquered umbrellas
do that job come rain or shine
they always carry the herons,
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poem by John Tiong Chunghoo
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