Felix Cheong
Felix Cheong was the recipient of the National Arts Council’s Young Artist of the Year for Literature Award in 2000. He has published three books of poetry, Temptation and Other Poems (1998), I Watch the Stars Go Out (1999) and Broken by the Rain (2003), which was short-listed for the 2004 Singapore Literature Prize. Sudden in Youth: New and Selected Poems will be published in 2009. Felix edited Idea to Ideal: 12 Singapore Poets on the Writing of Their Poetry (2004). A Bachelor of Arts (honours) graduate from the National University of Singapore, Felix completed his Master of Philosophy in Creative Writing at the University of Queensland in 2002. He is currently a freelance writer and an adjunct lecturer at LASALLE College of the Arts, Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts and Temasek Polytechnic.
In Praise of Sloth
Not writing is a pain
five years in the making,
a knot you choose not
to untie, pact of convenience
with time, vow of silence,
itch at your back, the back
of your voice you can’t reach,
neither pen nor stick.
But how it grows, terrible
territory; you flog dead
lines, sub-verse, start
false and stutter, follow
the lead as it sinks, suspect
animation, play dumb, downplay,
punctuate yourself with commas,
poems in coma, this lull, dull period
when you have nothing to say,
nothing to say it with.
For not writing is a virtue, let
sleeping words lie,
an implosion of sloth
before you find the gift.
Before Reality Shows
It will be, will it to be,
faith that a wall
is your window to morning,
glory, gilt-mounted, coughing out
the sun, sheen and shine
as if no closure, never
foreclosure. Imagine, yes, hold
it together with words or gods,
that into the distance,
doors lead you on,
corridors steep as the steps
you can carry on your feet,
before dead-ends chase you down,
nail your head to your heart,
seal them blinding shut.
There are no alternatives. Nothing
else will alter what is native
inside you: A box
where not even silence escapes.
Night Calls
Soon, your day will
pass, no matter how fast,
vast, furious, light will run
itself out, like a boy
given legs for a field
or a man, women for a song.
It’ll always be too soon,
like that last kiss,
the lasting kiss, a kiss at last,
at the mercy of needing
too much, saying too little.
When dark matters, rises, steadies
itself for the kill,
you’ll not be this weak again
but complete, completed,
taken out of circulation
and buried among stars,
want for nothing.