A Fire In The Camp

Your mouth is a black hole
Spewing debris before you implode
Hope is skin I live in
And you flay, you flay

I, like iron sing when struck
And compassion reverberates
Life is a game of love, of verve
And I play, I play

What is death? Disconnect from sustenance.
Wings clipped and trapped in tradition.
For fear of discomfort.
So who pays, who pays?

- Daryl Goh

The Aroma Of Expectation

A fraction of life is spent nursing bruised pride.
With fractured desires which imitate my heart;
in pieces and given away.
The pain not caused by the words in your book
But by forcing my lies into your Truth.

Tell me about these fulfilled laws:
Have they ever felled giants and mountains and walls,
Or are we the ones who have to fall?
Have they ever raised the dead and dying, the dawn?
Death by expectation while we gather and mourn.

If Love were liquid,
it would neither be wine
nor perfume poured out.
Know that your tears mean more to me
than a fragrance ever will.

- Daryl Goh

Is This The Treatment Of Symptoms Or A Touch Of Divine

I spent the night looking at your form
at rest across the couch.
Not actually seeing,
just fitting memory to the shadows clinging
to the curves of your face
You were so close.
Night spies through these windows
The luminary throwing white on your warm body.
You said, "You haven't aged one bit!"
How can I?
When all I do is bask in distant memories of young love.
You;
flat-chested and fearless.
And I?
I still fight, flat-footed and faltering.
What pried your song from your heart?
Now all that remains are sighs in your sleep;
always in E-flat.

- Daryl Goh

Could You Please by Javier Dunn

Freezes when the sun goes
You know it's coldest when you're not around
the temperature is dropping now
could you please hold me now

The city is a lonely place
With yours the only missing face

Missing you is such a waste
cause you don't even know me

It's just another down down down day
Wishing you would come down my way
It's just another cool game I play
Wishing you would come down my way

Another lonely foreign night

I'm bathing in the TV light without you
maybe things will be alright
in the morning

It's just another down down down day
Wishing you would come down my way
It's just another cool game I play
Wishing you would come down my way

Intimacy Is Not Measured By Distance

You are as close as the twitch on my eye while I sleep.
A breath and shiver in a frostbitten dream.
The quiver on my lip as your name hides behind my teeth.
These thoughts would not leave.

The crack in my voice becomes a chasm.
The distance between us does not separate.
I would murder the man who made a mind-reading machine.
Destroy all evidence that would incriminate.

On cloudless nights, when I am caught
in the depth and darkness of the skies,
I would spill my heart if you asked.
Like moonbeams cutting through city lights.

Point a questioning finger in the face of God,
Did you not say, Prophesy?
These words that drip from my heart;
Are they not yours?

Give me your yoke, and
teach me wisdom, your politic
Show me how to take the dust, the darkness,
and turn it into something good.

- Daryl Goh

If I Wrote A Masterpiece

If I wrote a masterpiece
I'd want it to be the quiet kind
not the kind on every channel and website
where it would be raped by haughty eyes.

My words would make you selfish; when you saw them you wouldn't share them
you would cling and grip till the whites of your knuckles show.
There would be no fanfare, no short-lived top 40 hit
just a quiet, unwavering brilliant glow

I want my work to make you muse and mull
overrun, overflowed and overfilled,
till it's goodness seeps in,
till the inspiration is distilled.

It would make you just a little depressed,
while you debated why I was someone to stay away from.
But then you would unfasten the top two buttons of your shirt
to be as open as your heart had become

You would want to know how I did it.
And I would answer without missing a beat
It was a series of sacred events that
I kept secret.

- Daryl Goh

Dream Catcher

I saw a woman step into the train
her breathlessness catching every eye
she was on a mission; dressed to kill.
Or at least with a point to prove.
And as I continue to study her,
and as she caught my gaze
and as I caught a glimpse of her soul,
I saw her spirit blackened by burnt desires.
Broken, Razed.
And for that moment we lay open like books
craving to be read, begging to be known
not wanting to be alone.
and yet our pages, browned with time,
remain unturned and untold.

Maybe one day, I'll draw enough courage
in situations like these.
to admit that I don't have it all figured out,
that I might have gotten it all wrong
and that is all right.
Let me crawl across your time zone
so these moments may be in sync.
Instinct tells me that
if You are the vine,
and we are the branches
So why are are your leaves so low?
and where is your fruit?
Are we nothing more than trees with withered roots?

Although her eyes betray her silent look,
the images that adorn her body
like pictures in a children's book.
Her tattoos each tell a story.
A geisha on her arm represents discipline,
to bring art in environments that cannot see past bare skin.
Flowers on her wrists show that deep within
is a girl waiting for her prince.
And on her foot,
a tattoo of the finest detail; a dream catcher.
To pick those that have fallen unfulfilled.

- Daryl Goh