the2ndrule Issue 13

Published in

· 4 years ago

The 2ndRule
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Jan/Feb 2001 email edition
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Web edition: http://here.is/the2ndrule

Contents
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0. Editorial
1. Meet Jill [Shannon Low]
2. Untitled [redredfish]
3. My Name Is Magdalene [Cyril Wong]
4. Red Riding [Cyril Wong]
5. Four Peaks [Shannon Low]
6. Singapore Implements Writers' Blocks [Judith H]
7. Three chords [Shannon Low]

Editorial
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Beauty is doing a hundred down the highway on Saturday night, a doppler whirl and headlight streak, shifting gears and admiring the recently completed high-rise flats showing scattered lights and other signs of inhabitation, then smoothing her hair and pulling up her strapless top, eager to impress the cute hunks tonight while dancing in her designer shoes.

Sadness is lying on the seats at the bus stop shelter on Sunday morning, top button of an overworn striped shirt undone, feet swollen in sandals, blocking out the morning's sunbeams with a black hand over his eyes, a nagging suspicion starting to rise again over his alcoholic suppression that his parents in Gujarat might be dead, and feeling completely unable to do anything about it.

Comments and contributions to the2ndrule@hotmail.com
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2ndRule team : Koh Beng Liang, Shannon Low, Benety Goh, Russell Chan, Alfian Bin Sa'at, Ong Ee-ing, Sim Pern Yiau, Judith H
Contributors : redredfish, Cyril Wong
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Meet Jill
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Confident. Extraordinary. Woman. Jill is the person you most want to know. As well as the one you try to avoid. No one speaks for her, she answers to no one but herself. She is her harshest critic.

She will expect the most; give nothing less than her life. As long as it's what she believes in. Look inside. She is there. Hiding, sulking, or waiting to spring.

Jill picks up where Jack left off. And goes much further than he ever did.

Goodbye Jack.

- Shannon Low
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I am completely without resistance.
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Untitled
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Between a bees sting and your tea spill
Four minds lost and a heart
hovers on railway tracks

light years afar
from smoldering dust
to poets & love notes
silver stars in plastic
on cradles & doors

not so far
wheels on highway
- head on the sea
heart forgotten
its a ride beyond

green to gold to dusk
mountains do fall.

each strays each fades each withers
the way you dont feel like it
each blossoms each rises

Die not.

Between a tap rusting behind thoughts
a paper plane
land in your tree
ink bleached blue.
I see trains pass by, water turn to ice, sap from a tree stain my murderer hands

And I wait.
so that I too may shout eureka! with conviction and pride

he says eureka

- redredfish
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Catch me if I fall
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My Name Is Magdalene
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'I don't know how to love him'
By Tim Rice

You were
Not a man, not in the sense
A woman like me would
Have known one: the grace
Of your body,
An illusion of containment.

I was
Something men rubbed
Against themselves, then threw away
Like a rag with too many holes.
I was a widening tear in cloth, air
Diving in and out of me like strangers.
Funny enough, I was also a key
That locked them further
Into their bodies, despite the hint of
Freedom at each turning of the knob.

Then, one afternoon, you held these
Hands to raise me, and they became real -
It was that simple. You said, 'Mary,
Love me, and you love yourself.'

- Cyril Wong
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She recognises herself in you. Same eyes, same heart, without lies.
Taking only what you need, giving only what you can.
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Red Riding
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It was simple enough
walking through that forest, when
the wind rattled like a heart
in its body of trees; the fear was not of
the sudden assault, the possibility of
violence, slash of a paw across
the bubble of your throat, the real threat
hanging like these open arms of branches
over the grass-licked path, from which
only the sunlight climbed down, was that
nothing would happen.

But something did happen. And it was gorgeous:
the hair-raising sight of its fur, its broad, sensuous grin
with its row of bone-white teeth, its eyes that could
widen and go on widening like the mouths of babies.
And it ripped me from the path the same way
a bird is freed from the sky by a hunter's raised rifle,
clutching me close to itself until I could sniff its deliciously
human breath, what I wore pooling at my feet like blood.

One night, I looked down its throat like a well
and heard the moans of not just my grandmother,
but of all the women who fell from the path
like a tightrope under their singular row of feet.
So I took out an axe from the cupboard in the cellar,
and when it was over, the wolf's body gaped
upon the bed like an open grave, not a whisper

escaped, as if all the voices could now be quiet.
Then I filled the grave with stones and returned
to the path, but saw that much of the grass
were now a darker shade of brown, and that
so many trees had turned suddenly to stump.

I kept on walking until there were no more trees
or even grass left to caress my ankles. Way pass
factories, spiels of identical houses, tall buildings
that plunged into the blue, gaping wound of sky,
in search of wolves with bigger ears and eyes, with
mouths full of teeth sharper and whiter than bone.

- Cyril Wong
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I believe in karma: what you give is what you get returned
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Four peaks
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Four peaks in the distance, on the shore of some other place. A swirl of pink cloud makes an eye at her, and she knows she's left something behind. The clouds form peaks behind the hills, not to be outdone. But tonight they will disappear, and leave only the real ones behind.

Jill leaves because she has no excuse. She doesn't enjoy watching the hills recede, as her excursion leaves her unsatisfied. Still looking, still wanting. But she takes comfort in the view, of pink and blue and green. Sun is shining, the weather is sweet.

She doesn't know where she is, or who she was, or when she will be. Just that she will, and she's just waiting for that. Adrift, in the meantime, back to where she did not want to be.

Welcome home, Jill.

- Shannon Low
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www.fightaidsathome.com
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Singapore Implements Writers' Blocks
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SINGAPORE - Can you can imagine falling down from the twentieth floor of a HDB block without having done it before, without a rubber band tied to your ankles, your arms outstretched and missing the ground (or kissing the ground...whichever suicide tends to seem like to you)? If you can, while dreaming of starry starry skies and flying and believing your wings are growing right then and there, there is a 89% chance that you write poetry, prose or whatever (lousy or otherwise). In which case, what you probably need is an apartment in the newly-established Writers' Blocks.

The Housing Development Board has, from recent surveys, found the need to establish such apartments due to disproportionate numbers of suicides amongst self-proclaimed "writers", causing unnecessary and irregular patterns in the cleaning schedules of the road sweepers. In order to facilitate a more efficient cleaning routine, it has been observed that a clustering of "writers" will create more regular and predictable cleaning schedules. Furthermore, cleaners with appropriate attitudes and experience will be better dispatched to serve such areas. The implementation of such Writers' Blocks has been recently approved of, with well wishes from the Ministry of the Environment. The Ministry for Information and the Arts also approved, saying that such Blocks would also facilitate the meeting and interaction of creative minds.

The public has expressed concern with the rising incidence of Killer Litter resulting from the building of these Blocks, but the ENV has dismissed this as a minor problem, saying counseling would be one of the highlights of these Blocks provided by the PAP for the new residents. Furthermore, it is hoped that Natural Selection will take its course, and create a smaller demand for such Blocks after the initial rush. In fact, it is hoped that by 2030, there will be no more call for Writers' Blocks.

- Judith H
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Methadone rules
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Three chords
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Three chords and I still don't have the truth. Only the beginnings of a hummable tune and a great view.

Every afternoon, I'd take a walk in the park. Hoping that the fresh air and sun might tease a song out of my head. A desperate attempt to compose, create. Every afternoon, I'd pass by an old man who would grin as I nodded in return. The man would sit by the river, fishing, feeding the ducks, or talking to himself. As I stood and watched and asked "why", "when" and "how". As the sun set pink over the blue-green water, the chords would rattle like questions inside my head. To hear them over and over, such cacophony. Each chord would seem unsingable, unconnectable, unfathomable. The closer I looked, the more I tried to listen. I could not understand.

The old man would just watch me and smile piteously. As if he knew where I was headed. Until one day, he came up to me and whispered, "The truth is in the view. Not the chords." And it was music to my ears.

- Shannon Low
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That which is overdesigned, too highly specific, anticipates outcome; the anticipation of outcome guarantees, if not failure, the absence of grace.
- William Gibson
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