Poetic Salivation

24 Friday Feb 2012

Posted by in Poetry (Family, Life, Love)

≈ 16 Comments

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When I posted TROPHIES, Peter blogging as Grandfathersky responded with a haiku and this led to an interesting exchange. I enjoyed it so thoroughly that I decided to make a post. For those who have not, I would suggest visiting Grandfathersky to relish his writings.

1. Peter’s first comment,

Or nameless hills in

Far Away forgotten lands

Wet with soldiers blood

2. Eric Alagan: February 23, 2012 at 8:24 am,

Medal for a limb

Folded flag for shattered lives

Fair trade wouldn’t you say

3. Grandfathersky: February 23, 2012 at 8:57 am,

The Sioux always had

The widows at war councils

They would speak their peace

4. Eric Alagan: February 23, 2012 at 9:10 am,

“Leaders” speak money

Clothed in “nationality”

Young bleed, widows weep

5. Grandfathersky: February 23, 2012 at 9:25 am,

Heroes heroin

Ban those dirty Taliban

Poppies for Harlem

6. Eric Alagan: February 23, 2012 at 9:32 am (Well done Peter – keep it coming…),

Buyers and Sellers

The Cycle of Destruction

Judge not the guilty

7. Grandfathersky: February 23, 2012 at 9:51 am (Likewise. What have we learned?),

Cast from the Temple

Pharisees traded their gold

For the souls of men

8. Eric Alagan: February 23, 2012 at 9:58 am,

Holy men, their keys

Do not open their heaven

What about of ours

9. Grandfathersky: February 23, 2012 at 10:03 am,

Abdicated our souls

Trusted into the hands of men

Greed was in their hearts

10. Eric Alagan: February 23, 2012 at 10:08 am,

We are to be blamed

Mindless sheep we, led by wolves

Return to Our Lord

11. Grandfathersky: February 23, 2012 at 10:19 am (Past 9 here now, I have to say good night… and Thank you. This has been rewarding),

Awake you who sleep

Now the time of man is nigh

He will lead us home

12. Eric Alagan: February 23, 2012 at 10:25 am,

When we sleep we live

When we awake we prepare

For a life that’s True

(Eric: I thoroughly enjoyed this too. Perhaps one day we ought to set up a post and invite all our blogger friends to contribute. It will be a blast. Thank you very much Peter. Good night)

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26. I once met a Star (not Errol Flynn but close…)

22 Wednesday Feb 2012

Posted by in Life of Mechanic Leigh

≈ 27 Comments

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1960s’ Singapore: The continuing saga of a boy called Mechanic Leigh…

Every morning, rubbish collectors came around in an open truck. Unlike the present day, the men did not wear uniforms or gloves. They wore filthy clothes and stank as bad as the rubbish they collected. Plastic bags were not invented yet and people simply tossed the crap into unlined tins, which came in all shapes and sizes – I was referring to the holes in the tins. Quite often, when the men lifted up the tins, filthy fluid would flow out and drench them.

I remember this rubbish collector. He was stout, sported a thick moustache and always sang songs as he went about his work. Mr Moustache seemed to know the first verse of every single Tamil song.

One night, the drama came to our village and every family turned out in full force to gawk at the outlandish and garish costumes of the actors who pranced about on the roadside stage.

It was a period drama enacted over five evenings. There he was, Mr Moustache, the star!

Everytime he made an entrance, he would jump and flick his sword left and right – swish-swish-swish. When there were badies, he would follow through the swish-swish-swish with a tang-tang-tang as swords clashed.

Normally, after the third ‘tang’ the badie would fall on his back and die dramatically – but only after reciting a two-minute speech of repentance. I always wondered why people, no matter where they were stabbed, had to cough so much after every sentence and before they die!

Within each two-hour segment, he killed off half a dozen bad guys and rescued his amply proportioned heroin from a strange two-legged tiger. I really thought it was the skinny tiger that needed rescuing.

For several weekends after that, whenever the rubbish truck came through, we kids would arm ourselves with sticks, run after the truck and shout swish-swish-swish and tang-tang-tang! Then we would bend forward and laughed until our stomachs ached.

Once I was so engulfed in my naughtiness, I did not realise that all my friends had run off. I looked up and there he was, Mr Moustache standing arms akimbo and glaring at me. My voice quavered as I expected to feel the back of his hand.

Instead, he ruffled my hair, wheeled and in an easy lope caught up with the truck. As he hopped onto the foothold, he turned, smiled and waved.

I held up my hand as in a trance and by the time I regained my senses the truck had turned the corner.

After that day, we never teased Mr Moustache. When the truck trundled past, we would run after it and wave at all the gruff men. They were so nice and we had such great fun.

These men became our friends :-)

********** Copyright @ Eric Alagan, 2012 **********

25. My Family Jewels

17 Friday Feb 2012

Posted by in Life of Mechanic Leigh

≈ 27 Comments

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1960s’ Singapore: The continuing saga of a boy called Mechanic Leigh…

School recess was all too short, only twenty minutes. The bell rang. I rushed to the toilet, just enough time for a quick pee before the mad dash back to the classroom.

Mother had bought the cheapest school shorts – with zippers – no more struggling with oversized buttons and tiny buttonholes.  (For the uninitiated, back in the sixties, Japanese products were cheap but sucked).

Dashing into the toilet, I unzipped, peed, flicked :-)  and zipped up – yarrgh!

In my rush, I missed a step – tuck into underwear before zipping up!

The thin foreskin caught in the teeth of the zipper. I screamed and just as quickly, froze. Taking a deep breath, with feverish hands I tried to move the zipper – no! The pain was hellishly sharp and heart stopping. I could not budge the zipper, not even a tiny fraction, without razor-sharp pain shoot up my, by now, shrivelled member. Red blood stained the front of my shorts.

(Ghost writer: Red blood – you are stating the obvious)

(Leigh: Will you be quiet, it hurts just to recall)

The second shorter bell rang and stopped. I could hear the deafening silence in the corridors outside. Curfew was in force. Any child caught outside the classrooms, when lessons commenced, can expect caning – yes, our teachers knew all about nurturing.

I stood shivering. Just then, Rascal Slim appeared. I was so relieved to see him but was also afraid that because of me, he too will receive a thrashing. He touched the zipper and I sucked in air with a painful hiss.

Then he hit me!

As I let fly with torrents of Hokkien expletives, I realised what he had done. The same time he hit, he had snapped down the zipper.

A tiny sliver of skin ripped off but for the most part, the pain was gone. He grabbed a handful of toilet roll and asked me to dab the profusely bleeding wound. Rolling the tissue around my member, I carefully tucked in, zipped up and we both rushed back to class. Fortunately, the teacher had not arrived.

Escaped!

I could not thank Rascal Slim enough. Even now, I marvel at the quick thinking and maturity of this ‘rascal’ whom all the teachers pointed out as someone, “you don’t want to amulet.”

(Ghost writer: Emulate)

(Leigh: Huh? Oh, okay, someone you don’t want to emulate)

I was too embarrassed to tell Mother or even Brother, who was the greatest bully on earth.

However, Jack knew something was wrong when he saw me holding out my shorts as I walked – remember Jack, the union steward in the dockyards? He was so perceptive. (Yes, I already knew this big word – clever huh!) After my bath he took me into his room, dressed the wound with a small bandage and plaster (Band-Aid came years later).

If Pa were alive, he would have done the same. Sigh!

I love Jack.

(Ghost writer whispers: Dear readers, it is the first time Leigh has mentioned his father. Please don’t mention him in your comments)

********** Copyright @ Eric Alagan, 2012 **********

The Blue Maiden

15 Wednesday Feb 2012

Posted by in Micro-fictions

≈ 36 Comments

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(You read the heart-wrenching tale: Fear not dear mother. Today 15 February 2012 is the 70th Anniversary of the Fall of Singapore to Japanese forces. While historians speak of generals and leaders, exploits and debacles…the stories of simple folks and especially that of natives are smoke in the wind…)

It was whispered that her mother had ‘known’ a ‘white rajah’ and beget her, a bastard child that neither the ruler nor the ruled accepted. For this reason, the first sixteen years of her family history in India remained obliterated and over time, died with the whisperers. She reached Malaya by steamboat to meet her future husband and to start life anew.

At a time when caste, language and religion were the real borders, her parentage did not bother Salangi (in English, his name meant – Chains). The maiden (kanni) he married had deep blue eyes (neela karkal). Marrying the two words, he called his bright new wife, Neela Kanni (literally, the Blue Maiden).

It also did not bother him that she ate unleavened bread and drank blood. He indulged in the black arts too and prayed to grotesque and terrible gods. He was Hindu and she a Christian.

They were a remarkable and odd couple in 1920’s rural Malaya.

After their son, Siva, died in the hands of the Japanese who practised a twisted code with a beautiful sword, Neela Kanni resolved to stay alive for her husband’s seeds, her remaining four children.

Fourteen months after she saw Salangi and Siva swallowed by that haunting morning fog she heard a light tap on her door. It was not the first bothered dream…but this persisted.

Cracking the door open, she reeled back in horror at the apparition before her – dark and bent, with long beard and matted hair that cascaded down to the waist. The eyes drained of sleep but bulged yellow with pain and hunger. And the smell…

Before the cock crew, with a sharp blade she scrapped off all his body hair and the vermin that nested and lived in his folds, crevices and pits. He had lost most of his teeth to rot and Japanese kicks. Then, dipping coconut husk in rancid kerosene, she scrubbed and cleaned the filth from his leathery skin. A cauldron grew black and glowered angry and orange beside him, as the water gurgled and boiled within. He did not flinch as the steaming water licked and wept down his raw reddened skin.

By daybreak, he stood hairless, naked and smelling clean, like a featherless rooster with nothing to hide with or preen.

Her husband, her Chains, had escaped from the Siam Death Railways.

(You might want to check out: Fear not dear mother Upcoming Sequel: The Great Escape. These are all based on true events)

********** Copyright @ Eric Alagan, 2012 **********

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