Song of a Reformed Headhunter

Don't ask me more than I can give. Don't ask for more, for more I cannot give. So let us live and promise no more. Don't ask me for my heart my heart has eaten to the core. Don't ask me for the teeth-marked part. Don't ask me any more. Don't ask me for a steady arm for rowing to the shore. A broken oar will do more harm than settling for no more. Don't ask me for my voice my voice echoes in encore, until it's hard to tell my voice from yours asking for more.

Weekly column written for the Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here . June is Pride Month in New York, and in Singapore, Pink Dot, an annual picnic-turned-rally for LGBTQ equality. After having come out as a gay man for years, more and more I find June to be a time not just for celebration but also for reflection, on what the LGBTQ movement has achieved and how far it has to go. This June, a Facebook post by a young Malay-Muslim gay man from Singapore made me think harder about the goals of the movement. I share his post with his permission. "Someone asked me this morning whether I tuned in for Pink Dot, and my reply is always the same. I have a complicated relationship with PD and Singapore's LGBT movement in general, because my entry into gay spaces at 18 just made me even more aware of my alterity. It was not a moment of self-acceptance and solidarity commonly imagined in popular coming-of-age narratives. The gay community in Singapore was often a brutal ...

A few users of the SAFRA Mount Faber Club Gym complained about my tank top to the gym manager. They accused me of trying to change a sensitive social policy or issue. My tank top says, “Gay But Not Yet Equal” on the front, and “Equality For All” on the back. I learned of their complaint when I arrived at the gym this morning. I have been using this same gym when I visit Singapore every summer. On this trip back to Singapore, I had gone to the gym three times; today was my fourth visit only. The gym manager had tried to call me about the complaint but could not reach me. He spoke to me on the phone in the gym. I asked him how many people complained. He repeated, some, and elaborated, more than one but not many. He also said that “the social issue” was sensitive nationally, and that SAFRA could not allow any social advocacy. I explained that I was not trying to change any social policy, but I was just wearing a tank top specially designed by a New York designer. I should have pointed o...

I have changed Sections 6 and 10 drastically, and made what I hope are improvements to the other sections. I am too close to the poem right now to judge its worth, but I need to give it a tentatively finished form before I can leave it alone and go on to other things. The change in the title should clarify the form and approach of the poem. An Essay after Adrienne Rich's "Snapshots of a Daughter-in-law" 1. "You, once a belle in Shreveport" One of the tallest boys of Class 1A, you posed against the older scouts, front double biceps, back lat spread, side chest, taut postures you studied in muscle mags while night coaching your little flared dick. You were only half surprised when you won. Though the other boys had more to show, you threw your hardest punch into the hand you raised. You crushed your abdominals as if jumping on a soda can you tossed. Your heart was still flushed the day after when a patrol leader, with strawberry for lips, grab...

In response to my take on the Non-declarative Art exhibition at the Drawing Center, Anon posted an objection that made me think. My turn in the conversation: Dear Anon, I've not replied immediately because I was busy, and also because I was thinking, intermittently, over my reply. Replying to Anon is also not motivating, to say the least; one so wishes to be talking to a person with a name. Still, your comment has made me wish to clarify myself to myself, and to others. There is a distinction between the art itself being "non-declarative" and what the necessary press release, curators and artists "declare" about the work. This point seems to be muddled in the statement "Which is a lot to declare about art intended to be non-declarative." To follow your logic, it would be a contradiction to talk about or discuss "silence", because silence is supposed to be about not saying anything. "Non-declarative" doesn't mean the art can...

After thinking, consciously and not so consciously, about monkey's response to my idea of compiling a chapbook of all my songs, I've decided to keep "There Is No Safety in Distance" as a sequence on its own. I've been moving the other songs around, seeing them in different permutations, flattering myself that I'm doing the same as Matisse with his scraps of colored paper when composing "The Dance" (1931-3, Paris version). So how do I know when to stop moving things around? Matisse shows the way: "In his mid-seventies he felt himself approaching the clarity, power and purpose evoked by Paul Valery in a passage Camoin copied out for Matisse at the end of 1945: "Perhaps what we call perfection in art...is no more than the sense of wanting or finding in a human work that certainty of execution, that inner necessity, that indissoluble, reciprocal union between design and matter, which I find in the humblest seashell" (Spurling, Matisse th...

My first 7/7 effort for the new year: write a poem a day for one week, starting on the 7th day of the month. Not sure if the draft is any good, but I wrote about people about whom I don't usually write: politicians, scientists and actors. The first part, with its matter-of-fact tone, is at odds with the rest of the poem. The Millay section (Vincent) is factually inaccurate since she did not die in Paris, but I don't know if that fudge really matters. I could change her to someone else. The poem is a gallery of characters and may be added to. Concierge Guardian of the gate, a doorman, I greet your visitors and keep out the street. On rainy days I whistle for your cab and stow your bags carefully at the back. I salt the sidewalk so you won’t slip, after the snowfall has been cleared in heaps. When power goes down, as in the earthquake, I provide candles, like my medieval namesake. And when you are gone, I hold the parcels f...

I’m flying back to Singapore for a two week visit. I don’t know when Singapore stopped feeling like a home to me. It happened earlier than my flight to New York to write poetry and come out as gay. Earlier than my undergraduate years at Oxford when the Anglican church appeared a more favorable spiritual home. National service, with its regimentation, terror and unreason, only confirmed, but not initiated, my feeling of alienation. The loss of a home is not the same as leaving home. Leaving involves personal choice. In Singapore, you decide to get married, and you leave home to set up a home of your own. In Britain or the States, you leave home to set off on the adventure of college, expecting to make your own way after that decisive break. My American friends who return home to live with their parents after college always speaks of that homecoming with a rueful sheepishness. You don’t have a choice, however, in losing a home. The loss comes to you, whether in the form of a letter or a ...

After Adrienne Rich's "Snapshots of a Daughter-in-law" 1. "You, once a belle in Shreveport" One of the tallest boys of Class 1A, you posed against the older scouts, front double biceps, back lat spread, side chest, taut postures you studied in muscle mags while stroking your little flared dick. You were only half surprised when you won. Though the other boys had more to show, you threw your hardest punch into the hand you raised. You crushed your abdominals as if jumping on a soda can you tossed. Your heart still flushed the next morning when an older boy, the one with strawberry lips, grabbed and congratulated you, Mr. 01 Scout! Your arm jerked back before you could smile, quicker, stronger, than you could catch. 2. "she hears the angels chiding, and looks out" The angels fell silent after you left the church, the boxy Baptist church converted from a cinema, where you learned the parts of sinner and saint with a cast of ten...

After Adrienne Rich's "Snapshots of a Daughter-in-law" 1. "You, once a belle in Shreveport" One of the tallest boys of Class 1A, you posed against the older scouts, front double biceps, back lat spread, side chest, professional postures you studied in Flex while stroking your little flared dick. You were only half surprised when you won. Though the other boys had more to show, you threw your hardest punch into the hand you raised. You crushed your abdominals as if jumping on a soda can you tossed. Your heart was still flushed the next morning when an older boy, the one with strawberry lips, grabbed and congratulated you, Muscleman! Your arm jerked back before you could smile, quicker, stronger, than you could catch. 2. "she hears the angels chiding, and looks out" The angels fell silent after you left the church, the boxy Baptist church converted from a cinema, where you learned the parts of sinner and saint with a cast of t...

After Adrienne Rich's "Snapshots of a Daughter-in-law" 1. "You, once a belle in Shreveport" One of the tallest boys of Class 1A, you posed against the older scouts, front double biceps, back lat spread, side chest, taut postures you studied in magazines while stroking your little flared dick. You were only half surprised when you won. Though the other boys had more to show, you threw your hardest punch into the hand you raised. You crushed your abdominals as if jumping on a soda can you tossed. Your heart was still flushed the next morning when an older boy, the one with strawberry lips, grabbed and congratulated you, Muscleman! Your arm jerked back before you could smile, quicker, stronger, than you could catch. 2. "she hears the angels chiding, and looks out" The angels fell silent after you left the church, the boxy Baptist church converted from a cinema, where you learned the parts of sinner and saint with a cast of ten ...

Written on 12/29 Fri: Winston and I have been in New Orleans for five days now, and we’ll be flying back to NYC tomorrow. The idea of a working vacation has been a success for me. I spent the mornings revising and rearranging Payday Loans , my 30-sonnet sequence, for publication in January. It helped to have a spacious hotel room to work in, $75 a night at the Sheraton, and not some quaint but claustrophobic bed-and-breakfast. Afternoons saw us wandering round different neighborhoods: the French Quarter, the Garden District (where we saw Anne Rice’s house, Rosegate, and Lafayette No. 1 Cemetery), Uptown, the Faubourg Marigny (with a gay bookshop, to our surprise), and the Warehouse District. Wednesday night, we went to Oz, a gay bar, where we sat beside two godly-sized lesbians from Yorkshire. When I asked one of them if they hailed from York, she repeated Yorkshire, and went on to explain what a county is. The drag show we saw there (Oz, not Yorkshire) was amateurish and poorly-hosted...

I never met Justin Chin, and now it’s too late. He died on Christmas Eve after his family took him off life support. Two people wrote me separately to ask if I knew Justin Chin. Why ask me? Because we both moved from Singapore to the States, and we both are poets and gay. Born in Malaysia, Justin Chin grew up in Singapore. He was just one year older than I am. He probably went to Anglo-Chinese School. I’m guessing from the comment on an obituary left by Singaporean actor and comedian Hossan Leong. Hossan Leong was a classmate of Justin Chin’s since six, and Hossan Leong studied at ACS and ACJC. After ACS, Justin Chin went to the University of Hawaii before transferring to San Francisco State University. In the 90’s he made a name for himself on the San Francisco poetry scene, writing and performing work that was full of “humor and raw vulnerability,” as the POETRY Foundation website describes it. The website also calls him “fiercely political.” Justin Chin published many books, of po...

After Adrienne Rich's "Snapshots of a Daughter-in-law" 1. "You, once a belle in Shreveport" One of the tallest boys of Class 1A, you posed against the older scouts, front double biceps, back lat spread, side chest, taut postures you studied in magazines while stroking your little flared dick. You were only half surprised when you won. Though the other boys had more to show, you threw your hardest punch into the hand you raised. You crushed your abdominals as if jumping on a soda can you tossed. You were still flushed the next morning when an older boy, the one with strawberry lips, grabbed and congratulated you, Muscleman! Your arm jerked back before you could smile, quicker, stronger, than you could catch. 2. "she hears the angels chiding, and looks out" The angels fell silent after you left the church, the boxy Baptist church converted from a cinema, where you learned the parts of sinner and saint with a cast of ten thousa...

After Adrienne Rich's "Snapshots of a Daughter-in-law" 1. "You, once a belle in Shreveport" One of the tallest boys of Class 1A, you posed against the older scouts, front double biceps, back lat spread, side chest, taut postures you studied in magazines while stroking your little flared dick. You were only half surprised when you won. Though the other boys had more to show, you threw your hardest punch into the hand you raised. You crushed your abdominals as if jumping on a soda can you tossed. You were still flushed the next morning when an older boy, the one with strawberry lips, grabbed and congratulated you, Muscleman! Your arm jerked back before you could smile, quicker, stronger, than you could catch. 2. "she hears the angels chiding, and looks out" The angels fell silent after you left the church, the boxy Baptist church converted from a cinema, where you learned the parts of sinner and saint with a cast of ten thousa...