National Day 2011 - Mu Yao : If I May Call You Home

If I may linger,
in the quiet evening light. I only seek,
humbly seek,
the twilight's embrace,
bounced off the blank white canvases of concrete
which echo distant laughter of playing children,
along with the filling chatter of aunties
contented in the joy of sharing news of bargains at the wet market.

If I may stay,
in the metal transpositions of architectural drama
illuminating the river of life that flows in money and feeling,
carelessly in patient routines, where no one seems to say they care;
all with a heart that is brimming with life,
in a quest for never-ending fulfilment and betterment.

If I may dance,
amongst the twisted glasses of light,
or along the terracotta red narrow five foot ways,
looked upon by the stately eclectic mix of aesthetics, that european inspired orientalism,
that lay home and place to the bustling businesses,
all cooking up a new rich life with the coloured cuisine and hand-woven fabrics of home.

If I may walk,
the verdant green boulevards of painstaking plans,
grown from the rich fertile earth, nourished with sweat from skins of all colours,
to blossom and shelter the nurtured and nourished
from the harder asphalt and concrete that people may fall and crash upon.
Even when their bones may take it,
no one,
no one - has the conscience to bear that brunt of such price
for stopping the semi-illusory breath of soul spreading through this manufactured land of sand.

If I may smell,
the rich breadth of aromas wafting with intense love,
sweaty nostalgic love, the hard kind -
with mum's long hours by the claypot stove and the charcoal fire
on the grimy and dirty tiled kitchen floor scrubbed once a year,
with pungent incense and perfumes drifting by,
transcending an unspoken tolerance
overdone and shadowed by the selflessness of understood love.

If I may call,
this woefully inadequate description or narrative, of a place,
a place, a quiet place that's bursting with the fast energy of life,
a place full of ironies and paradoxes all wondrously accommodated
in a place,

I call home.