Marc Nair

Camera Be

Camera be waking
Camera be watching
Camera be filming
As we are drowning

Camera be loving
All of our living
The joy and the grieving
Camera be scheming

Camera be
All that we see
Camera be
In you and me

Camera be dreaming
Unfocusing sunshine
The dotted blue line
Of security signs

Camera be keeping
Random memories
Are we now frenemies
Camera please tell me

Memory card is full
Format, delete, edit
Memory card for fools
Forget, defeat, omit

Camera bewaking
Camera believing
The lies we are telling
The eye of our failings

Camera be
All that we see
Camera be
In you and me

I wrote this poem a while ago, but am posting it up now in honour of Myanmar’s historic 2015 election results.

 

Number

I will stop being a number, and start being.

20102010 was the first World Statistics Day, and I learned that
1.03 billion people are undernourished and 1.15 billion people are overweight.
1.4 billion people don’t have clean drinking water, while 80% of the world
believes God exists; it must be all those who have clean water.

For once, the number crunchers could slice a perfect pie chart
Of how many soldiers it takes to overrun a country and keep
Statistics unknown. But we do know that
Numbers are the natural fall-out from any disaster.
When Cyclone Giri landed in Myanmar right after World Statistics Day
It took out 100,000 homes and affected a quarter of a million people.
UNICEF still needs 2.1 million dollars, but that’s one number people are quick to forget.

I will stop being a number and start being.

32 per cent of the people in Myanmar walk below the poverty line,
Villages take weekly turns to have electricity in their homes one week out of two.
Temples are plated gold with millions from rulers who own the natural gas reserves
and elections are nullified with the third largest standing army in Asia.

Because numbers only quantify, they can never measure the degree
of joy to hear someone say, you are free, or a father faded like
a photograph of a better country, or simply speaking of peace to
the crowd who cannot be counted, whose numbers reach for the right

to stop counting the number of decades a country has been
downtrodden, to change hearts and raise people on their knees,
to build together a bright collection of strange victories,
which is the translation from Burmese for Aung San Suu Kyi.

I will stop being a number, and start being.

Written for Waiting At A Stopped Clock, a pop-up poetry reading held at 71 Rowell Road, Wonder Wash Laundromat on 7th August 2015, where the clock has stopped at 9.37.

 

Spin Cycle Meditations

i
Laundromats are always shiny. Like whitewashed walls bereft of the identity of graffiti, a blank page proposition of what you might become if you spin long enough. And if you come at the right time, you can stop the clock to pick up a date, finish a novel, or conduct a clandestine conversation with someone who might be a spy.

ii
Next to Chinatown complex, parallel to Smith street, there is a laundromat; metallic and cold, unlike the clay crockery and Taoist offering shops that flank it. It stands with its rows of eyes, a bulging panopticon, swallowing a thousand dirty stories, spitting out clean, state-approved versions; softened and sanctified, darks separated from whites.

iii
There are two old men arguing in a Bukit Merah wonder wash laundromat. As good morning towels churn slowly behind them, their words thicken with Tiger, full of old-fashioned expletives, wet with the rain. There is no one to hand out change here. Perhaps an altar would work better. Prayers to the god of pre-shrunk hopes.

iv
The laundromat in Hualien, Taiwan has a photograph of a sexy white woman on the dish-washing powder box, but she’s not wearing enough to show how white her clothes are. Anyhow, the machine ate all our coins and didn’t spit out a return. Maybe we weren’t white enough to begin with.

v
A very large man stands in a Penang laundromat all by himself. He stares at the spinning drum like a roulette wheel, or some time-sharing kaleidoscope. Past midnight, when the lint drifts around like a broken snow-globe, he will read his future in the way clothes crumple to the floor, a tea leaf testimony of t-shirts.

 

 

I’ve just come back from Daiso.

I ignored the photo frames, the bow ties, the dog biscuits,

I went straight to the cheap DIY poems,

because even the price of words has gone up these days.

 

I wanted to try making a poem by myself, you know, the Ikea experience,

instead of getting a professional poet to come and install words for me.

 

You would think that even a $1.99 poem should come with an instruction manual,

a cheat-sheet for suggested end rhymes, some quick-start ideas or even a sample poem.

 

No.

 

For $1.99 all you get is a blank piece of paper, a pencil and 4 small cards.

I turn them over, and one says

Theme: Identity

another says

Tone: Happy

one more says

Poetic Device: Personification

and the last one is a picture of a sock.

I look in the packet for something else… a quote maybe, or an auto-complete button…

 

So I start thinking why socks don’t often come in black and white,

why bright colors on socks generally make your day walk by better.

I remember how socks keep your feet warm, unflustered and blister-free

I remember never to pair white sport socks with black pants.

 

Perhaps, I could use my poetic device to give the sock feelings of heroism

when it fulfills its stoic duty in spite of toenails threatening to punch holes in it,

how it gets bullied in the washing machine by more elegant work socks,

or smiles in quiet triumph when it gets picked to go out on weekends.

 

But look, it’s just one sock, and not two.

Are single socks more fashionable these days?

Maybe this sock likes to go DIY,

but a single sock getting a foot job might send it to a sticky end.

 

Or maybe someone else has another DIY poem kit with my matching sock,

and is writing a poem about how their single sock will find my single sock

and pair up, because… (cue killer last line)

they’re not single, they’re just waiting.