Poetry + Science = My Teacher
So I was bored one day and decided to surf the Internet. I Googled the name of my Science teacher and found that he actually writes poetry as a side thing. Here are some of his works:
(Warning, it's a bit long)
1. The Beginning of The Beginning of An End
A final crease, then a gentle puff,
this origami lion can then prance and prowl
on piles of paper, shredded and fine,
above a manual, round and round
a cup of coffee, sour and chilled.
Just the harmonised movement
of an index finger and one plump thumb –
one firm pinch, just one firm pinch –
marks the beginning of the beginning
of an end.
It’s a pinch I dare not pinch.
With pink swans soaring across
its cyan skin, this lion is strange indeed.
Well, let him explain, let him purr
about how his predecessors failed,
with their broken limbs and deformed faces,
how they wasted the sun-coloured papers,
and now have a destiny in the bin:
above a rotting apple core and
the crisp foil of packaged chips.
Let him boast about his second life,
from forest to factory, then factory to flat,
from plant to paper, then paper that prowls.
Let him dream his dreams of stalking,
papery paw by paw.
And let him suffer – roar –
as one thumb and one finger hesitate.
One last pinch and this lion will be done,
ready to edge round a mass grave,
mocking paper that failed to be.
If I pinch that final pinch,
it will leap across a ravine of books
and never be mine again.
This marks the beginning of the beginning
of an end and the cyan lion is pleading so.
(found on http://www.weareawebsite.com/tan-xiang-yeow.html)
2. A Hearty Drink
Heat spikes your skin. You thirst.
You order one glass of organic juice,
Swallow, then complain it isn’t cold.
So you dig out your heart of icy stone,
That umber bitter seed.
You slide your organ into the glass.
It plops. It splatters – melting – flakes,
Turning your drink a candy-pink.
You sip and lick your lips.
It slicks down your throat.
You moan then see my face
And you offer your juice to me.
(found on http://www.weareawebsite.com/tan-xiang-yeow.html)
3. ART THERAPY
The key is to construct a self from scraps. Be it an origami lily with
a credit card bill, or collage pieced using childhood photos. Think
of a lost puzzle piece, its edge bent to fit. Think of a home
as a blueprint, with a toilet tap that keeps dripping
even when tightened till the forearm aches. Think of
window blinds as rebars, a ribcage as an iron scaffold.
Think of father at the balcony, eyes closed. Before him, the city
sprawling like his firstborn child, excited with a crayon stick.
(found on https://www.rattle.com/art-therapy-by-aaric-tan-xiang-yeow/)
(All of the following are found on https://www.nac.gov.sg/dam/jcr:8b15ce91-0754-4e59-b6c2-2ba9433e21a2)
4. Circulatory System:
There are 96, 000 kilometres’ worth of blood vessels in the average adult, from aorta to arterioles to venae cavae, a closed delivery system which begins and ends with the heart. A week ago, a colleague was almost slapped. Blood from ruptured capillaries is the first contusion and it, too, does not last. Any angiogram can summarise this: vessels dilate, contract, wave-like, regardless of the next thrombosis.
5. Digestive System:
If she didn’t care, she wouldn’t have cheated. Screamed fuck in front of the class when caught, that was how deeply she cared. Her expletives hardened into flint. Would leaching with vinegar make it more porous, bendable? It would have rested uneasily in the stomach if not for peristalsis. A digestive canal convulses, a muscular snake wrapped neatly in flesh and skin.
6. Reproductive System: Can we please have sexperiments in school? I look at her, that’s the sperm which won? One sign of puberty is dreams: stains on pears and testicles like Christmas bulbs, pendulous. Skies, rainbows, blushed mulberries, explosions of clouds. Maybe even an urh-urh-urh-urhhh. Has been a long while since they are excited by notes. No one crumples paper into balls.
7. Immune System:
Hematoma: a small pool of / blood, walled / off. Endocarditis: the infection of valves; bruises / behind skull / fractures; bumps, firm, raised, multiple, occurring without / injuries. Someone will say that you’re not fit to teach. A wasp fits into a fig. A tiger should be fit. Some are fitter than others. Some leak more easily. Flesh does not forget its traumas.
8. Respiratory System:
My thoughts are dragged up timbered veins of the lungs to bronchi arches, then the trachea walkway. In air sacs linked by these pathways, we trade carbon dioxide for oxygen, a more determined poison. Time and time again, it wears the body out. I breathe in air my student exhaled, conscious of the effort behind a meaningless apology.
9. Optical System:
What an eye holds captive will never see light once more. It turns electric, an impulse. Slapping till you learn to lunch with me, she said. Sound of rubber against parquet, palm against face, red face to red face. An eye for an eye, the victim’s mum quoted, as if these organs could regulate justice. All they do is to swivel sunlight to textures, others to self.
10. Renal System:
The purpose is to filter out excess fluid. Some is reabsorbed but most, expelled as urine. Like how you predicted her disease and thanked bacteria for expelling her. From this seat, this classroom, this school, our collective gene pool. Someone else should have intervened. No one did. An equivalent silence when they say you should have averted it. The message is this: if you are dissatisfied, leave.
11. Endocrine System:
After repeated exposure to the same tired stimulus, one is desensitised. Whenever she plays truant/ at the playground/ with dildos/ after a school day/ in her uniform, someone must be faulted. Why we touch and what touches us no longer align. We rest earlier by plagiarising police reports. There can only be so much discomfort before the body adapts.
12. Lymphatic System:
Leaked fluid from blood vessels are pushed back in. Ions, haemoglobin, cell fragments, broken pieces are repurposed. No easy escape even when the boundary is porous. An adolescent cell is patched to the point of rebellion before an excision occurs. Every organism keeps itself alive by extracting value from damaged parts.
13. Exocrine System
Before we become skin creatures, we were scaled, feathered, furred. Our fingernails come from claws. Those animals we grew out of are beneath, present. We are more similarities than differences which is why we remember not to bite. The law states that the weakest is answerable for a student’s bruise. We survive though the musical flow, gently pushing one another towards an indifferent maw.
14. Auditory System:
Sound waves rarefy in air to reach the ear then pulse along axons to the midbrain. Each particle does its part so steadily we forget meaning has diffused. What you say is to raise your girl for you. What I heard is a cry, a whimper, a pause. A key stakeholder, you say and I repeat, as if you were holding a stake to thrust at the heart.
15. Cardiovascular System:
Please, teacher, her father ran away, gangsters sprayed O$P$ on the door. I’ve to work all day long and my son has his meals on time but my daughter tells me she doesn’t love me because I don’t love her. Time is love but is love, time? My head can’t take this. Neither can my heart. Their grandfather just died from a cardiac arrest. Please keep this secret, please take care of them.
(O$P$ means ‘Owe money, pay money’)
16. Nervous System:
All she has to do is to sit by the window and stare. No need to apologise after slapping the mug away. It’s a coordinated response between brain and spinal cord, simple as that. Nerves, unnerves, unnerve nerves, the same signal loop in worms some 500 million years ago. We move on. We have to move on. We forget to stare while she stares.
17. Muscular System:
You have to do it, the principal emailed. So you do it, imagining yourself in the kitchen, a cleaver pushed towards you, tendons tight, veins visible, pressure against the tilapia’s gills. You feel every muscle tighten, demanding more. You offer an apology. The fish does not accept. You wish there were eyelids to stroke over its glazed gaze, to cover like how hers was covered.
18. Skeletal System:
We start with 270 bones. They fuse to 206 by the time we can earn a living. It’s hard to have faith when the skeletal architecture merely holds everything in place. Harder still when we know there’s loss embedded in growth. Perhaps easier to teach the rhyme in calcium/crematorium, oath/loathe. As easy as tying shoes to the window grille before something cracks against ground.
At this point I never knew Science teachers could be so cool.
(Master, teach me!)