Goreng Pisang
They say it takes 7 seconds to make a first impression
Here it is
**** you
**** you for making me do this even when the most profound ideas are
Swirling around beautiful, untouched unsullied
For making me do this, deliver a child before it is viable
Reach into the womb and pull it out, skin translucent heart
Beating beating beating beating so very fast
Painfully loud like the drums you hear during Chinese New Year
Yet deafeningly silent
It has not yet learnt to cry, you know?
**** you professional authors for putting words so beautiful into devastating effect
An unrealistic example for us all to follow
I am nothareshsharma I am notalfiansaat
The beauty of this language does not run through my veins it was beaten
The cane the tattoo needle
The Preston Grammar Book a pigskin tapestry
Profundity and beauty rejected in favour of understanding
“Grammar”
you
My first language was Cantonese did you know that?
My Birth Cert says Khek (Hakka for you)
The only way I can contact my grandparents
Is through pidgin’ Chinese
And burning the josspaper
But hey, my B3 HCL cert
Satisfies Chinese foreign investment interests
My culture is dying, sustained only by
The IV drip drip drip of Confucian values (Mus respek your elders!)
Formula fed through the nose
Diet of Chilli Crab Hainanese Chicken Rice Laksa Black Pepper Crab Sambal Belacan Roti Prata Singlish on Bus Stops Social Studies Lessons Carrot Cake Kiasuism Paggro la Bak Kut Teh Kit Chan Wanton Mee JJ Lin Jack Neo Ah Boys To Men Ah Boys To Men 2 Ah Boys To Men 3
This is not my language
This is the language of Farquhar
This is the language of the hongmoguai
Who invaded China to sell opium
Who came here to sell opium to exploit the indigenous to further the reach of the Crown
While we stood, watched, moved goods for them
(And invented Bak Kut Teh in the process)
This is my language
I think in it speak in it write in it
They may have cut Mother’s tongue out and replaced it with theirs
But I let this foreign appendage take root in my mouth, my soul.
I am the hongmoguai with yellow skin
Drowned in the sickly oil of
Capitalism Competitiveness Globalisation
made soft by Trump Trump Trump Brexit LIBERALS
Battered sweet glistening under the heatlamps of my own identity crisis
Goreng Pisang satu, da bau