When the World Wants a Slice of You

For Ruth.



Sixo'clock in the morning
Another day is dawning
And the world wants a slice of you.

With eager eyesit prowls around
On quiet feet. It makes no sound
Until it catches you unawares
And secures your defeat.

In this world it's free for all--
Just be careful not to slip and fall
When balancing too much on your plate.
It isn't destiny, it isn't fate--you'll be surprised
How much difference our choices make.

Split the cake, but be sure
There's enough for all to eat;
The lure of desire tempered by
The stress of demands you'll have to meet
Should help you gauge how much of cake
You really have, and how much of it
You will have left (if at all).

The roads diverge; there will be some paths
You cannot tread.
(This, I know you dread,
For the people that you meet
Like a thousand rising suns
Make you want to lift your feet,
And in enthrallment dance.

True, man was made to conquer
That his boundaries may know no end,
But the furthest frontier
Was in fact the first, though we tend
To forget, and hide upon the shelf
The hardest adversary, that is, the self.

Red holidays, green terms and amber junctions--
Feats worthy of honourable mention;
To balance committee and national convention
And dance on one leg in a floodlit hall
With eyes waiting for the rise or fall
And hands juggling four basketballs.

It is time for the curtain call
Will it rhyme a little, or not at all?


* * *


Begun, 30 Sept, 6.00 a.m., McD's Section 14.
Completed, 3 October, 10.45 a.m., on the road to Sungkai.

With some editing prior to posting.


(Trivia: the second-last stanza, although with explicit reference to another person, is perhaps the truest stanza describing implicitly a lot of what I'm going through.)