Backfilling the Jesus-Resurrection Story

And Other
Interpret-As-You-Please Poems
By
Lawrence Chew

1. Backfilling the Jesus Resurrection Story

Let us then endeavor to backfill
Gaps in the improbable story;
And a-nil of profit, bias or ill,
Shear it of retrofitted glory;
Suppose, Joseph and Nicodemus
Arm-bore in linen white as nimbus
A covered body of Marys womb
To the newly hewn tomb
As from afar, wary of tomorrow,
The disciples, fraught with sorrow
And wanting wit mercurial Wist not the mock and decoy burial;
Now, James oddly but duly relate
Faith without work is dead
Suppose he, born of Marys womb,
Slept that Passover in the tomb;
Dare you ask, Christian truth-juggler:
Who played decoy in the retrofitted myth?
My head urges yours: Go figure!
Let the improbable be done away with!
Lawrence Chew
29 October 2014

6. An Atheists Perspecta of Sunset

The evening is doing her aesthetics:
She dons make-ups and cosmetics
And in her boudoir the cloudlets,
Pretties their faces into rosettes;
She outlines in gold and mascara
The cusp of the suns setting eye;
Shades in eye-shadows, the aura
Of the burnished sky!
In curly-woolly dresses, cloudlets
- blondes, redheads, brunettes Don scarves round about the head:
Silver, gold, auburn, magenta red;
Gentle sun and ladies of the skies!
So sweet is your loveliness it dyes
Perspecta! I could almost swear
God is suave, genial and debonair.
Lawrence Chew
10 November 2014

3. A Portrait of Views as Big and Small Pictures

Afore Christs Church was begun,
Priest-kings made God the sun;
The moon, kept as consorted wife,
Birthed daughter Earth with life;
While the Middle Ages was dark
The Church was Gods bulwark;
The universe was Earth-centric;
Copernicus was heretic.
Caesars held sway as man-god,
Kings ruled with scepter and rod;
What was there not to believe
If despots are accredited thieves!
Though one mans big picture
Is but another mans small picture,
Dare any man defy Caesars strictures
Or blaspheme the Holy Scriptures?
Lawrence Chew
17 April 2014

4. Absolutes
I hate absolutes
Its intolerance of substitutes:
God, demigod and demon;
Infinite hell and heaven;
Fascism, Communism, Nazism,
Racism - any sort of absolutism:
Above all, I hate
The absolutes I am!
O, hate me most my sham
And the absolute hates I state
So you less hate by far
The absolutes we are.
Lawrence Chew
15 November 2014

5. Addressing the Truth

Address the truth
Not dress it or cover it
But strip it, naked it
Fete and fetish it
Betwixt the eyes
Sleep on it, betwixt the ears
Dream of it, betwixt the hands
Bolster it
Covet it, beg,
Borrow or fend
Worship it, crusade it
Suckle it, live by it And die by it,
Not as holy writs
But as reason dictates
For Truth has its abode
Not in Godhead dead
But in the rational head
And this too know, inherently
Truth is tentatively final
Its foundation and basis
Is not its certainty
But its uncertainty
For osmotic is the line
Betwixt truths and lies
Since time primordial and primeval;
And is dire the consequential price
Of not drawing a diaphanous line
Betwixt black good and white evil
Lawrence Chew
6 April 2104

6. A Poets Spat with God

After my spat inside-out of time
With God, our unison of rhythm
Go out-of-whack; our versified rhyme
Diversified as light through a prism;
Crucifix! I disavow your albatross
As stock and yoke about the neck,
Holy writs! Psalms and poetry of loss!
I dishonor your crossed cheque.
But most times, I still baulk
At how holy writs may stoop to suture
Body to soul in a retrograde future
In which holy men seek to caulk
The libidinous lips of the devil;
Where to root out the libelous fake
Inspirited inquisitors most holy in evil
Burn again apostates at the stake.
Lawrence Chew
12 April 2014

7. An Old Mans Lazy-River Days

In these my lazy-river days,
Time, winding, dazes me in haze;
I misplace dates, duties and faces,
I forget promises, names and places;
Now, where was I? Ah, God, yes!
What was I saying? God bless!
Mind and I are so adeptly inept
We meet to disconnect.
Head and I are so mismatched,
I fear the formers so detached
From space-times ergonomics
It shapes not my economics
But cut holes in my pockets
So its good ones testicular balls
Are appended in pendular sockets Or Id lost my marbles, balls and all!
Lawrence Chew
12 November 2014

8. And Cosmic Anonymity is his Name

When into the immutable dark,
Alone, the deceased I embark
As one mindless pantomime
Interfacing space and time,
I die, confident the I shall find
No conniving God or Deist Mind
But the matter-entropy to energy
Of the I into cosmic anonymity!
May it haply be, in luciferous light
I hie away - or hide in plain sight Haply, as dust in the blazing bonnet
Or tailing flume of a comely comet!
So follow after me, sweet love,
And fear not anonymity! Above
Or below, entropic God is the same
And cosmic anonymity is his name.
Lawrence Chew
9 Oct 2014

9. A Circadian and Diurnal Truth

By the circadian clock its my biological 11.59 pm;
The frail flesh is about ready to put away the day
And consign it to the drowsy dark I may. I am
Done with Horaces carpe diem adjuration for now
But though I put my pen and unfinished poems away,
The soul dreams of truths forbidden of mortals to know.
With a pivotal dip of the pelvic hips as fulcra, I slip
Into the 6-foot plot of bed, foot asleep up to the neck;
Eyes down to the soul dreaming of troubled sleep!
I dream I asked of the god-darkened sky, Reposed,
How is a pound of flesh in heaven or hell re-composed?
But what the heck! No god-given answer comes back!
The gods keep a stiff lip but no matter! The mind
Shall the shallow secrets of the deep dark uncover!
Luciferous light knows where to look, what to find!
For in the liminal and luminiferous dawn of our age,
The Dark Ages of holy inquisitional terrors are over!
Reason and Renaissance douse the fires of holy rage!
But still I fear the diurnal sides of our circadian nature!
When mortals vie for the gods 12-oclock-high stature,
When Lucifer fell in the dark, Icarus in the noon sun.
Lawrence Chew
11 Jan 2014

10. The Emotion as Wreck

You will, after this poem, think
Heaven and earth are in essence
Elementally evanescent;
Though hope of fire and desire
Effloresce and effervesce
Eurhythmy in heart and lyre
You become a total wreck,
When in your jelly presence,
A floundering one is dying!
You look to God in heaven,
To what hope the clouds hold
But behold, no windows open!
Forlorn, you look at your feet
But know: a wreck has neither leg
Nor earth to stand on!
Lawrence Chew
24 March 2014

11. Binary Universes

Our matter universe
Is not materially alone
For quantum logic avers
It has a twin-like clone
With an immaterial difference!
There, electric charges inverse
And the inescapable inference
Is: its an anti-matter universe!
For our universe is left-handed
And so spins anti-clockwise;
Its twin albeit is right-handed
And spins counter-wise;
Just look at the neutrino
Its observed to be left-handed;
So somewhere, physicists know
Theres one thats right-handed.
And just you look at the clock
In a supposed mirror-universe Time spatially go tick-tock
In ectopic reverse!
Lawrence Chew
23 May 2014

12. Blackly Angry

I am blackly angry
Because you God color some black The one color of imagery
You know is out of whack;
I am blackly hungry For fairness - because you, racist God
Visit upon them mockery
Birthing them of blackest sod:
How is there an only white You!
A god of many races entails the odds
Of it being reciprocally true A race of many colored Gods!
God of blackly biased grace!
Your rainbow has many a fairer hue!
O black God, why didnt choose You
A color of light for every race!
Lawrence Chew
29 October 2014

13. Centers of an Infinitely Large Universe

In an infinite universe
Which way you may traverse
You are its center!
For the infinite has no edge;
And no radii may render
Its arc a circumscribed ledge
Egocentricity!
Do not think it is true
In your centricity is proof
God has a definitive plan for you!
O, do not goof!
Nor think you Graces indigent*
But think, I am a rational agent.
Lawrence Chew
17 November 2014
*person deficient in what is requisite e.g. he needs Gods grace to be saved

14. Contrarian
For once,
I shall like to write
A poem with no meaning,
Reason, rhythm or rhyme
So contrariwise, it pulls me
Together;
From today,
I shall like to live
My days with no dreams,
Reason, rhythm or rhyme
So contrariwise, I am held
Together;
So always,
I shant have to think
Life needs dreams or meaning,
Reason, rhythm or rhyme
So contrariwise, I neednt put me
Together!
Lawrence Chew
22 November 2014

15. Deliquescing into Quantum Anonymity

(Many Centillion Years Hence)
At Omega, when space-time acquiesce
To our cosmic interment, we deliquesce
As particulate clay and molecular loam
Into the anonymity of quantum foam In the pyrohoric pyres of a flaming star,
In the nearest galaxy or farthest quasar,
In Cold Spots or at either cosmic pole
Of Zero Kelvin or in darkest black hole In all quantum corners of the universe
Were ghost particles! Where we traverse
Weve never left! Under its cosmic dome,
We are everywhere abroad and at home!
Lawrence Chew
25 Oct 2014

16. Dough Man

Earth is the only heaven
And, far by nearest, the only hell;
The afterworlds are, best as I can tell,
Myth-knit lumps of leaven.
Man is the only sour-dough god
And the only sweet-dough devil;
Best as I can tell, amoral, good or evil
Dough man springs from sod;
For dough is the only talk
And man the only cock of the walk And dough man, best as I can tell,
Leaven heaven and hell.
Lawrence Chew
23 Sep 2014

17. Eat, Drink, Sleep - and Evacuate!

This be the high and happy life:
Eat, drink, sleep - and evacuate!
Who so envies a richer fate
Affirms glory, avers strife!
Hie away, gun; stay far, knife!
Live, work - and grow a little fat!
Where the good earths the life!
O, evacuate me to where its at!
And one companionable one
To share, love and dream with!
Let higher heavens under sun,
Moon and stars, cloud into myth.
O, call me the scum of low life!
Eat, sleep, love - and procreate!
Be striven glory the stuff of life,
Ill pass at any rate.
Eat, drink, sleep - and evacuate!
Dream, work - and grow a little fat!
Where love is rich and passionate,
Dear one, evacuate me where its at!
Lawrence Chew
11 Oct 2014

18. Eat, Drink, Sleep and Grow Fat

(A poet of anonymity to himself when too lazy to write)
Sad poet! Life has too short
A span of time! Yet you comport
To distil in rhythm and in rhyme,
Poetry from slime and grime!
Fool poet! Under an amoral sky,
Sun, moon, stars, clouds and rain
Pour over dark mountain and plain,
Pore not over the shady and sly.
Abort, sad fool! Relax and unwind;
Eat, drink, sleep and grow fat;
What the hands of time snook at,
No poet of anonymity may unbind.
Vanquish and vanish sorrow!
Drink to song, women and wine;
Poet! Who can tell if tomorrow
In heaven or hell I dine or whine!
Lawrence Chew
11 Oct 2014

19. Ebony Agony

Eboni Agoni
Was born 4th July 1778 in Africa
But grew up Ebony Agony, a bonny
If bony slave lass in God-christened America.
Beneath his red-hot rod
Her Christ-liberated-master America
Gave her virginally Jesus for God
And vaginally deflowered her Africa;
She slaved and sowed in the fields
And as her God-begotten yields,
Bore every of her many slave masters
Slave sons sold for slave daughters.
O New-World America,
Why in the Jordans river-flood,
You christened God in the vaginal blood
Of virginal Ebony Agony, blackly stolen of Africa?
Lawrence Chew
23 Sep 2014

20. Elegy for a Young She-Suicide

Our sister brooded deep on the specious
Meaning of life but in our twisted time,
The Golden Mean and Ratio confabulate
Sanatoria of the subliminal and sublime!
Nay-seekers of lofty stases and loftier truths!
Malign (if you must) but most gentle of her!
Disabuse not her dreams of better worlds;
Falling dew sleeps here!
Pilgrims! Path-seekers who heaven hope!
No fiery eyes of ice on her frailties cast!
But steadfast as pitys saving grace
Beyond her mired mind look past!
Lest equitably or inequitably, inside of life
And time, we live unforgettably unforgiven;
Lest equitably or inequitably, outside of death
And time, we die unforgivably unforgotten!
Epitaph
Here lies at rest, deliquesced afore
The full awareness of her prime,
A happy-born mind attenuated
In a less happy time;
Beneath this plot of turf,
Oblivion salves her sleeping bosom!
Erstwhile dreamer of death and dirges,
Dream not wreath but blossom!
Lawrence Chew
12 December 2013

21. Gibbous and Crescent Moon

How evenly the gibbous moons many phases
Bespeak oddly a shenanigans mercurial faces;
Up to a waning cusp, a crescent gibbous grows;
Down to a waxing arc, it cradles darkest glows.
Like an eternal obfuscation of lie and truth
A crescent Truth hides a dark gibbous Lie:
Like obfuscated sage Age and navet Youth
A dark gibbous cusp holds a crescent truth;
Friend or fiend, Truth is fiction, Fiction truth
And only the odd and discerning ocular eye
Behold the mercurial turn of truth and lies
For truth is tentatively final: as is fleecy youth.
Lawrence Chew
4 April 2014

22. God Waiting for Godot

I know what God will be like
A thousand calamities from hence He will not have moved us thence
Into a millennium of light;
Come high or nigh gone, time,
Godless as the sun, laves on;
Alike, God, Vladimir and Estragon
Await Godot in the emery grime;
Our foreteller fathers made God;
We, the unforetold future, bury in sod!
Let the old dead bury the old dead;
We, new dead, shall bury godhead.
For God is the emery friction
Which sand besotted minds away!
We are Gods tragic fiction,
Tall tattlers tell along our way.
Lawrence Chew
8 May 2014

23. Gods Heaven and Devils Hell

(An allegory from half-truths and half-lies)
If manifold-truths be half told,
Half-lies are equally manifold;
And neither being effectively final
The twains affectively affinal!
O, fair for foul and truth for lie,
One oft husbands the other for wife;
For too oft, half-truths a leafy onion
Of lofty, many-layered opinion;
And too oft, half-lies a bony bunion
Of leavened truths in Holy Communion;
So one can never assuredly tell
Gods heaven from Devils hell!
Lawrence Chew
30 Sep 2014

24. Watching a Harlem Gangland Initiation on YouTube

In the video, the gang boss is angry;
He taunts the kids, chides and snides:
You aint black enough; you aint hungry
Enough; youre egg-white on the insides!
You gotta beat a cop, gotta steal a car;
Mug a white hag; its hip, man, its cool,
Rob a store; maybe drop out of school;
You dont need them dreams to get far!
Look! The one who said I had a dream
What happened? They shot him!
I exit YouTube, turn on the radio
And hear on high definition stereo,
Tremulous as a pouting volcano,
Elvis singing In the Ghetto...
Lawrence Chew
8 November 2014

25. If this were the Last Day of my Life

Life! I have zero want or wish to share
My last day! No, not even one odd bit
Of my demise! I desire only to spare
All I love or hate me my exit!
It is when mind and wants parley alone
That a man may in truth and finality cease
To be his most unforgiving foe! We atone
Best who best palliate a broken peace!
Let wise fools and only-wise of gods tell
Of eternal riches in heaven and fires in hell!
Beyond the tomb, no man may net or gross,
Nothing is gain, nothing is loss!
May the self-audits that follow after, count
All my businesses duly certified account
As solvent! May all hard and fair-won credits
Fair and square, net-off fair-lost debits!
Be that I had done little good or much evil,
Be that I had played the fool, saint or devil,
For near better or for far worse, I bequeath
All I am above, all I am beneath!
I propagate no great word, feat or device;
I promulgate no philosophy of man or god;
I die as I live by this one amortized vice:
I disinherit as I inherit Earths amoral sod!
Let no appointed god know I take my leave
Of absence; let no like-passing man grieve
My mortality! Let the amoral universe insist
It had no knowledge of such a one as I exist.
Lawrence Chew
2 March 2014

26. In a Default Dream

In a default dream I had last night,
The gods and light had a brawl!
I invariably dreamt the speed of light
First slowed to an infinite crawl;
There was a new world disorder
In which slow light was a border
Neither gods nor man could gloss
Over, either over, under or cross;
Time moved so infinitely slow
Man lived long but died low
In years; the gods lost all power
Of infinite motion by the hour
Then I dreamt but not the last;
Light propagated infinitely fast!
All gods and men had one birth
All lived and died in one burst!
The gods pleaded with me,
O dreamer, illicit us no more!
You drive us impossibly silly
As born you are on that score.
Lawrence Chew
19 April 2014

27. In Dreams Seeking Me

In my dictionary, am as in I am
Is first person singular present indicative of be.
But in slumbers dark as dreams,
I know not who or what or where or how I am!
Is this why in realms subliminal
The Mind is a stranger to all the Heart aspires?
For then, I am neither I nor me but
A non-person singular present indicative of be!
And what if I dont remember what I had dreamed
Or forget I had any?
Shouldnt I then disenfranchise me My egocentricity or throw out my dictionary?
Lawrence Chew
22 November 2014

28. In the Coming Twilight of the Gods

All our celibate holy Fathers before us!
And all our virgin Mothers! A new age
Is fast dawning! Sin is dead! For wage,
The gods are reprobated in Tartarus!
The gods retreat! Palindromic dogs
With tails drooped between the legs;
We drink no more the soporific dregs
That muddle-mire us in bogs and fogs!
We shall decouple and delink the faiths
Which yoke hearts and minds to necks;
Scorn the sanctimonious calls and becks
Of popes, priests and beatified wraiths!
You iron gates to the abysses of Tartarus,
Shut heavy on the gods who pilloried us,
Bought and sold us for scepter and money,
Purveyed us adulterated milk and honey!
Lawrence Chew
24 March 2014

29. Man and Money as God and Devil

If contextually, a neither nor
Is the converse of an either or
And Money neither good nor evil,
Will not Man, Moneys savant
And uxorious servant,
Pray God to marry the devil?
And if contextually, an either or
Is the complement of a neither nor,
And Man neither good nor evil,
Will not Man, Moneys servant
And usurious savant,
Sell God to buy the devil?
Be that either or
Bespeak or belie neither nor,
Men are equally and equitably many
Who either or neither, deny nor decry
Money is God, God money,
But in the monetary see holy matrimony.
Lawrence Chew
16 Sep 2014

30. My Evening Years Falling Away

My evening years are falling away:
Leaf-shed trees by parched brook;
My mind is a yellowing beige book:
Dog-eared pages thumbed one way;
O, that I am trees in a new avenue
Shedding most old leaves for new;
Or a leather-bound if yellowed book
Shedding old covers for a new look Or just shredding old pages for new;
Life! Shredding me is shedding you!
Death, hold yet your debilitating debt;
Limbs and mind owe me a poem yet!
Lawrence Chew
21 November 2014

31. My Sweet Hut

Sweet, be my sweet hut
Of art!
My sweet repose
In poetry and prose!
Prose, be my door!
Poems, my floor!
Odes in the hall,
Sonnets on the wall;
Rhythms in the loft
Rhymes in the croft!
None lives and houses art
But I, sweet, in your heart!
Lawrence Chew
8 November 2014

32. Octopus
In a hole spongy dark,
I am the squishy night;
In open flashes of spark
I am translucent white;
Dark to bright is a change
Of fragmented figment;
Color is but pigment
I array and arrange.
If big, I squeeze
Into smallest hole;
If small, I squish,
Bland as clayey bole;
I do not hope
To uncurl a swirly world
But cope
Twirling to its swirl!
Lawrence Chew
19 November 2014

33. Party-poopers Song

(The New Normals New Mormal)
The worlds at wits end;
The worst is yet to come;
The Apocalypse horsemen,
Visiting famines, wars, diseases
And calamitous disasters
Upon us - arent done;
Gods roulette in a swirl Alls hell with the world!
Lawrence Chew
6 November 2014

34. Pilates Apology on What is Truth?

What is truth?
I, Pontius Pilates called Jesus bluff
And having gotten no proof
But spoof, went out in a huff;
And I, Pontius Pilates, hereby attest,
The said defendant had no clue
What answer is best;
What answer rings true!
For What is Truth? is less
A question, more a quest;
Though old as the blinding sun
It has no answer once.
And no answers now!
For Gods and man may only avow,
Being anecdotal and apocryphal,
Truth is never final!
Lawrence Chew
30 Sep 2014

34. Prayers
An orthodox Jew in Israel will assert
Truth springs from the earth;
Righteousness looks down from heaven;
Were he a Chinese Jew hell say,
Heaven is high,
The Emperor is far away.
All are Jews and uncut jewels As is everybody else; business fuels
Prayers; every way we pray Money is God if prayer doesnt pay.
Lawrence Chew
13 June 2014

35. A Dream of Birth and Death

In one cold dream, I am floating I, cold-eye lover of life: or boating
In a dateless pall where no light
But a blank moon is: I first sight
The cyan glow of Time as I waken
Like some sleeper suddenly shaken
Who dreams he falls like an echo
Reverberating in a soundless hole And feels with deep, infelt unease
Of being Time-borne in a womb
Where between a mothers knees,
He falls - into an undated tomb.
Lawrence Chew
2 November 2014

36. Rat-races
Stars know their places;
Planets know their paces:
They who ad hoc places as paces,
I think they mean you rat-races.
Gentle giant, the tree weaves
Apropos flowers and shoots;
Times malapropos, falling leaves
Return sustenance to their roots.
People! Be mice-nice apropos!
False hearts veneer false faces;
Princes! Be not rat-fink malapropos;
Rats and ratfinks win rat races!
Lawrence Chew
2 November 2014

37. Rip Van Winkle

Twenty years up my youth
I went in high search of truth;
O specious God of mine!
I imbibed your moonshine!
Ate your blooded bread,
Drank all I read!
In visions of worlds aflame
Wine-to-water apocalypses came
But one: just afore I woke
I dreamed my departed dog spoke!
Life, Wolf said, had passed on by
Asking, twenty years, where was I!
O bones of my departed dog!
You divine truer than Word of God.
Lawrence Chew
2 November 2014

38. The Done Thing in Math

Plus times plus equals plus
But minus times minus isnt minus;
Its the done thing!
The square of 2 is 4
But the square of -2 isnt -4
But 4; its the done thing!
The square root of 4 is 2
The square root of -4 too!
Heavens! Its the done thing!
The square and square root of -1
Is always +1 under the sun;
Good God! Its the done thing!
Save in his beauteous equation,
Euler is of the odd persuasion
That -1 times -1 equals -1!
O, the overt oddities of convention
Are covert orthodoxies of contention!
And as in religion, the done thing!
Lawrence Chew
21 October 2014

39. The Done Thing in Religion

God faithfully forgives
He who fatefully believes;
Hey! Its the done thing!
Tell saints to go to heaven, tell
Sinners theyre to go to hell:
Its the done thing
As in: Been there; done that;
Weve got the holy facts pat:
Its the done thing!
Popes, priests and preachers,
Deists and creationist teachers,
Lets do the done thing
As in: Teach fathers to suck!
Teach mothers to fuck!
Its the done thing!
Come, toing and undoing Death,
Do your one done thing:
Undo the darn done thing.
Lawrence Chew
21 Oct 2014

40. What Adso didnt Know

In The Name of the Rose,
An Inquisition novel by Umberto Eco The young apprentice monk Adso
(Which name the atheist Eco knows
Means the simple of heart and mind In short, an apprentice of the blind!)
Meets an incubus-like girl
And quite later, makes love to her
In a dream-like world In which pages the reader cant tell
If incubus and unnamed girl are one
From the damned fires of hell!
Nor will Adso know by the by,
The one bride of God he makes love to
(Eco knows!) is a coven of incubi!
Lawrence Chew
25 November 2014

41. The Invisible Hands of Supply and Demand

In Economics 101, we learn that price
Is the function of the invisible hands
Manipulating supplies and demands;
An upped price increases supply
Which then decreases demand;
A downed price decreases supply
Which then increases demandConversely, increase in supply
Decreases price; an increase
In demand increases prices
Which increases supply!
Going forward, price evens
Supply and demand! Still,
The proletariats wonder
As bourgeoisie marvel
Why inflation and deflation,
Cost and standard of livingDo not in the main or prime
Even out over time!
Oh mysterious invisible hands!
You wouldnt be so invisible
If you take your greased palms
Out from under the table!
Lawrence Chew
3 January 2104

42. The Mirror-Side of Space, Time and Me

In the mirror flip-flopping my visage,
I wonder why I am older but no wiser;
Why the furrows across my forehead
Running right to left, run left to right!
And if left is to right and right is to left
Why is up not to down and down not to up?
And if up is not to down when left is to right,
Wheres the flip-flop in an X-interstice gone?
And asymptotically, if a cubes near side
Is near as its far side is asymptotically far
From the mirrors plane, whence comes
The reversion of space in mirror symmetry!
The clock on the mantle knows whence!
Obfuscated in the mirror the clock runs
Counter to convention; Space, Time and I
Orthogonally regress into one another!
Forsooth, all co-ordinates are reversed!
Times triadic hands tick forth backwards
And Space inverts, so I, a receptacle shell
Of space and time, older but no wiser get!
The regressive mirror-side of me! Truly,
I want to reach into you, break into you,
Wring flip-flopped hands about your neck,
So you reach out to flip-flop-throttle me!
Lawrence Chew
23 Jan 2014

43. The Myths of Trees at Creation

The toe-footed roots of trees
Hold the mighty earth together
So oceans have confines,
Fishes, seas therein to swim And islands in archipelagos
Rise amidst the slow falls of hills
Into valleys or in steep climbs
Tower into mountains O Creation, look at my worksSo you may breathe easy!
The finger-armed limbs of trees
Hold up the domed aqueous sky
So therein, sun, moon and stars
In turns swim in their places;
And while fleecy clouds drift by,
Birds amidst have somewhere to fly
In between the parted firmaments
The ocean, earth, lake and sky!
O Creation, look at my works
So you may breathe easy!
Lawrence Chew
24 November 2014

44. The New Normals Mormal

(In the Light of Quantity Easing and Islamic State)
In the specious New Normal,
The uxorious love of God
And Mammon, once at odd,
Is the new mormal!
Since pendulous times begun,
Men had worshipped the one
Or the other or else, bowed to neither But now they kill for either;
As QE and IS rise and prosper
Only the Devils acting proper:
The times indeed is strange:
The medium of exchange
Declares, God cum Mammon
Summon bonum
And hope, faith and charity
The new vulgarity!
Lawrence Chew
6 November 2014

45. The Tentative Nature of Truth

Truth, like Einsteins warped space
And time, manifest not a final face;
In a universe where all is quanta,
Grainy, discrete and relativistic,
No iota of energy and no iota
Of matter or truth is absolutistic.
All matter is born to be investigated
Sensately felt and sensibly debated;
And unless we can describe reality
In light of the physics of relativity,
We never can be sure if a nappy lie
Poses not as frothy truth to the eye;
For Heisenbergs Uncertainty Principle
Avers that no certainty of truth is final;
And in the warp and woof of relativity,
Perceived truths do not define reality
But as best they can, approximate
The reality they postulate.
Lawrence Chew
3 April 2014

46. The Ushering In of My Zero-size Anonymity

When soulless, Time ushers me
Into my zero-size anonymity,
My Zero shall into the unknown
Go faithless of what it had sown;
Fame, fortune, fear and infamy
No straggle hold shall have of me;
Idolized gods and devils flee
My zero-radius absentee;
Mindless, my Zero Point shall love,
(Be it earths below or suns above)
The anonymity thats not ours
But the emptiness of the hours!
Lawrence Chew
10 Oct 2014

47. Thinking of Lazarus Bound in his Dreams of Heaven

Myths bud and grow
As dreams when the eye is looking
Never out its window
But in;
So too, dreams grow
As myths when the I is looking
Never out its window
But in;
As deep in dreams is the sleeper,
As dead and deep is the dream!
Dreamer! The subliminal is a stream
Winding ever deeper
Into the anecdotal!
Lazarus of the apocryphal!
Come forth! Unwind, unbind and tell
If Abrahams bosom be apocryphal as hell!
Lawrence Chew
3 November 2014

48. This Little Hour (in which I Pen a Tentative Poem)

I think of this little hour as a tentative poem
Moving up a world-line1 in which the universe
Is the poet, and I, its cosmic xylem and phloem2
Designedly woven into sunburst webs of verse!
But O, how quickly my free-flowering hour
Devours and dissipates the collated synergy
That moves the mind behind a poems power Only to bury poet and poem in entropic energy!3
Entropic energy! How it unwinds like a skein
Without end! And I, losing foot and feet,4 find
The universe a cosmic mind in a comic bind,
The pains of life and death etched into being
So that I now know, in gleaning and weaning,
The more I seek to understand the universe,
The more I write my adversarial verse,
The more I know this little hour has no meaning.
Lawrence Chew
26 Sep 2014

49. Threnody for a Bedraggled Caged Bird

Bedraggled caged bird,
You trill the clinks of chains!
You lull a brumal, hibernal Earth
Blind-sided by your pains!
Insonorous bird,
The hot and cold gods above
And cloyed lovers never heard
More ruffled a reverie of love!
O, wistful warbler,
If one-time sweet songster!
I bear no gifts but ears to borrow
Requiems to requiescat sorrow!
Unrequited bird! I know
Your pain as you mine: we attest
Only dreams or death may bestow
Rightfulness to its nest!
Lawrence Chew
13 November 2014

50. Reverie for an Edenic Caged Bird

Edenic caged bird,
Free antonymy of chains!
You lullaby a sleeping Earth
Mindless of your pains!
Irrepressible bird,
The hot and cold gods above
And coy lovers never heard
So visionary a reverie of love;
Revelous warbler,
And insouciant songster!
I bear no gifts but ears to borrow
Orisons for tomorrow!
O, requited bird! Now I know!
You sing to make captors atone!
In your Edenic state, you bestow
Rightfulness upon its throne!
Lawrence Chew
13 November 2014

51. Trigonometrically Triangulated Trinities

The mind mathematical will acknowledge
Omniscient gods are inordinate coordinates
Of impossible knowledge
True-blue heads know Zero and Infinity
Are the Jokers in the pack; two infidelities
As false as the Alpha and Omega of divinity
For whereas Alpha begins at point-radius Zero
(Which is an impossibility), where Infinity ends
(Another impossibility) places Omega in limbo
And as assuredly as there are no radii equal
To the squared sum of Zero and Infinity
So too there is no Alpha and Omega sequel!
The Pythagoreans could have told you so:
Trigonometrically triangulated trinities
Are no-shows of no-no and no-go!
Lawrence Chew
1 April 2104

52. Twilight in Tartarus

While the gods are fast smug asleep
Upon Parnassus side steep and deep,
I slip-steal into their narcissistic dream
And drink deep of the Pierian stream;
I tune my Aeolian lyre to the breath
Of Poesy, the free winds of the sky;
I lull the gods the coldest of lullaby
And sing of their cataplectic death;
I sing moon-nights and sun-days long
And all I sing is but one freedom song:
I decry the gods and demons and hell
And holy minds holy writs bind in cell.
O holy men who most revere the chains
Wherewith the gods fast bind your brains;
Sever your iron chains and bring upon us
The twilight that binds gods in Tartarus!
Lawrence Chew
5 April 2014

53. Tycoon
While we are yet alive we contend
We never have enough to spend;
Yet when our demise nears at hand,
All our moneys still in the bank!
A December tycoon I happen to know
So smitten with amour, beg to differ;
He bequeathed all to his April widow Who married his February chauffeur
Who aptly and raptly attuned,
All the while I worked for the boss
He was working for me! His loss
Inopportune is my good fortune,
While his April wife fancily opined,
All is aptly dandy; all is raptly fine,
Though my pretty heads in swirls,
Ive got the best of all better worlds.
Lawrence Chew
15 April 2014

54. Unborn Prophecy

(On a Babe Died Soon as Born)
No star led wise men to his bed;
No crescent or gibbous moon
Haloed his swaddled head;
Grieved dumb and numb,
His dad and mom wondered
If at all wise men would come
But no, not a Magi came
To anoint or gifts to confer:
Frankincense, gold or myrrh;
Nor shepherds, in dread, clung
To another, nor heard the angst
Never was by angels sung If anon and ever truth be told In a word or two, it up-gloried
And died quite un-storied;
Still, I haste to add, the babe
Is born a one-time messiah
Who dies an all-time savior
Of overly holy mankind!
For if it be but borne in mind,
In a cock-screwed world,
Dying, it bequeathed us no lore,
Nor sacrament nor crummy god
To live, kill, maim or die for!
Lawrence Chew
20 November 2014

55. Undoing my Did; Doing my Didnt

(A poem in astrophysics speak)
If I may back-step in Times grid
And rewind all the Big Bang did,
The pendular ball of Time Ill bind
So escapements never unwind!
T alpha shall stay T omega!
And Times infinite progression
Recede as infinite regression!
Till at T zero all is an r = 0 iota!
Bound thus in the span of T zero,
Nothing is born ex nihilo!
And neither God nor his Devil
For his better good and lesser evil
Knows neither you nor me!
Knows neither you nor me!
For at T zero, no gods decree
Neither you nor neither me!
Lawrence Chew
13 October 2014

56. Upon the Last Day of My Life

Life! I have zero wish to shirk or share
My last day; no, not even one odd bit
Of my utter dissolution if only to spare
All I love or hate me my exit!
It is when we by our good self are alone
We may in all truth and all finality cease
To be our most unforgiving foe! We atone
Best who palliate our peace!
And if one is unburden of material assets
They weigh not upon ones sleep as debts;
For all that is beyond one to net or gross,
Nothing is gain, nothing is loss!
May the audits that follow me after, count
All my ledgers as properly certified account
And as solvent! And all my fair-lost debits
Be net-off against fair-won credits!
And be that I had done little good or evil,
And be that I had played the saint or devil,
For near better or for far worse, I bequeath
All I am above, all I am beneath!
I leave no sagacious word, feat or device,
Promulgate no philosophy of man or god
But die as I live by this worldly-wise advice:
We disinherit not wealth but sod!
May no man or god know I take my leave
Of absence! May not one loved one grieve
My passing! And let no appointed god insist
He had knowledge of such a one as I exist!
Lawrence Chew
2 March 2014

57. What Good It Is Babes Are Born

Up-sky, an arc of Sun portends a beauteous morn;
Somewhere, Earth suffers forth a babe newborn;
Down-sky, a dark waning cusp of gibbous Moon
Prophesizes inordinate bane, inordinate boon!
Oft-times, rosebuds blossom in red and blood;
Mouths suppurate in famine, drought and flood;
Intrigue in war and peace bedevils whom it befell,
Gods in heaven, men on earth, demons in hell!
Up grows our fawning babe ruddy as the morn
But who is to tell if a tabula rasa be father-born
Of first-slain Abel or of first-born killer Cain,
Which the old murderer, which the new slain?
What if friends and foes kiss and smite his head;
What if rocks and stones make his bread and bed?
How assuredly may he know, how assuredly tell
Which god marks him for heaven, which for hell?
Sun and Moon! Better put out your portentous eyes
Than see the likes of prince-ling man die like flies!
Gibberish prophets, psychopathic gods! Pray tell
What good it is babes are born for the fires of hell!
Lawrence Chew
25 Sep 2013

58. What I Most Wish to Reverse

What I most wish to reverse
Is the accelerating universe!
Roll back its cosmic dream;
Run in reverse my stream
Of consciousness - wherein quiver
Unborn stars in some galactic river
Or, swimming round to Baby Earth,
Dream of a Planck-point at its birth;
O then I shall ex-nihilo know,
If in throwing open Times window,
I see the Planck-point - in reverse,
Accelerate into a runaway universe.
Lawrence Chew
7 November 2014

59. I am the Night of You

If nights be diurnal tunnels
The day discovers;
And days circadian funnels
The night uncovers;
And if day and night,
Cross-delineate each other,
I shall cross the cyan border
And embrace you at twilight;
For I am the night of you
When you are a sky away;
And I the biding avenue
Of day when you stay;
O, be you then the moon
In my night and I the sun
In your day, so noon to noon,
We pursue one another as one.
Lawrence Chew
6 November 2014

60. i am the i-night of u!

(An i-poem penned in cyberspace)
If nights be diurnal tunnels
The i-day discovers;
And days circadian funnels
The i-night uncovers;
And if i-day and i-night,
Cross-delineate each other,
i shall delete our cyber border
And embrace u at twilight;
For i am the i-night of u
When u are an i-sky away;
And i the biding avenue
Of i-day when u stay;
O, be u my i-moon
In my i-night and i, your i-sun
In your i-day, so i-noon to i-noon,
i-sun meets i-moon in i-sky as one.
Lawrence Chew
6 November 2014