Hong Kong
I see the sight of a million people
Turning the street into an artwork
A landscape wrought by the brush of dissent
Under one united umbrella of resistance
Like a wonderland of political possibility
Against an invisible enemy
Parting to let an ambulance through
Then closing ranks again.
Shutting down the trains, defining revolution
Firing the night with songs of contention
A grandmother gets tasered by a soldier who
Ignores the bonds of society
Against the uniform decision of the party
He failed to define who is friend and who is enemy
Respect your elders even though
They may stand on the other side, unafraid to hide In the firing line, across the cordon
There is still the same bloodline
And we are all wardens, regardless of distance
With this stubborn insistence to stand for freedom
Children hold fast with their parents
Young men blot out tear gas canisters
As they fall on the road, blistering
With bottles of water that deflect
Like a roving bomb squad armed to attack
The enemy behind this extradition treaty
Extradition
Axe tradition
Extra diction
Extract fiction
Singapore
We have no overlord like Hong Kong
But we’re bound by insatiable cords to fall on our sword
What do we protest? What we can’t possess
The perfect peace of political
Call it papa pathological
Lightning descends over and over
But that's not enough to make us take cover
The hammer won’t make a hero unsung
So a change in time never gets hung on the wall
And the nominations fall, every five years
Forgetting what we all keep abetting
In the feed of greed for the next sponsored
Thing we never need, but want anyway
Life isn’t always written in black and white
But we choose not to fight, not to see the gray
Everything's perfect, everybody screams
Give us free shipping or money back dreams
We've signed a treaty to sing this ditty long ago
There’s nothing to do now
But watch someone else’s show
Extradition
Axe tradition
Extra diction
Expect fiction
And what of treaty?
This word that first held the idea of an assembly
Before it became about contracts and discussions
Before it became about avoiding repercussions
That spelled the definition of what makes an individual
What makes a home
But now, if a million will stand with you,
Then maybe, you are not alone
About: This poem is a response to the ongoing protests in Hong Kong and our own relatively state of stasis and even indifference here in Singapore.
