October 2007

            
The Poetry of Kianseng
            Ng


            

              

                
 
 
                

                  
 SEEKING ASYLUM


                  
“I have Schizophrenia and
                  I am treated like a pariah. I hope

                  I will have Alzeimer so that I can forget the bad, the ugly &

                  the painful.” XXX

                  I

                  have been

                  i

                  n

                  t

                  e

                  r

                  n

                  e

                  d


                  
And now I’m in a cell I’m
                  not nucleus

                  of. My crime, “Teenage graffiti on the wall

                  of an adult mind,” says the police of my

                  mime.


                  
Hallucination

                  I see hobbits, aliens, flying Harrys

                  and UFOs, dinosaurs and dungeon dragons. No

                  one believes me, I see the smiles beneath

                  their smiles. Then suddenly Hollywood makes movies

                  of them, everyone raves, “A tribute

                  to the imagination, the temple of the mind!”

                  But that is where I worship too!


                  
Portrait

                  They show me my pictures, Chest

                  X-Ray, a white dove trapped in a black

                  bird cage. MRI of the brain, a plate

                  of negatives, I’m the black moon casting

                  white shadows, the darkroom unmade me.

                  It’s Box Camera technology that under exposes

                  my colours, prints my portrait in post-

                  mortem black and white.


                  
Moon-dial

                  My clock is a moon-dial, it chronographs

                  the stolen hours, the short hand counts hours

                  amputated by drugs, the long numbers the shock

                  hours spent in the convulsive eye of an

                  electrical storm.


                  
Stigma

                  i learn a new word

                  stigma is not botanic

                  the term is social


                  
Sin

                  Today I think about sins, the seen

                  and the unseen. I know my own seen

                  is as many as the leaves of a deciduous

                  tree, each leaf the serpent of my right

                  mind seducing the eves of my left

                  days. And I know that the difference between

                  my seen and your unseen is the thickness

                  of a fig-leaf I don’t care to wear!


                  


                  Adam Speaks His Mind


                  
“The vast part (95%) of our
                  minds is the “unconscious”

                  that which we have little awareness of.

                  The unconscious know things we have not learnt.

                  Jung believes that in our unconscious is stored the collective
                  wisdom

                  we inherit from our ancestors. This is the knowledge we gained
                  from

                  lives we never lived, from the experiences we never experienced.
                  This

                  knowledge is transmitted from one generation to the next through
                  the genes.

                  One of the ways we know of the existence of the unconscious is
                  through our dreams.”


                  
It is like the Tree

                  In Eden, this arabesque

                  Of my mind.


                  
Herein, leaves of variegated

                  Thoughts jump synapses from twig

                  To twig at the speed

                  Of a photo-synthetic adultery.


                  
Herein also the often sudden

                  Flowering of things I do

                  Not know and things I did

                  Not learn, things the Original

                  Apple promised the Digital Apple

                  Would deliver.


                  
And herein also the dreams,

                  The cloning of Eve

                  From the marrow of my rib,

                  The fig leaf shame

                  Of an exile, Eden now

                  The room next to my

                  Nursery rhymes, the serpent

                  In the tree moults to become

                  The dragon in the dungeon

                  Of Harry Potter minds.


                  
And I, a latter day Adam

                  Know that the flaming unsheathed

                  Sword is the belief

                  That good and evil

                  Is learned, not inherited

                  From the First Adam
                
                
 
 
              
            

            
Kianseng Ng is a Physician
            and Presbyterian Elder . His writings (poems, inspirational pieces,
            short stories, medical articles) have appeared in 44 different
            journals published in Malaysia, Singapore, India, Australia,
            New Zealand and the USA. A prize winner in many different poetry
            competitions, including the prestigious 1995 New Straits Times-Shell
            poetry competition.Many of his inspirational poems have been
            translated into Mandarin. Author of 3 books of poetry, "White
            Magic", "Postcards from Kluang" & "Familiar
            Strange Country". Kianseng is presently working on his 4th
            book of poetry tentatively entitled "A Different Kind of
            Magic".