Silence is like the colour black

For years I was in its shadow

‘Cos I was taking it all in – absorbing

Absolutely everything coming my way

I could not miss a single thing

Could not miss a single moment

All that was amiss – went my way

The grot and filth under the fridge

The dust and fluff that gathers in corners

The garbage tossed in abandoned places

Where the weeds and brambles grow

There, in the dark, I divined Man’s fate

A much more telling epiphany

When raised on everyone’s crap.

Cheung-Ling Wong

Dressed in rags

Menaced by flies

Shunned by all

For her open sores

And terrifying stare

They say she’s immortal

And all pervading

Haunting her way around

From refuse heap

To sewers’ reek

Generations deep

Oft unseen

But for her stench

Presence overpowering

Essence unmistakable

Clinging to our minds

Clinging to our conscience

For her name is Truth.

Cheung-Ling Wong

It ate me away

Year after year

Decade after decade

Like a cancer unchecked

What you now see

Is but my residue that stains

I kissed and forgave

But cannot forget

Or else I’ll betray

What little remains.

Cheung-Ling Wong

It was pins and needles all over

Acupuncture in all the wrong places

This is fear; this is panic, it’s all attack!

Yet the barbs remain decades long

And so have my wounds sceptic

Such cruel, cruel therapy

Holding their noses as they pass

And washing their hands for hygiene.

Cheung-Ling Wong