BIODATA
staircase, block 104
by Tharman Shanmugaratnam
variation of yesterday’s game.
accusing shrieks challenging
laughter
and yesterday is no pakai.
and happiness is sometimes bought.
scrambling up
children’s lives,
they too
shall learn the ways –
smother their responses, cultivate
the measure of nonchalance: they
too shall squeeze into lives
and live with it. and happiness
is often sold.
screaming past the lightning,
then smiling through a
missing tooth
in the dark turn of the staircase
- From but we have no legends, co-edited in 1978 with KC Chew and Yeoh Lam Keong as part of the Young Writers’ Circle at the National Library
(Source: Mothership.sg)