Driving through this city, I often warn myself,
Don't go in a rush for you will surely miss
Grandeur by the bay sparkling under a cloudless sky.
There's the local bloke carefree as he strolls
Unlike us Asians aloof and stuck to our wheels.

So, go slow and slowdown or risk
One-lane roads that recall fume-free days,
Hated colonial days,
Days filled with clip-clop sound of hoofs.
Bypass buildings stunted
Never to rise more than 15 storeys.
Or linger over sidewalk-sitters
For whom Time has passed on
A legacy handed down tribe-by-elder-tribe
Royalties from timber, gold, copper, and oil.
If I Increase my speed I would get me there, anywhere
Even somewhere in two minutes or so,
What a sightless, tasteless journey it would be.

So, I glide . . . stop. . .stallin' at a hearse's pace,
Advance, by chance, inching block by block while
My eyes imbibe confusion in the center of
The spread of indolence
Here, Life by the roadside snores then bursts into cacophony.
Songs and cusses, quiet stares and stores of laughter.
Some scenes too amazing to linger over:
Betel nut vendors with their betel nut juices
Spattering bleeds of hatred on overturned pavements.
Slowing down grabbing for road space,
I stare at surly men in run-down buses
Shuttling to faraway places.

Go on! Pass on by! I have no need to rush
Under this city's sky, golden time idles, never flies.
No soul, no body pays no mind
Like a pliant leaf I float in the ebbing out of life
By Being Me in kaleidoscopic Pot Mosbi,
I restrain the hurrying sands of time.

© Alfredo P. Hernandez