Alvin Pang (b. 1972)
SELECTED POEMS
Upgrading
Give me more rooms, floor space, floors, dropped ceilings, cornices, extra bathrooms, a toilet wide enough for a jacuzzi.
I want a kitchen I can fit an island in, stainless steel German cooker hoods, state-of-the-art induction hobs even if I never use them.
Give me wall-to-wall parquet tiles, roman blinds, more curtains than I’ll ever open, so many square feet I won't have to knock down a wall to make the place seem bigger. It IS bigger.
I want a bedroom so capacious I can park a Jaguar in it.
Two Jaguars. I want it large enough to be a local oddity, a tourist attraction, the subject of awe and envy, a heritage site.
So huge, developers will knock on my heavy door, asking to turn my land into condos for profit, and I will gleefully refuse.
I want it so generous friends would drive by and ask to drop off their dogs for exercise runs.
I want a pad so massive I can go jogging in it and not get bored with the view, so vast I can’t see my neighbours without binoculars, so tall I scan continents with my naked eye.
Of course a swimming pool. Make it Olympic-sized, lake-sized, a body of clean water visible from space, one my father can go fishing in any time he likes, a private indoor beach, like the one in Japan with man-made waves, 2.5 metres high all year round.
Give me an estate so huge it'll be its own GRC. Heck, it’ll have its own Parliament, a standing army, a separate time zone, the clocks always set to 6p.m. on Sunday, the skies forever on the brink of twilight.
None of us will survive this anyway, says the flower, says the ant, whose abode is larger than any of ours.
So while we’re at it, give me property with its own climate, the air tuned to a cool 23 degrees C, the clouds broadcasting jazz instead of rain.
And how about a mountain or two in the living room, each topped with ancient pines like overgrown bonsai. My own moon, that I can switch on or off with a flick of the wrist. A sun with a built-in dimmer. Stars to deck my Christmas forest with.
Rooms the size of night. Perfect quiet. Space at last to dream of islands without end.
by Alvin Pang
from City of Rain (2003)
