Goh Sin Tub (1927-2004)
FEATURES / DEAD POETS’ SOCIETY
Written by Jack Xi
Dated 31 Oct 2023
When I was eleven, Linkin Park released their nuclear post-apocalypse concept album A Thousand Suns. I adored it—but when I first heard its despairing lead single “The Catalyst” on the radio, I thought it involved a cowherd. Is it any surprise I like Goh Sin Tub’s cow-haunted “Mood”?
While less raw than my preteen faves, “Mood” remains weirdly topical and resonant with Linkin Park’s angsty post-9-11 aesthetic. War is a “shadow” in the poem, with an “uncertain/ [m]ushroom” cloud that ripens to “end-of-the-world” urgency by the poem’s end. Politicians ignore the literally explosive consequences of their “politicking”; “ordinary” citizens are powerless to stop them, left to pray for “salvation”:
Incantations of ordinary people
For ordinary protection
Fingering the wish-lamp of their diverse rosaries—
Though veering lofty, Goh’s poem is also deeply, unexpectedly absurd. Malapropisms reign; the moon shines “fool”. Images of power and doom are sidetracked by a cast of characters commentating on a couple’s lovemaking. It’s weirdly contemporary, Donna-Haraway-esque, and queer—half-animal ciphers fucking to beget “nought”; recognising interspecies entanglement; a public with bigger things to worry about meddling with bedrooms and bodies.
How effective will Singapore’s prayers be? Goh does, optimistically, call them our “sole case for salvation”. However, his poem’s title doesn’t just reference zeitgeists, but also a cow’s ‘mooed’ voice. Singapore’s people “[moo] recitations”, like the cow “mooing” ineffectively to an inspector in the poem’s opening—the cow becomes “curry beef” for this authority figure.
“Mood” thus presents two possible ends to appealing to higher powers—to be pitied and left alive, or to be misunderstood into an edible end. Even if the divine exists in the poem’s world, Goh’s layered juxtapositions suggest the politicians may be the gods. He asks—are we just their sacrificial cows? I can only say: oh, mood.
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Destroying Angel
We couldn’t decide if it was edible so we sent it in for testing; but the spectrometer broke every time the scientists tried to find its peaks and the view through every microscope was ablur with angry artifacts; whenever we fed it to rabbits or mice or pigs we came back to empty cells; and so we fried it and fed it to death row inmates and they too disappeared before their time; this got out to the media so we dosed the offending reporter’s food with it before she could make it to the newsroom; and by five she was, conveniently, extremely gone; so its ribbed cap flapped sexily over highways and signs, spores like sour snow; we made sporemen and spore angels and threw sporeballs; but of course, school and work did not stop for spore days; and the hot new craze would have been mycelial leather, but that was too risque so we invited the offending designers to dinner; and so it was modest mycelial lace and suit and fabric in no colour range beyond pastel, so as not to pervert our children; and still it hung in the sky like a stubborn parade float, unsure which wind should take it; and the citizens all started getting angry, like, can you cut it down already or not, and we said it’s all under control, except actually, it was eating all the helicopters, and then every piece of artillery we could covertly release, and then the central catchment piping and curious macaques, and then we weren’t sure what it was eating but it was eating; and then we came up with the genius idea to give it our trash, which we argued was really green; the mushroom seemed to like that, it’s growing without eating the planes and we can make more sofas out of it; and every night we dream of the mushroom; and we are forgetting the names of our wives.
Jack Xi (they/he) is a queer Singaporean poet and member of the writing collective /Stop@BadEndRhymes (stylised /s@ber). They’ve appeared in several online poetry journals and Singaporean anthologies. Find out more at jackxisg.wordpress.com.
