My Day

On a school day,
It goes like this:

Still receive the same 24 hours.
Assuming 6 hours of sleep,
On a good day.
And we are left with 18.

I catch up in school
Or on the bus.
In total, I make 8.

Two for all meals,
Another for baths.
An excess in estimation:
Buffer time.

In school at 7,
Leave at 6 plus.
Eleven hours, in total.
That, too, on a good day.

4 hours left.
One is for travelling,
On a bad day.
3 hours.

And they still want me to revise.

Which?

Smelling the roses or inefficient?
For often, my lack of speed does not mentally please.

Confident or show-off?
With very little can I label true ability.

Plea for help or attention-seeking?
If I cannot solve my problems, no one can.

Friendly or selfish?
There is need to fill my lack.

Slow-and-steady or just plain useless?
Anyone else is fast-and-steady: Relatively.

Thinker or lazy?
The former is understood. The latter is "weird".

Unlucky or stupid?
It must be a very unlucky streak that I am on, then.

Continue or stop?
Forget it. I should not attempt such complex styles.

Paths

The paths are so clean, in a place like Singapore.
Hradly anyone uses them, now that they have cars.
And curiously, they are unhappy over COE prices.

Oh, by the way, don't read this as a poem.
It was not meant to be.
I just want to bite-size everything.

So why 3 lines?
The magic number of 3, perhaps.
Introduction, climax, conclusion.

So, anyway, about the paths in Singapore.
It is undisturbed, for a large part of its life.
Yes, it remains there: silent, still.

It seems so small, so inconsequential.
Yet paths interlink very intricately.
All throughout this country.

I have walked through shortcuts.
I have found open fields.
Places that only paths go.

Cars rush by, but I take my time.
True power, perhaps, is doing just that.
The ability to give control to myself, not commerce.

How can Singapore be boring?
When every fork is an adventure?
Oh, right. You drive on roads.

Paths were the roads, in pre-car times.
The legacy is passed on,
If only we dare to walk.

I would like to walk home.
But there is school the next day.
And homework still undone.

So I'll take a car now.
To save so much time.
After all, I still am in the system.

What Else?

How many things in this world is there to comment on?
Perhaps, you may count many:
Iraq's invasion, Israel's eviction, even glacier extinction.

If I had to, it is the fault of humans.
Our pride causes us to abuse.

We know we have power,
We ignore responsibility.

We scream foul at Abu Ghraib:
But really, it's just to stand out,
To show that we have humanity.

Ironic, isn't it?
How we need 9/11 to forge universal brotherhood.
The construction of such bond,
Yet the makers are condemned as terrorists.

It's like in the movies
Where it takes a problem
For us to learn to cherish.

What else can I comment on?
Nothing new, in essence,
But the failures of the humankind.

Maybe I shall tell you more about my life.