Ant & Grasshoppie

I want to tell you a story,
About the ant and the grasshoppie,
One is sensible, the other is crazy,
One is rajin, the other is lazy,
All summer long the ant is busy,
Building its nest, collecting nuts and a daisy,
While play is the only thing does the 'hoppie;
Summer come, summer go,
Autumn fall, winter follow;
The first snow flake falls,
The ant gathers its last nut and daisy,
Its store full, its nest cozy,
While the hoppie goes hungry;
Knock, knock! Ant! Open the door!
Sorry! Opportunity knocked but is no more!
The poor hoppie keels over and is no more,
That is the end of the story
Of the busy ant and the lazy hoppie.
Oh, one more thing, the ant now,
Has more food in the freezer -
The dead hoppie -
To be eaten next summer!

My house an igloo

I have a pen, my pen is blue,
I have a friend, my friend is you;

I have a house, my house is an igloo,
I have a blouse, my blouse is new;

I have a shirt, my shirt is yellow,
I have a skirt, my skirt is mellow;


... to be continued

Stark the world,
Over which creatures,
High and low,
Stand sentinel,
Play-acting
To be little gods.

At ground level
A cockerel
Stands sentinel,
Ever alert
In the struggle
For survival.

Parody D'amour, Take This Verse To My Reader

The same scene on a different day ...

Under an overcast sky ...

Instead of piped music, cig smoke provides the accompaniment ...

Planted Townies

The men sit under the burning sun,
Whence all but them have fled to the bower,
Day in, day out, right on the hour, past the tower,
Right there in Dungun town
By the Pejabat Pos clover;
Their skins darkened like fishermen,
In the heat wave, smoke lingers
From their fingers,
The filtered tips of their cigs,
Wetted by their black lips;
This is the scene I see every day
Since two months I moved
Into Dungun town.

Malay checkers they play,
Every day by the day,
On their faces not a worry,
The only pictures gory
On their cig packets surely;
Their pockets must be in pay,
For they work not a day,
And yet can sit in the sun
And all day play.

Say Father!
When are you going to take them out?
As the statistics indicate,
And the Health Minister shouts?
Or am I going first,
Worrying to death,
About my health,
Jogging the beach,
Cycling the road,
Picking through the eateries
Vainly trying to clear up
My cholesterol clogged arteries,
Calm down my beating heart,
And tamp down my rising pulse?

O Father!
Life is so perverse!
I who cross my t's and dot my i's
When it comes to eat,
Jog, sleep - and no cig,
I who traverse fields and ford rivers,
Living the style of a scouter,
Am getting the bejesus out of life,
While these planted townies
Are setting an opposite example
And seeming to get away with it!

Spider and Fly

Spider and fly,
One is a sinner,
The other is dinner,
That is the reason why
Things have never been keener.

Photographic Verse: An Epiphyte

Hang on there, epiphyte!
Or are you a saprophyte?
I don't know how long
You've been, and will be, there,
Appearing out of nowhere,
Now sticking out like a lantern of light,
Against the darkness of the night;
Staking out a claim to existence,
However temporal and insignificant,
Your only claim to fame being spotted,
Photographed and here immortalized:
Would you have mattered,
Rising up out of decaying matter,
Had it been otherwise?
Then again, I'm no different,
What I've just said of you by inference,
Is also true of me and all en passant -
We come, stand up and move on.

Photography: Children

Balanced composition: dark background, light foreground; subjects centered, looking natural and on the trot ... Nina is leading the charge of the light brigade ... circa 1998.

Anna Mastura: Charge Of The Light Foodage

Sticks and stones may break bones,
But for Anna, six,
A fork and a spoon is the fix,
To separate fish flesh from bone;
By cheek in jowl,
Soup in bowl,
She attacks the food in her plate:
Elbow to the left,
Elbow to the right,
Anna piles the rice and pries the fish,
Filling grains and fleshy fillet,
Fork to the fore, spoon an added boon,
In the swoop to the dish of health;
In goes a sliver of flesh and a mound of rice
Into the mouth and jaws of death.
A klink now, then a klunk,
As fork misses the chicken
And slides off the bone
Follows the spoon
On the heel of the fork
As metal scrapes the dock.

Photography: Elements of Composition

The use of back light coming from the window helps to give radiance while the look of openness gives an expression of innocence to the subject. The clutter in the foreground lends the picture an everyday scene.

The vertical format of the picture putting the subject in the top half and the food in the bottom half brings out a touch of contrast and irony between the bounty of the fare and the ailing look of the subject.

A simple composition in which the two subjects are separated with an intervening space made up of the darkened doorway. The cup of tea in the foreground adds a point of interest.