MY GRANDFATHER (THE KONGKONG POEM)
My grandfather’s first job was a cub reporter.
When he couldn’t find enough news to write,
he’d make it up. He’s most proud about the one
about The Oily Man, who allegedly ran naked
in the streets body covered in grease
so no one could catch him, stealing
clothes off washing lines, caused a big stir
for two to three weeks, re-appeared
a few times each year, particularly
when the economy looked bleak.
My grandfather used to complain
when I brought books to his house,
he was all like, stop reading other people’s ideas.
write your own bloody stories down.
I think I now understand what he meant.
My grandfather still votes for the party
in control, the one in power since
fifty years ago: I think he’s lived long enough
to know how they got our land to rise
above its Southeast Asian third world ghetto.
My grandfather, he’s lived long enough
to know how the world’s not black & white
but five shades of Technicolor rainbow.
He woke up in the 50s to British soldiers
dragging away his roommate at university for being
a commie traitor, how this lawyer I’ll call Harry
fought to get them out of detention. Harry went on to
join forces and lead a whole island out of Empire’s grip,
but not before he learnt a few things from them,
like how to keep a nation strong and fit,
and put the guys he disagreed with in
his own detention cells instead.
Still, my grandfather respects the guy,
never stopped voting for him
and every growth rate he did.
They’re about the same age, but
unlike him, my grandfather
couldn’t afford to go to Cambridge,
got a government scholarship to the University of Malaya.
(after the war, they were running low on graduates).
You could say everyone made good in the end:
I ended up going to the same kindergarten as the
Harry’s grandkids, and I never got the grades
for Cambridge, but here I am.
You could say my grandfather made good in the end.
Got himself a flat screen, golf club membership
massage chair and family. Today he mostly watches
the stock market on TV, when he’s not fighting with
my grandmother and walking out of the house to
escape and ride buses around the city.
Sometimes I think my grandfather is the Oily Man.
Only pretending to be a regular guy
in front of the TV, blind in one eye.
Maybe he turns into the Oily Man when he’s angry.
Maybe this is how he got a job with the newspaper:
he set up cameras and shot pictures of himself running
around grease trickling down his back. I bet he first kissed
my grandmother upside down, while dripping off the side
of a building. I think he still turns into the Oily Man at twilight,
then runs naked through darkened alleys with other Oily Men,
ripping underwear off washing lines, howling at the moon,
throwing wild grease parties in abandoned car parks.
I believe this is what he really does at night.
Today my grandfather’s hands are too shaky to
put drops in his eyes. As I do it for him
so his cataracts don’t shrivel and die,
he reminds me never to feel sorry for him.
“Just remember,” he says, “one day you too will end up like this.”
My grandfather, he’s lived long enough to understand
that we who stay alive long enough will all come to the same end,
best parts of our lives distilled into stories for the grandchildren,
part complaint and part fiction, how all leaders are corrupt
but you work with what you can, that the stock market will always
rise again, your wife will keep shouting, and every time you walk
out of the house the city scape will have changed again but it will be
ok, because there’s a side to you the grandkids will never understand
like that pool of oil at the foot of your arm chair
like how you slipped right out the policeman’s hands.
