In the underground, moist nape

of a woman’s neck held

exposed to the vertical bars;

fellow bipeds plucking mental

berries in the electronic jungle.

Not Edenic, this world     keypad

games where dull & acquisitive

acumen takes the highest prize.
A boy who stares like a gas-mask at a

Prizedraw for a 3-D Discovery Battleship

Commander Simulation at the new Science

Park. Every weekend hundreds of spectacled

baby-faces belted into virtual war     just what

education is for. The other side of the glass

a thousand building-sites   the

making of a world in order

soon enough   to pull it down again.
We already know which world wins out

though we each know differently; that

is what democracy is for, why it

succeeds in always failing.

          Never knowing what world

it’s fighting for but that

the winner takes all.
                                                                 Singapore, 2014