Eat My Foot Poem by john tiong chunghoo

stilettos - my memory walks on shoes
- the 60s platform shoes, the high heeled ones,
those floating on cork, the click clacking clogs,
and the rest that propel our fun out of the
cruise of our feet on the dance floor,
ballet twirl, on a mountain slope in getting
that life saving grip, in the arctic and
as one walks down the aisle to a life of bliss


the memory lines up thick on the house shoe rack
where we chucked our school going ones
as soon as we reached home
they were always near the stairs wherever
we had stayed - ever ready to oil our pirouttee
as we turn like angels seeking out another life
walk us into another wonderland.

the shoes were interspearsed between aunty's
and mom's more adventurous ones
when she was out on a limb on the bridge of life
lack clack clack, thud, thud, thud,
the way mom and aunties had always wanted to sound
proud on the harsh ground of the street

clack, clack, clack,
on the verandah and when I was braver -
I was only three or four -
clack, clack, clack
how light the body was
in some of the fancy shoes
stilettos especially that lightly put me
on a flight to another world
on their steady solid stumps
nobody could deprive me of
these other worlds

if really someone had taken me
by the hands and
rolled them off my little feet
i would have kicked a fuss
so that those shoes walk the ceiling

and i would shove my
little feet in again
while rubbing off the tears
that had rolled down my cheeks

clack, clack, clack
the echoes of childhood
where the weight of the body
is lighter than sound
the world colourless
borderless and unisex

my body and soul kicked
in the sky of thoughts