“Accidents” and Other Poems

by Ryan Yeo

• Content warning

  Suicide

Accidents

The entire point of this exhibit is the accidental nature of its production.
The whole film roll was dropped into seawater,
destroying the images that were captured but
staining them with the colours of the sun.
You can’t tell just by looking what the original intention was.
For all you know they could’ve captured a nebula. An island, a canoe.
More likely that everything the artist originally intended
had completely vanished. Blemished and torpedoed by the sea.
Accidents happen and you make art of it. Remember this lesson.
If I should die in the next month they would probably call it an accident.
A moment of recklessness, like my thoughts tripped and
fell down a building and smashed themselves into nothing.
A permanent solution to a problem that was plummeting for years.

In the moments before you die your brain spikes with activity.
You become hyperaware of everything as your brain
thrashes about trying to do its job. Remember remember remember.
Your life flashes before your eyes in the same way
a supernova flashes in the entire history of the universe.
An explosion of sound and colour. Few people live
to tell the tale. If I could hang that moment in a gallery I would.
See, my last moments weren’t so full of despair.
If it was an accident then it was beautiful.
If I was reckless then that choice was worth a visit.
There are five canvases. Each one speaks a little different.
I’d like to think that when each picture drowned
their thoughts exploded in different ways. One, How sad
to end a life. Two, How beautiful the end will feel. Three,
I have always wanted to dive. Four, No I hate art I don’t
want to be art. Five, You cannot take a photograph of
anyone’s experience. Philosophers call it the hard problem
of consciousness. There are no easy ones.
You will see my brain waves spike; the look on my face;
the shape of my eyes in all its fear and peace. Nothing
can capture the pastel of pain. The melody of deep blue.
The polka dots falling through the canvas are mine to see.
The slow reckless crash of the setting sun is mine to behold.

Every year 800,000 people die by suicide. Every minute
a brain supernovas because it chose to. Every day, 2,190 new accidents.
Pastel pink spills into deep blue and becomes a part of the universe.
Looking from the outside every choice runs like a reckless speck,
but from the inside we slowly watched every ray of light
shoot from the dying star. Few things happen by accident.
Yet if God blinked he would miss us.

A List of Immovable Objects

I have been trying to open the pickle jar for three minutes. The lid will not budge.

I asked my mother for twenty more minutes on the TV. She said no.

We moved into the new house. There was a pillar in the middle of the living room. The architect said it could not be hacked away, because it was a “load-bearing structure.” I didn’t really understand. I just pasted stickers all over it. I didn’t know until years later that it wasn’t normal to have a mural in the middle of your house.

I received my first pen when I was six. Suddenly I held so much power in my hands. I could write something down, and no one could ever take it away.

Somebody pasted a poster in the elevator. There was no stamp in the corner; no sign it had been approved by the office. When I returned that evening, the poster was still standing there, shining under the elevator lights, proud of living to see another day.

The Joker said to Batman: “Oh, you. You just couldn't let me go, could you? This is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object. You and I are destined to do this forever.”

Two years ago, six people held a protest without a permit. When the police arrived at the Ministry building, three of them left but the others stood still. They were arrested. Nothing changed. Life went on.

I sit in the garden and watch a spider attach a thread between two bushes. I turn to my book for a while. When I return, an intricate web is shining in the sunlight.

I asked my supervisor why we had separate shelves for “Stationery” and “Staplers.” He shrugged and said that this was how we always did it.

The Script said: I’m going back to the corner, where I first saw you. / Gonna camp in my sleeping bag, I’m not gonna move.

We are sitting at the benches when we realise that stability and security are two different things. If things are always stable, then no one is trying to imagine something better.

Barnaby purrs softly as I scratch his chin. The moment I sit down, he climbs onto my lap and curls into a little ball. Within moments, he is motionless, save for his back, slowly rising and falling—the gentlest sign of life.

Ursula Le Guin said: “We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings.”

Two thousand years ago, somebody wrote that change is the only constant. Tonight, I sit down to write a list of immovable objects.

Today, it’s hard to get out of bed.

My first diary entry was about a birthday party I attended. I wrote about the birthday boy, though I no longer remember his name. I wrote about striking a pinata for the first time. How I almost missed, and only succeeded in chipping away at the paper, making it sway a little bit. How another kid smashed the pinata later, striking the little dents I made and spilling candy all over the floor.

The diary is gone now. I don’t know where to find it, or how far it has travelled. The words must still be inscribed, for anyone who cares to read it.

After all, here we still are.

A Diary in 24 Weeks

One. You cannot simply stay at home and
Two hyperventilate. You haven’t cleaned your room in months.
Three every time you break down you fill your lungs with dust.
Four. Breathe in. Breathe out. In and out. Stay alive on bad energy.
Five. Your past self is looking. Why haven’t you recovered? What
six do you think of their disappointment? This is not a disease
seven you isolate yourself to fix. It is not contagious. It is only you
eight all you do is breathe yourself in. When will you breathe
nine the sigh of the trees? The salt of the sea? Or the laughter
ten from your friends. Your thoughts can’t hurt you. But here you are. Breathe
eleven them in, out and in, and out. The more you breathe, the more
twelve you want things to end. Maybe they will someday.
Thirteen maybe the shape of your future self will be unrecognisable.
Fourteen maybe you wouldn’t even notice the day it happens.
Fifteen. Depression works in a funny way. The deeper you sink,
sixteen the more you loathe yourself for sinking. The self stays the same
seventeen no matter how dark the mind gets. Still you will know
eighteen how sharply your chest hurt. How it needed to escape.
Nineteen still you will know that you should not stay at home
twenty and hyperventilate your days away. But you can.
Twenty-one. And some days you must. You know the same things.
Twenty-two. You’re still the same person. But one day
Twenty-three. You will return to your body, and breathe,
twenty-four, and breathe, and breathe.

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Ryan is a poet, improviser, and teacher from Singapore. They graduated from Yale-NUS College in 2024 with a B(A) in Philosophy, where they wrote a chapbook-length poetry collection titled Life Cycle of the Depressed Mind. Their works have appeared in anthologies like Contour and SG Poems 2017-2018. Apart from poetry, Ryan enjoys doing improv comedy, and has performed improv in four different countries with the Yale-NUS Improv troupe and their independent troupes, 7-Star Cendol and Kingfishy.

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