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Poetry:
preface to Parodies Everyone can Enjoy
(yet to be published)
Ern-Mal Li went to his death at the age of twenty-four secure in the knowledge he was a great poet.
Nobody suspected Ern-Mal Li wrote poetry. People only knew he earned his living first as a worker in an electrical appliance discount store, then as a mercenary proselytizer for a certain religious faith and also as its enforcer and finally as a restorer of faulty TV images and an odd-job man. He didn’t have much education, leaving school at the age of fifteen. He only ever owned one book in his life—The Perfumed Garden, an abridged version for bridge enthusiasts, translated into Japanese and illustrated with woodcuts. He even kept his poetry writing a secret from his sister, Ms Ta-Ta Li. His sister sent me two of his poems accompanied by this letter:
Dear Mr Loh,
Going through my brother’s belongings after his death, I discovered, buried in the bottom of his tool box, bundled up in an old fish and chips wrapper, a stack of poems he’d written. I showed the poems to a friend and she suggested I send them to you as you’re a noted dealer in rare poetry, pottery and pargetry.
I’m sending you two of his poems for your appraisal. I’d appreciate it if you’ll let me know whether they’re any good. My brother had never given me any indication he wrote poetry. I’ve no idea myself what his poems are about but I owe it to him as his sister to get expert opinion on them.
Ern-Mal suffered terribly in the months leading up to his death last July and it may have coloured his outlook on life.
I enclose a stamped, self-addressed envelope for reply.
Yours sincerely,
Ta-Ta Li.
The two poems Ms Ta-Ta Li sent impressed me tremendously. I felt I’d just encountered a genuine talent of enormous power. He was a great poet with an extraordinary feel for language and an amazing delight in words. Although he must have suffered hugely (and his sister wrote that he did), his suffering didn’t show through these two poems. Instead it was his cheeriness and playfulness that came through. I showed the two poems to my fellow dealers in rare poetry, pottery and pargetry and without me telling them anything about the author, they all agreed, to a man, here was an exceptionally gifted poet.
I wrote to Ms Li asking her to send me the rest of the poems and to tell me more about her brother. She did, enclosing the following letter with the rest of the MS:
Dear Mr Loh,
You ask for more information about my brother, Ern-Mal. I failed to tell you in my last letter that he died of Acute Lateral Epicondylitis Disease. It needn’t have been deadly but when he lived away from home, he didn’t take care of himself. He refused to see any doctor about his condition. He only saw one when he came back to live with me last January. I found out later he’d been administering acupuncture to himself, using straightened paper clips and resorting to herbal medicine, brewing the tonic from Masters Food herbs bought from Woolie’s. Dr Kwak, who was my personal physician, was of the opinion that this must’ve prolonged his life considerably.
He was terribly crabby. I wanted him admitted to Rozelle Hospital so his condition could be monitored but Dr Kwak advised against it, saying that that hospital never cured anyone. The doctor at first talked about operating but my brother refused to go under the knife and so Dr Kwak gave up and said it’d be better he was not operated on, which hadn’t sounded right to me.
My brother was born in Hong Kong on February 29, 1982. Our Papa died of Asian Avian Flu in ’84 and we came to Australia where our mother had a brother.
Ern-Mal was not a good student as he hated school (and the school hated him). After Mama’s death in ’97, he quit. Luck was with him though. In no time he got three job offers.
As he was good with his hands, the first offer was as a mover and shaker in a Lee Bing Electrical Appliance Discount Store in Cabramatta. The job required him to move large items of goods and to stand at the door to shake hands with customers.
As he was also good with his feet (he was the striker for his school’s soccer team), the second offer was as Rupert Murdoch’s kicker. The job necessitated kicking employees in the pants, kicking them out or kicking them upstairs. Also he had to give kickbacks to Third World government officials. Finally he had to kick his employer’s business rivals when they were down.
Then as he was also good with his mouth, tongue and lips, the third offer was as June Bronhill’s licker. The job involved licking her into shape. Also he had to suck up to her and every day lick her boots and kiss her arse. Every now and then, he had to blow her up as well as blow her trumpet.
He ended up choosing the first job although it didn’t pay as well as the others—he didn’t want do too much travelling. I thought he’d settle down but two years later he quit his job and moved to Melbourne.
A friend who’d run into him there told me he was working on a commission basis for the Society of Buddha of the Much Better Latter-day than Earlier-day Saints recruiting converts, tracking down and kidnapping apostates, blasphemers and heretics and then re-programming them.
I finally got a letter from him in 2003, I think, telling me he was all right and earning good money fixing crap TV pictures. He had to get a poetic licence to do that and it was expensive and fairly hard to obtain. His work involved re-colouring faded images, colourizing images that had been exposed to the sun and consequently bleached to black and white, thawing snowy images, singularizing multiple images, gluing split images, poaching scrambled images, ironing horizontal lines, steaming vertical lines, broiling wavy or zigzag lines and unknotting tangled lines on magnetically interfered images—and doing other work on the side. He didn’t write again.
Then early this year I learned he was back in Sydney. I succeeded in persuading him to come home to live and it was only then I discovered he was gravely ill. He was on edge most of the time and pretty bad-tempered but on his good days we’d talk. I gathered there was a girl in Melbourne he’d fancied but she didn’t want to end up marrying a poet. There was poetic injustice in there somewhere.
The end came suddenly and he passed away on his birthday.
Yours sincerely,
Ta-Ta Li.
I read through Ern-Mal Li’s poems with mounting excitement. When I’d finished, I found they were so good I felt it’d be criminal of me to put them on the market when they’d only end up in some rich tycoon’s private collection or even keep them in my own collection. No, I felt Ern-Mal Li’s poetry belonged to the world. This is why I’ve published his poems so everyone can delight in them.
What comes through Ern-Mal Li’s poetry is his unique style with its imaginative use of end and internal rhymes, alliteration and word-play, its bouncing rhythms and telling imagery. The poems are parodies of works by talented but relatively unknown poets. His tone, though angry at times, is never bitter. He’s witty without being cruel. After reading Ern-Mal Li’s poetry, you’ll come away with the realization it’s not every day that poetry like his comes your way.
Frank Chan Loh
Sydney |
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