Thursday, December 24, 2015

Daughter

The stranger emerges from water
as the wife becomes a mother
Then the stranger meets her father
Whose son is now her brother

Monday, December 14, 2015

Idealist

An idealist
Is something much different 
from an ideal list 
Or a list of ideals,
a listless dealer,
Or a dealer of lists.

An idealist 
doesn't deal so much with things the eyes can see 
as much as ideas that could be

Sometimes an idealist 
Might even write stuff
Such as this.

Friday, October 30, 2015

Prayer

Don't say a prayer for me
It's very unnecessary 
Why would God send an angel, see
When you're right next to me?

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Thought shepherding

Throughout the day
all these thoughts 
pop up in my mind
and I try to catch them 
but they fly away
just before another thought stops
just for a sec, then is gone. 

Before bed I round them up
into my thought pen
But when I'm sleeping 
they wander 'round 
and are gone the next day.

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Fall time

I go out in my green jacket
And the sky is gray
The air is cool 
And kids are out of school
The bus is crowded
The street is full
But there's a solitude
That fills me and my
insides feel good
I can feel it 
Coming up from the street 
through my shoes
the cheesiest feeling,
while walking down the street
Not the excitable soda pop kind
But the mellow yellow gray kind
Of happiness

Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Greatness

Dr Seuss, Shakespeare 
and Eminem
Are very different yet
Amazing men
Their greatness is hard to deny
And that greatness lies
In their ability to rhyme.

Drawing stuff

Sometimes I think
Of how some colors and shapes
And lines put in specific places
Can come together and create
complicated things like feelings and faces
And it's kind of amazing


Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Pursuit of excellence

My secondary school's motto was something along the lines of "pursuing excellence." (But disguised under the motto "daily giving service"). 

You were supposed to be super positive and motivated and all rounded, self disciplined etc.. And if you did community service you got points or something. At least some kind of credit.

I should unlearn that because in real life you don't get any credit for helping people. You probably just give up a lot of your time and that's it. But you make someone's life a bit better.

Monday, September 28, 2015

Yum cha

Every yum cha starts out ok. But eventually after the 1.5 hour mark it seems to stretch on forever... Until eternity and beyond... 

Avoiding the camera

We used to avoid getting in other people's photos by walking behind the photographer. 

But ever since people started taking selfies we avoid the camera by walking in front of the photographer. I still haven't gotten used to it yet.

Getting old

I know I'm getting older because I can get along so well with my aunts. They used to be my mom's sisters.... but now they joke with me and send me messages with emoticons. (a sign of friendship)

Funeral

I used to wonder what was so special about eternal life.. And why God would need to promise it to us. Why not experience God in our lifetime and leave it at that? What is the point of something that happens when you're dead?

But then I went to a funeral this week. It wasn't even that close of a friend. But i saw the dead body lying in the coffin and thought, how comforting it must be for him to know that after his death he would still be spending time with God. 

Imagine how hopeless and desperate you would feel if you were going to be forever separated from everything including God....

Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Chicken question

Chickens have legs
And chickens have feet
So chickens have toes
But those we don't eat

Chickens have wings
But hands they do not 
So where do all those fingers come from
Kids eat those a lot

At night

Sometimes I lie
with my head 
on my pillow 
and my body
on my bed 
and I just marvel
at how comfortable 
I am

Saturday, September 19, 2015

McDonald's

All kids love it.

I think it's sad when one day people despise you for eating there. Grown ups...

There's nothing better than salty deep fried potatoes with cold sugary fizzy water. It's good for the soul.

Living abroad

I speak to my mother in my mother tongue 
I speak to my father in my mother tongue
My mother speaks to me in her mother tongue
My father speaks to me in his mother tongue
My neighbor speaks to me in her mother tongue
I speak to her in my other tongue

Books

I don't know why, but reading books that you read before is so comforting.

And sometimes I remember what the book is about, but not quite, and that's the best. You read it before, so you don't need to work hard to take in a lot of new ideas, but you don't remember it so well that it becomes boring.

Friday, September 18, 2015

Fine line

There's a fine line between

Being weird and being special
Being independent and being a loner
Being complacent and being content
Being carefree and being messy
Sleeping late (at night) and sleeping early (in the morning)

And every day I'm crossing both sides of that line.

Make up

The same companies that sell make up to you also sell make up remover. 

Also the same TV channel that talks about deep fried carnival food also talks about losing 600 pounds.


Sympathizing with sympathizers

Sometimes my friends have sad friends and have to comfort them.

I feel really bad for my friends because it's really hard to comfort people.

Sometimes my friends are sad and I feel bad, not for them, but for myself, because I actually cannot understand what they are going through. 



Thursday, September 17, 2015

Giraffe people

Have you ever seen one of those giraffe people on the subway?
They're sitting across from you,  looking normal, minding their own business. Then they stand up and suddenly they're 10 feet tall. 

They have a really short torso and really long legs so you can't tell how tall they are when they're sitting down. 

I always wonder if my view of life would be different if I were taller. But I guess short people notice things that tall people don't.


Wednesday, September 16, 2015

Becoming a murderer

As much as I'd like to be a non conformist, I realize that friends are important in keeping you grounded in reality. They tell you what is actually going on in society and what's weird and what's normal and also if your ideas are too crazy. I don't want to become a murderer.

Also i've been watching too much crime tv these days.

Tuesday, September 15, 2015

What if

I wonder what it would be like if no one knew how old they were.

Maybe old people would be a lot more active and young people would be respected more.

Filing tax

I have to file my US tax but I don't know how to. So I need to pay some accountants to help me figure out how much tax I'm supposed to pay.

That means I'm paying people to tell me how much to pay. Or maybe I'm paying people to tell me I don't need to pay. 

I feel like a tax filing service should be covered by my tax payment. Like if I eat at a restaurant, the restaurant tells me how much to pay. They don't make me figure it out myself. Or they should get prisoners to file taxes for people. Then accountants can do something more productive.

Maybe I'm just too lazy. Or dumb. I dont get how this system works.

Monday, September 14, 2015

Sympathy

They say if you can't sympathize then you're a psychopath..? Something like that. 

But I feel like if I sympathized with everyone, I would get a mental breakdown. Because it would require too much effort emotionally to totally feel for all the people in this world.

New nephew

My sister sent me a picture of the new baby. But I just can't get used to the fact that there's a new human being in this world and he's related to me? His face looks familiar but it also looks like any typical baby.

I keep thinking how weird it is that this human has only been in our world for one month. What is it like to be in a totally alien world? The problem is he can't talk so no one can ever know what a baby thinks. 

We'll have to teach him the tricks of survival and what humans are typically like in this world and soon he'll get used to it and be just like us. 

Saturday, September 5, 2015

Ducks are the best

Waddle, paddle 
Quack, float
Quick dive, 
Shiny coat.

Big butt
Squeaky beak
Skinny neck
Floppy feet

Oh heck 
Oh joy
Ducks are
Nature's toys


Wednesday, September 2, 2015

What if

What if I wrote a poem that 
Only rhymed visually
A poem that would be a pain
To read out loud. Slowly now...
Cow, sow
Food, good
Slower, flower
Couch, touch
Colonial, colonel
Beard, heard
Leaf, deaf
Ear, bear
Finder, hinder
Foot, root
Lord, word
It'd be best poem I've even seen
And the worst
I ever heard.

Tuesday, September 1, 2015

Pet rock

If I had a pet rock ...
I could ignore it,
and pretend it was invisible.
I could give it the silent treatment,
even if it wanted to talk.
Think of all the things I couldn't do
if I didn't have that pet rock!

Sunday, August 30, 2015

Night falls

Night falls, morning breaks
Water falls, waves break 
Tears fall, when bones break
My coffee mug falls,
Gimme a break

Sunflowers

Sunflowers face the sun
In the daytime and at noon
So at night are they moonflowers?
At night they face the moon


Saturday, August 29, 2015

Dust

Just as fairy dust 
is a little sprinkle 
of miracles,
the dust on my desk 
is a little sprinkle of 
dead skin particles.

Friday, August 28, 2015

The sky

Sometimes the sky is huge,
all sorts of colors, hues,
dramatic, it moves.

sometimes the sky is itty bitty
a tiny sliver in the city

sometimes the sky is so dark
there's nothing to see
and that's the coolest kind of sky
i wish you could see


Saturday, May 2, 2015

Paragraph

It read probably could you, Chinese were you if but. Interesting but.Confusing pretty be would that. Backwards paragraph entire an write could I if wonder I.