Daughter

The stranger emerges from water

as the wife becomes a mother

Then the stranger meets her father

Whose son is now her brother

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.

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?

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.

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

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

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.

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....

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

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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

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.

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!

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

Dust

Just as fairy dust 

is a little sprinkle 

of miracles,
the dust on my desk 

is a little sprinkle of 

dead skin particles.

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

Paragraph

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