Waterfalls

I should've bottled up all that maturity
I thought I had
and saved it for moments
like these,
but there it goes,
down the stream and
into the river then
out into the ol' big blue,
better go swimming,
something about
staying afloat and growing up
makes sense together,
it's a message in a bottle:
it never gets easier, and sometimes
you need to be harder
on yourself.

Substantial World

Reconnecting with my emotions
like they're old friends,
it's awkward at first, but soon
everybody's crying
and laughing
and reminiscing about how long it's been.
If they could ask me how I've been,
what would I say?
I'm a material girl in a world full of substance,
I know what it's made of
but I don't know
what it's made
of me.

Twilight

I used to think twilight
meant something in the middle of the night
or after midnight,
I still wish it did,
something about the t and the w
twirling together,
clouds so dark that they're almost purple,
deep greys and blues submerged
in a void of black,
lit here and there,
nothing natural about it.
Here I am in the twilight, listening
to Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune
and swooning over Chinese girls,
"They're so adorable,"
I say,
my words bumbling and bumping
into bittersweet
in the twilight

Conscious

I've begun to become
conscious
of myself
growing up,
I can feel it,
it's surreal,
sometimes it feels good, other times
I write about it.
Every poem a growing pain,
I've begun to become
conscious
of my poetry
and when I write and don't write, and
why.
Why, that's the big question,
how and why,
but there's something to be said
for the who, what, where, and when's,
I need to be conscious of them
too.

A few more notes on dreams

I remember when I used to have
"shower dreams,"
when I was so tired
that my head, still half-asleep,
functioned in a dream-like state
in the shower,
sometimes trying on
in vain to continue the dreams from just
minutes before.
I usually only "dream" when
I sleep in, and not when I stay up late
and sleep in even later, but
when I get to bed at a decent hour
and sleep in a couple more hours than normal,
that's the magic hour—
that's when I dream.
I've heard stories that
certain foods cause you dream,
but I've been too scared to purposely
try them before bed,
something about manipulating my mind scares
me, let it manipulate itself for all I care,
I'd rather there be some magic to it,
let dreams be dreams.

秘密

Should I call you Mimi? Or just
my little secret?
Dreams seem to have more intimacy and immediacy
than (my) real life,
I don't remember being this attracted to you,
how do these dreams happen?
Are people dreaming of me—
am I eligible for other people's dreams?
I can't find any good photos of you,
although I might have some memories somewhere...
Those memories transpose
into a dream, that dream into a feeling,
my feelings for you having nowhere
or no one
to go to.

CNN

Watching my ten minutes of CNN a day,
I want to tell Anderson there's a wolf
in the Situation Room, but I fear
he won't believe me.
Soledad,
I would've had your babies
if you hadn't already have had
seventeen,
ditto Andrea Mitchell, oh wait
that's MSNBC.
As for Fox, well,
I've never been drunk and gone to the bar
and picked up a chick
who I couldn't recognize,
but if I did,
it would be you, Judge Jeanie,
you could judge me all you want
and I would say I'm honored!

Not really scared but plenty of loathing in Duluth

My social circle consists of my computer, my keyboard, my mouse
and the cords that connect them.
Not so much a circle,
but a square—fenced off, top secret—
a myth yet to be busted
like Area 51,
a place where
paranoia doesn't run deep, it runs wild.

Buckwild.
Look there it goes,
running off in the hay of Kansas,
how'd it get there? Who knows,
not me, I'm still here,
my social life has become a zombie, self-aware
and self-loathing, more undead than dead,
an afterlife that haunts the living,
and an afterthought which haunts
me.

Nights with Lady Yunalesca

I enter the bedroom.
The Lady sits on the bed,
ready to read over to the scriptures with me again,
"How about we catch the sunrise?"
I say,
almost tripping over the rubble.
"Ha,
you're full of jokes tonight."
I sigh a small sigh
and shiver a small shiver,
the pyreflies wrapping up around the undead lights,
misgivings and fear spilling into the air.
"I'm not a necrophiliac,"
I protest, weakly, faint and final.
"Spectro,"
she says,
"it's
Spectrophilia,
and don't kid yourself."

Grocery stores

With everyone I know, I've gone to grocery stores,
whenever I go to visit them,
big, small, expensive, cheap,
different stores for different lifestyles,
I wish I could take them and put them all together,
a conglomeration of foods, locales, and people,
真的丰富多彩，
memories dictated by food,
digested, absorbed, becoming
part of you

Natural light

The orange plastic light, the dark cupboards,
the naturally-lit kitchen
and the snow piling up outside the window
over my memories.
It's Winter, when I can feel
them being compressed under
another year, another Winter,
when I wonder
if I can make new, naturally-lit memories,
instead of buying pieces of the past off eBay
hoping to put them together
like the puzzles in the screen porch,
snow and squirrels and chickadees watching me
in all my silliness...

The Brule's illustrious hat collection, I put one on,
one says it's 1994, another 2002,
the difference between the life I have lived
and the one I thought I wanted
is the people who have loved me
and those I loved back,
natural light shines when the snow comes down
and I can see clearly, what I have forgotten,
but not what I will remember.

Backpack

Pick up a backpack, it makes me
want to write, it makes
sitting in this room bearable, it makes me turn
on the Cinematic Orchestra,
it makes me realize there's a world outside of this,
places to go, take that backpack,
take my hopes and leave
my fears in the policies that got us into this mess,
I'm grateful for my car, I should use it more,
maybe I should get a job,
but does getting a job = getting a life?
Check the math, the arithmetic,
doesn't add up,
my hourglass of luck is running out,
I'm running out of Doe's on Christmas Eve,
it's cold, Christmas lights
and outdoor lights,
shining like headlights,
the wood siding of the house, so much warmth
and so many people inside...
The good old world had a good run, where do we run to now?
Pack a backpack.

Now and then

Girl at the Philly bar in Westwood, sorry
I haven't been writing,
not to you, not for myself, you
deserved better, I was coming off
the tail end of a Great Depression,
all out of that jazz and ain't got no swing,
I couldn't have known what was good for me
if it looked me in the eyes, which it did,
luckily it didn't hit me in the face but
oh, how I wish you had,
I wish it had hit me in the face then instead of now,
why is it always now instead of then,
why now?

My language

I couldn't hear the rain before I turned the computer off, maybe
it's a sign, I was already shaking my hand
in fear before I started writing
this, and as I wrote
the first few words of the first sentence I started
to feel cheesy like a dinosaur, this language
feels so big and clunky and awkward
after learning another one, I wonder
if it's raining
on the army of Chinese babes halfway across the world,
connected via the internet and OkCupid,
I wonder how much I'll edit this, I wrote in pencil
because I don't like pens anymore,
ink washing away in the rain, lead fading with time, there is nothing
permanent to record your thoughts,
I wish I could carve them into the universe
and let my inspiration flow freely,
sucking up and absorbing the debris,
the split-second—sometimes second decisions
that go into writing surprise even me and my pencil and those
millions upon millions of Chinese babes halfway across the world,
would it surprise them that I was writing about them,
would it surprise them that I know less about my own
language than they do,
that I know less about myself,
that I don't know when to stop and am too
chicken to go,
that I still can't help falling into nostalgia whirlpools
and feel the pain of having to learn my language.

Dream about Atlantis

Or was it school? A test, a thousand students,
a dark cafeteria of a classroom.
I don't understand the requirements,
run outside—
a castle, an outdoor commons—
Atlantis.
It's like a video game level,
it's a chance to relive the school life
I may never get to see again, the life I already
ran back to a little over a year ago.
It's like a dream, it's like Atlantis.

God she looked good

Hit me like a sudden thunderstorm
at first you try and run through the rain
but eventually you're soaked and just walk it home,
but where is home?
Where are you and where am I
headed with my life?
You seem so cool just like you always were,
I can't believe it's not butter, I can't believe
it's not like it always was,
but butter's not healthy anyway
and like the rain it all just
washes away

伟伟

伟伟，

我听说你常常看这个博客，

看我的诗，

今年夏天在北京，你让我的诗

从纸上、从电脑中、

从我的心里出来了——

得到了现实、进入到我真的生活中——

这让我写的诗没有意思、没有用，因为

字不算是感情，

真的诗就是真的生活。

最后，我终于在生活，

我终于在我的生活中有诗，

我终于有你，

王伟伟。

(Untitled)

It feels good to feel good,
it feels good to hear you laugh,
to feel your smile over Skype,
I need to document this, Word-documenting it
as we type but
feeling good isn't as easy as writing it down
I want to translate this into every language
and broadcast it everywhere and anywhere
so that when the aliens arrive,
they can feel good too.
I'm making a peace treaty with myself
to never feel bad again,
do you want to cosign? Maybe
we could get the aliens in on this
it's 2012, the world's supposed to be ending
but rather it's just beginning
to feel good.

Sun at 6:00 PM

I almost forgot the toilet paper
just like I almost forgot you,
not to equate the two but
there's something nice about the notion
of being able to flush it all away.
I've learned to appreciate even the littlest bit of sun,
I'm sick of my grey area lack of a love life
it's just like Duluth
never sunny, it never rains,
always never, never ever,
forever and ever
never.
But that's changing,
just look at the sky,
clouds rolling out like toilet paper

Bad dream

"It's like a bad dream," he says to myself in the third person
in the dark
"heck, it's the bad dream Browns,"
I live in a virtual world
sometime around '96-'97 where
the video game music is good and the
music video games, well, they're even
better.
Women? You whose imaginary sister works at Shuang Cheng
if you don't call me tomorrow I'll resurrect
payphones just so I can keep in touch
with what I imagine to be your body, I'll put
Cullen's brother's defunct Ford Taurus
on top of the 4Runner to create
the TAURUNNER, opening a new Dimension
Films branch at the end of
my rope...
Why, tell me, was Dark Forces never co-opted?
I crafted this rope out of your hair, it smells
like Pantene Pro V and
bad dreams.

In touch

Going to the mall for dinner on Saturday night,
I get some breadsticks while
waiting for my Japanese,
there's almost ten orders ahead of me, it's amazing,
two Asian-American families and an older Japanese couple
with their older Japanese-American daughter,
they give free refills, I make sure to thank him,
I make sure to thank everyone
for letting me be so lame as to be here
for dinner on a Saturday night,
it's closing time, my social life went out of business
a long time ago. I pass by a video game
night—Street Fighter vs. Tekken—so I'm not
the token white person after all and I'm not
as out of touch with society as I thought in fact
I'm in touch
with what's left of it.

Bo呢? Bo知道

My running commentary won a marathon,
hell, I have the Bo Jackson of running commentaries,
it was so good until it was stopped
in its tracks by you and your Diablo habits
and your brand lame shoewear,
Bo Jackson's been doing a lot of charity work lately,
me? I've been making jokes about Diablo 3 which
seems to be all the rage
quit these days,
but I'm not giving up.
My brain hurts because I'm so tired
but I can't keep taking Tylenol
and listening to this generic music
because there's nothing generic about your genre
and you're the best headache I've ever had.

Every night

Every night,
servers become classes
and my classes become servers
and that girl from class becomes
the acquaintance I stumbled upon in a server.
My sister graduated today,
I never walked, I ran, I didn't run far
away but rather I ran in
circles, which leads me back to you:

I'll let you go this time,
I won't press, I won't write some awkwardly forced
Chinese or Chinglish email to you.
I'll let you go back to 杭州
and if I ever make it out there, maybe
I'll run into you in a city of almost 9 million people.
I'll think of you from time to time, and I'll feel
bittersweet,
what will you think when you think of me?
You'll think of pineapples, because they're
bittersweet.

The whatever it was called ballroom

Chinese test of DOOM!
and I'm finding pleasure in smelling like smoke, shaman prom, and having friends on a
cell phone,
why can't I cope with the fact that I'll never be
president? Why can't I "deal?"
Why can't I cope that I can't
write a poem every day
and that I enjoyed spending time with Yuanxin
at that talk at the St. Paul Student Center,
with the Martin Luther King Chinese guy
and that one girl who talked to me,
on a pretty Spring, lukewarm, white-sky day
when we had to move the tables
in the whatever it was called ballroom,
and that I have to go to bed.
Should I have ended that with a question mark
because life ends with question marks
only I don't know any Marks,
I only have questions.

If it's even an it

It's kind of fascinating, how
I'm struggling to not eat Cocoa Puffs
even though I'm not even hungry in the first place,
as I watch
my Steam friends list move between servers
like bars, wait, where did Airball go?
How I feel like I should listening to music
but feel that it would hurt my ears.
How she looks like Anita Mui,
and how you can't find any good pictures of her.
Why is everyone ugly on OkCupid? I guess I haven't
mastered the art of a flattering picture of an ugly person,
heck, I can't even recognize them,
but I guess Anita never did either,
I feel like I can connect with her in that sense,
just like I can connect to these usernames on a list
turning green and blue and grey to indicate a change
in the atmosphere.
Sometimes the names even change,
how can you reinvent yourself when your name's
plastered all over the internet?
I got off Facebook so long ago that I no longer have a face,
I got out of real life so long ago that nothing's real,
give me a book of life and maybe we'll have a deal,
it'll get me reading again,
UpButtCoconut just joined the dodge ball server,
oh, wait, it's been a few minutes since I wrote that and
it looks like he's gone,
at least his name isn't there anymore,
if he's even a he,
if it's even an it.
But what am I but a bunch of words in Microsoft's application
of roughly the same name?
I can sleep all I want but I'll never feel rested,
just like Anita, rest her soul,
I'll always be tired, I'll always be hungry,
I'll never be awake, never be
an it.

Where in the World is Barbara Walters?

Where in the world is Barbara Walters?
She's not in the Korea Restaurant, she's not in that
hachiroku-wannabe Honda hatchback, and she's not
in the building blocks and toys of my dreams, a.k.a.
the world (Second Life?).
Just where is she, then? She's in my loneliness,
pulling strings and selling her cat's cradles
to other women because God knows I love my
feline friends.

Spiders

My only companions are my Subaru,
my 3000 dollar computer and
the spiders, oh,
the spiders, they crawl up my pants,
they hang out in my hair,
they join me for a shower, hell,
they even try to hang out with the computer
and the Subaru too!
The Subaru gets me where I need to go
and the computer gets me to the people I know,
the people, the screennames, I must be to them
what the spiders are to me,
I'm not scared of spiders anymore, I'm not scared of mice,
I'm not even scared of myself,
I'm not scared, I'm only used to it,
which is more scary than anything.

I wrote this one two weeks ago

Theatre,
a five-star hotel, a ballroom,
dim, moody lighting,
seating going out into the hallways,
huge and convoluted,
can't see the stage, only diagonal corners of walls,
in fact, can't see ahead at all, only besides—
my hallucinatory friends and you.
Calm bustle, a cocktail bar nearby,
I know I'm dreaming, is this what they call
a lucid dream? I get up, leave the show
and bustle, and go to sleep,
not looking to wake up.

佳红

A creature of bad habits
sees
the most 'thingy' thing he's ever seen,
at least since he saw her
the time before, and the scores of times before that,
running out of adjectives and in
two different languages.
We've
lived around the block
from each other for almost 400 days now,
maybe you saw me once and didn't say anything,
maybe I saw your melon head and stringy, black hair,
but on a different face,
sitting in front of me at the theater.
Put a feeling to a face,
a face to a name,
and call it love.
It's instinct.
This feels right.
It feels like,
what does a feeling feel like?
I'm sick of these words, poetry-and-fail,
I want to compose a feeling,
drop it in the mailbox of your mind and
see it last
longer than words, faces, or
bad habits.

Take a couple time capsules

The backend of the world
is your office, your cubicle, and you
calling me back
into it.
Déjà woo me
all over again, a time capsule
with the snowy, shiny wind blowing outside,
"How long has this office been here?" I ask,
already knowing that I once knew
the answer.
I can feel the memory memorizing,
I can feel the process, your laughs
tucking, wrapping and curling themselves
in my brain.
Eyes meet, hands shake, bodies move away
but the brain stays on,
lost in a laugh
in the backend of the world.