i found an old blog I had on Xanga.com, somehow remembered the password, and got access to my old blogs, some public, some private. I’m republishing my favorite ones here. This is a series of poems i wrote in 2005 called “Blasted Stars.” They feel a little juvenile (and very morbid) now, but I still like them.

blasted stars

never assume that youre the only one who cant reach the stars
if we could all reach out and catch the falling stars we wouldnt be so entranced when they twinkle in a child’s eyes
and those blasted stars
just as i get strong enough to reach them
they set and i have to try again tomorrow
my arms hurt from stretching so much
from reaching for something that will burn in my hand once i catch it anyway
pull it from the sky into a coffin
because jars break and lanterns run out of oil and twinkling eyes have to close sometime
the coffin i’ll bury into the ground blasted star
blasted star i finally got the better of you
how does it feel to be mortal?

blasted stars 2

remember those blasted stars, my dear
the ones who mocked the stories i told?
they winked and smiled their eternal flames
in comedies only they wrote and understood

well i know something theyll never understand
theyre blind to something ive known all along

it’s only a reflection

and let me tell you something more

this is just the beginning

blasted stars

blasted stars 3

what do i have against them, you ask?
things of beauty, joys forever?

HA

don’t be decieved
decayed
delayed by their lustre
their poisonous
venemous
shine

but they already have you in their trap, poor fool, and you’ll suffocate before you can swim. they’ll hook you light but reel you in and kiss you sweet but burn your skin and quote you truth but prize your sin.

why, you asked?

competition

blasted stars

One year ago: Mochi

The silver-haired man sitting next to me at dinner said not a word the whole evening. He listened patiently to the judge on my left and nodded along as we all discussed the Legal Ethics scenario for the evening.

He seemed a real southern gentleman. A quiet, pensive man who started life as a hardworking youth and grew into a hardworking adult. His mind had been trained with the words and writings of the law, but his hand stil yearned for the skills of his more fulfilling life.

He was a craftsman. A tinkerer through and through. His joy came from tying strong knots of fishing line onto a hook or carving a block of wood into a toy soldier for his grandson.

It was the same attention to detail that made him an excellent lawyer. His days were spent arguing for his clients. I could imagine him in action during his prime - commanding the attention of the judge and jury in all the terror and power of the courtroom stage. But the night I met him, he spent the evening lost in his own contemplation, with his hands in his lap, not in prayer, but doing what came naturally to their skills. One of the tines of his fork was oddly bent, and over the course of the night, it was reshaped and reformed by his wrinkled but strong hands.

I learned more from his silence that night than from the tableful of respected attorneys giving their opinion on someone else’s life. At the end of the night, when he shook my hand warmly, I could truly say to him, “It was a pleasure to meet you, sir.”

sometimes eavesdropping is
the best inspiration

never underestimate the power of environment….sometimes you just need to change the places to which you allow your mind to wander

i was sitting in Panera yesterday, trying to work on a paper. for the most part, i spent my time watching people and doodling on my paper. but suddenly, i got a wave of inspiration and started writing bits of poetry. they never all make sense and i’m not exactly sure where they come from, but i write them down as quickly as possible before they waft away

the crest of the waves seems
higher these days
I hope it will last a bit
longer than before
my mind drowns in
those lows

i think when i don’t have a lot of academic or mentally challenging things to do, my poetic side wanes. instead of the extra time allowing my mind to turn to lyricism and inspiration, i waste a lot of time doing mind-numbing things. but lately…..it’s almost as if the voices have come back….i’ve started to hear my own mind speaking in verse, noticing things that i haven’t thought about for months

i wonder if they’re all looking at me
the strange, pensive girl in the corner
whispering to herself en Français

but it doesn’t matter to me
they don’t realize that my hands
have just found my pen again
and my ears just heard something
that will make my hand fill
scraps of paper for days

i end a line when my pen runs out of space to continue
but then my thoughts seem like broken seashells that
are pieced and re-attached together
and that doesn’t make any sense

one thing i’ve noticed
when I lose my poetry during the day
my heart and mind make up for it during the night
with dreams
my soul needs to express itself

the strangest thing is this - these past few months, though i haven’t been blogging (or even writing on the corner of my notes) at all, though my oratorical side has gone dormant…..it’s as if my mind takes all this pent-up imagery and funnels it into my dreams. i’ve had the most vivid, complicated, and interesting dreams in these past few months that i’ve had in all my life combined. and i remember most of them.

//one dream starred me as a angel who was an expert in martial arts. i was trying to inform the World Council of some imminent danger, but they wouldn’t believe me, so i flew up to the tower where they were having their cabinet meeting and spied on them. my favorite part was my outfit - long robes made up of a pashmina-like embroidered deep red fabric. // another dream involved a combination of a Model UN tournament, the Magic School Bus, Power Rangers, a Mughal poetry party, and the kidnapping of my teacher’s young son, which took place in my old house in Cary, the first home I remember // another dream involved a grown-up Harry Potter trying to fight evil forces who had taken to turning all the world leaders into babies. i was helping him and at one point I was driving him around somewhere and he looked in the back and saw all my Harry Potter books (that i guess i was carrying around for reference). he asked what they were and i told him that they were stories about his life when he was a child. he was fascinated and started flipping through them and pointed to a passage about a battle with You-Know-Who and said “I remember when this happened! But it didn’t happen like this….let me tell you my side of the story!” And then i woke up…blast.

I hope the dreams continue even when I get busier with classes and such….I love the feeling of waking up and momentarily thinking I’m in a different world

i can’t remember the last time i was able to sit down and write. it used to be that i would scribble on the corners of papers, napkins, or even just compose poetic prose while walking to class. at any rate, it seems that the creative juices have somehow been sucked out of me. i haven’t written in months and i actually forgot i had a blog until a friend emailed and encouraged me to post again.

it’s funny. i’ve found that i go through phases of self-awareness. at times, i feel as if i am held by an invisible force in the center of a whirlwind - sounds, colors, words, lives spin around me in a blur……like in the movies, where the confused and yet ultimately triumphant main character stands in the middle of a busy street and gazes intently as the world spins around him like an abstract painting. life is rushing by and it’s all the hero can do to keep up.

people notice - more and more you seem to be staring off into oblivion, pondering something, and someone interrupts your thoughts with a kindly “are you okay?” you nod and make amends for your distracted state of mind.
(more…)

corners of notebooks. the back of receipts. napkins. scratching out the story of my life on these scraps that i’ll stuff into my purse and then just toss anyway. i never save them. where would i put them if i did? i’m not one of those girls who has a secret drawer somewhere, filled with perfectly folded secrets. i keep it all *up here* - after all, that’s the safest place for it to be. no one will ever know. i only trust myself with my thoughts.

perhaps not even.

someday i will be the hero of my own epic