Wednesday, January 25, 2012

pavlove

I've always had a keen eye for discerning other people's faults

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I keep expecting a blue fairy to make me a real man

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life of chasing butterflies

ipsomniac

if a woman's most important feature is her face, then a man's is surely his spine

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waking up is hard to do when you don't know you're asleep

shut up, crime

I need to find some new friends

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so many things I'd like to change about myself, not sure where to start

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deprived of honest/earnest/intellectual conversation

gut feelings

you can't always trust them

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The trouble with hating so many things is that it's very hard to keep from becoming one of them

Monday, January 23, 2012

separate states

the new year always makes me feel melancholy

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why do strings and ivory keys
strike such chords within me

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every once in awhile i feel the need to immerse myself in sadness

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farewells are
such a dreadful necessity

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you'd think I'd oughta be used to that by now

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winter always makes me feel melancholy

Sunday, January 15, 2012

no more heroes / firstborn

I love visiting empty shopping malls, especially if they look run-down. Like a barren wasteland, the vacant buildings are like a forgotten monument, now the embodiment of a faded masterpiece - an uncharted territory rife with adventure. Walking along the empty avenues, through impressive archways and expansive concourses, I imagine myself an alien explorer discovering the ruined remnants of a once busy marketplace. Its abandonment is a tragically poignant parable, but such parables are too common to count and are often consequently ignored.

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I sit in an old wooden chair, on the same cushions and cushion covers I used to 12 years ago, back when I was a kid mesmerised by the television- oblivious to everything and anything else. Now, I take in everything. My uncle sits with a pile of pine cones on the plastic table in front of him. The afternoon sun makes its way through the full length windows, filling the house with its warmth. With the windows fully open, sounds of passing cars, the light panting of the dog and the summer heat enter making the world a part of the house, or rather, the house a part of the world. The tv, in its usual spot, calmly informs us of war and oil spills, but we pay it no attention. The narration of current affairs seems foreign in this familiar setting - the wallpaper stained with memory, the nostalgia soaked carpet - but it is preferable to listening to the empty air that an old lady's belaboured breath would have once filled, so we leave it on. Now her picture hangs on the wall overlooking the dining table; beside it, a picture of her husband - my grandfather.

His picture always looked slightly forlorn to me. His expression gravely solemn, I used to avoid looking at his picture, perhaps out of some form of reverence - the same kind of courtesy that prevents people from making eye contact in the elevator or on the subway. Now together, as I study their portraits, their features seem impossibly serene. Resting side by side, countenance captured in black and white, he no longer looks forlorn. Like a flower photographed from a different angle, his wife's presence beside him reveals a different dimension to me, or at least that's what it seems like. I was never very close to my grandfather - too young and too busy watching cartoons to care. My dad spoke of him infrequently, but they were always words of praise and admiration. I contemplate with wonder how I could know so little of the people whose blood runs through my veins - a pair of anonymous donors, distant neighbours, familiar strangers.

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

human geography

fingers trace the careless contours of her skin
her body quivers and shivers
a tiny earthquake
stifled ripples from waves within
I study her peaks and faults
valleys and dunes shifting
chest rising and falling
like the tide

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love poems are not my forte

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

硫黄島 アイディリスト

her eyes could speak
languages foreign and familiar
sweet sounds of soft and smooth silk
that like a stream spill forth
meanings too lovely for words
poems unpronounceable
laced invitations, gilded elegies
weaving gossamer threads
invisible and irresistible
that kiss and caress
as fleetingly as her gaze
secret parcels with velvet ribbons
fragile as a butterfly's dream
and as precious as its wings


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too specific/narrow/straightforward. too much embellishment. not saying enough

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the grace of a Grecian statue
features as if carved of marble
a thousand mysteries hidden in her eyes
sparkle like pieces of gold and silver
buried beneath a somber shroud
treasure that would inspire both brute
and empire alike
attempt to claim and conquer


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better

Long Revision

 夕食後、ベアは湾のパノラマビューのために4月をエスプラネードに連れて行くことを申し出たが、彼女は翌朝早く空港にいなければならないと言って断った。代わりに、4月は金融街を二分し、川の河口を横断して少し上流のMRT駅に到着できるルートを提案しました。そこで彼らは手入れの行き届いた都...