I'm not comfortable save for my old teenagery xanga page

I'm trying to grow out of it, but I guess if I'm so unsettled everywhere else, I must not be ready.

Here's to triumphing over adolescence:

laixu.wordpress.com

my dream last night, told backwards

inside a old hong kong pin-up there's a girl that you'd recognize.

she bought noodles from the noodle house. the same one you went to with all of your friends. she asked for a boiled egg, pickled and salted vegetables with the thick noodles even though she probably couldn't afford food for the rest of the week with what's she's spending on that bowl of noodles, but she's thinking fuck it all, if there's ever going to be a day for noodles today's the day for it.

outside, a mob is brewing, but it had nothing to do with her.

previously, an old matron with long fingernails had just explained the notion of class to her. Beside the matron stood a girl with downcast eyes, the daughter, a friend of hers, who is now never to speak to our protagonist again. The thing about class is, it's there for a reason, dear. We know how to handle ourselves delicately. We took you in because you showed promise, but I see now, truly, my mistake.

I thought better of you too, Our protagonist responds, and leaves for downstairs.

The matron keeps her contempt expression, until the daughter takes a certain red hairpin from her head, and taps it onto her mothers, as if to say, this is shameful. I will have nothing to do with this. The matron is left alone behind her glass desk, full of magnificent dead butterflies.

previously, we see a montage of a rich young bachelor at a table, meeting with families trying their best to market the marriageability of their daughters. he's not very attractive. but he's rich and he's proud of the fact he has the choice of picking the kinkiest one. And perhaps after a while...pick a second wife...

One of the families is the matron with her daughter, and the personal maid and best friend of the daughter, our protagonist. Do you see my daughter there? says the matron to the bachelor. He nods, watching the wrong girl. The matron, a seasoned and veteran businesswoman herself, starts her long and seductive promotion of her daughter, unknowingly luring the poor man into falling in love with our protagonist.

A pervert and greedy woman! What am I dreaming these days?

my other dream was one where

I was part of an troupe of actors who performed on-stage as superheros. I was the small, "ethnic" one and my suit was light purple. I panicked, realizing I had never rehearsed at all. I went to the other dressing room, found another superhero and asked him for the script.

As I was reading it I realized

I didn't know my character's name at all.

This is the hammerhead spaceship.

I am dreaming of climbing a tree. A small one.

So small it is only a scar in the ground.

I twitch

i have an eye twitch in my face i think

because my cornea is irritated

upper division latin is hard

karen is displeased by the vegan

butter substitute in the refrigerator

i think the muscle that is twitching my eye is getting tired and sore, but it can't help itself. it's like it gets off on flexing.

oats are bitter when baked?

notes on this observation later.

oh.

I forgot to post my pie recipe onto karen's cooking blog.

this will be the new thing,

Bryce and I unfortunately lack this magic bean that breaks alcohol down in our bodies. Or something. Friends and family agree. I am much more fun unintoxicated.

THUS. We will open a bar in the future that serves pie shots.

tiny bite-sized pies. (think about it: higher crust to inside ratio)

and soup shots. (like soup in bread bowls. but in a bread shot-glass)

IT WILL WIN.

holiday season

bullets will be useless

I dislike

the thickness of your socks

the color of stripes in your

shirts and

the one devilish yellow

gleam in your left

eye

I'll pretend the trees in this town will be kind and you'll pretend

I didn't call to want you back

even demons have lush lashes

I hate it when

I find a piece of your curly hair

in the pages of my books, what do you do

rub your ass in them when

I'm not looking

jesus christ

flu season

cranes in white nylon suits will feed you with

their metallic beaks feeling around your tongue.

hold still. trust me it'll be

nothing like how they'll say it'd go.

in the reflection of their glass faces, let's play

pretend. I'll be congress, you'll be the

law, and don't worry it won't

be sexual or

awkward

at all.

Spanish-Chinese girls look different than Ameican-

Chinese girls. Both are willing to show more

leg than Chinese-Chinese girls.

18 ounces, and you'd be that much closer. I dare you to

unclose me to find me thinking about my open mouth,

find me thinking of the poem in the shadow

the cicadas making the forest quiet, the lightness of

birdsong that deepens the forest, the wind stopping so still it stirs the petals

off flowers.

I am thinking of the word "benight".

I am thinking of the puppy who circles us,

how I'd love it for a moment, how I wonder what he knows,

sniffing at our ankles.

I am thinking to close my eyes to become a narrow shadow, my body dissolved, embraced by a warm feeling of a tenor voice soaking through the transparency of my being, water warm like a hot spring. I am not even thinking. I am someone else, turning to the wall while I receive fever.

earthquake season

rabbits will warn us, but we will ignore their warnings,

most of which will be too small to be felt.

magic markers will determine plate tetonics, two-dollar

packets of gum will cost $4.99, murderers will claim

the homicide was consensual, and at Christmas time, the best pears

we send to your grandparents will smell like sweat

on feet.

actually,

everything might end

up ok. the ceiling and walls and

antibiotics are in place, sad people

can be fixed, and from a distance, we can see

grandma walking home holding a huge leg of ham.

she says, she

says,

roses are a kind of people,

smiling is an kind of spring:

a contemplation allowing steam

to escape from below the surface.

she really meant to say,

I really hope I don't get the swine flu.

school season

mother said one time I came home from 5th grade really bummed because I had a substitute teacher and she sucked. I don't even remember who my real 5th grade teacher was. I just remember standing in line after recess this one time, finally gathering enough courage to tell the kids to stop making fun of this fat kid named Robert Qumar.

Later in 6th grade I would come to hate this Qumar kid because he was socially awkward and liked Sailor Moon, and boys weren't supposed to like Sailor Moon. I liked Sailor Moon.

I think my 6th grade math teacher was gay. He was small and diabetic and sadly loved chocolate.

I think my 6th grade homeroom teacher was mormon. I have no basis for this other than the fact that one time he used a mormon website to show us an example for our genealogy project, and that he was very pale.

We made fun of our 7th grade science teacher, Mrs. Willensky, for being obese and having a habit of bouncing in her seat. This might have been due to a restless leg syndrome that made her bounce her heel up and down constantly, but we didn't care. She had a mean face and called Jolly Ranchers Jolly Rogers. I heard later she got liposuction. And that she finally noticed a kid laughing and pointing at her bouncing, stopped abruptly in embarrassment. I'm not sure if this was before or after her liposuction.

In 6th grade when I hung out with other people during lunch, Bonnie Tran stepped on my ID card in the locker room. The absurdity of this malicious act confused and bothered me the entire day.

After sex-ed all of us rushed out of the classroom disgusted with our bodies. Popular kids' names never get made fun of, even if it sounded like 'semen'.

Danny had this backpack that said "Bad Cop/No Donut" and I had no idea why other kids thought it was funny. I get it now, but I still don't think it's funny.

Cory Woodall and I had the same schedule in 7th grade and we joked that someday we'll find each other at our future workplaces, with the same work schedule. Then we reminisced about an old computer game featuring Putt-Putt. Secretly I wished we had the same schedule for the rest of school.

One time we made a big deal that she wore a skirt one day and she was embarrassed, having been labeled a tomboy up until then. I wondered why she wanted to rebel against it because I was always jealous of the tomboy label, as if it gave the wearer a sort of power against the weaknesses associated with the regular girl label. It would be long before I'd realize it was as much of a stifling label as any.

In 4th grade we watched a documentary on Big Foot and I was scared out of my mind. I still do not understand the educational value of such a film.

work in progress draft 2 - Monsoon season

From the light of the horizon, the term sunset is under fierce debate
between the glass of our balcony door and the electricity of the skyline.
Your eyes of fog and ink have invented them
in the most profound awareness of the moment.

Rain and air is dangerously thin and terrible outside.
I open the door, and the typhoon becomes my hair.
. . .

We sympathize with the inhaling and exhaling of my white curtains,
the shapes of clouds, and the leftover sand in the corners of pockets.
Our existence begins to disintegrate, watching the faces of our mothers grow younger and
younger in a magnificent slideshow—the richness of hue, the definition of wrinkles melt
into a blur.

The colors of the monsoon coagulate into a deep and muddy purple;
I won’t hold you, not even when you cry.
. . .

Later, I’d almost lose my sense of belonging.
You’d trade me in for a sun coin, if you hadn’t already.
One to hold in your white palm, cold as if alive. And it’d stay inside your pocket, inside your hand, where it will never get wet. We call each other by the possessive forms but neither of us will belong to each other.
You will never forgive me for writing this poem.

The tips of my fingers meet the tips of your fingers when we match our hands for size.
Time lifts in an impossible feat of physics, a few hours is already the air
holding up a Boeing 747, its beverage carts, and the 3 different languages.

On the ride back, I’d dream cartoons. I sit in a lake,
wishing for July.
. . .

When I look up, the fireworks of the sun blinds me through a million prisms of water.
When I look down from the balcony, my hair falls in before me in the direction of the rain.
Warm rain smothers like love.

Lightning strikes, naked and bold a few feet from the railing—
I fall back, pulling a muscle in my leg.
You are asleep in my bed—dreaming of explosions,
grandfather, and the Nationalist Army.
. . .

When Taiwan is submerged—
everyone gets a prize.

I’ll come back to see you
but I promise nothing.

Direction of diffusion, temporary wholes

I.

I remember liquids, especially.
By passive, I mean not
only a general curiosity. Nobody can be constantly moved from one place
to another.

To be sure, I directed a steady gaze
at the moment. At one end
I suppose, I was

walking in the wind for stories, inches,
miles. I classified
the movement in the arties
as the most real.

At the other end, how desperately
slow was the deepening into a
subjection, a disassembly line of
memories, a dull throb-
bing sensation.

It all happened.

The sun that envelops
color, simultaneously spent my brother, sung
into the snow.

I said, “wait”

II.

Even now, at an instant of yes and of course,
you may be
missing.

In an aroma lose my sense of the definite, but
the answer matters. Subject to
modulation, I still choose to feed you,
even if courage only comes to you

in dreams. Now we are
high in the sleep, together
in this light-filled room

and still, the half of you in the white
is blinding.