19 Jan 2019

Mid-Winter Poetry Digest

From time to time I will use the notes app on my iPhone as a place to store my thoughts and write some prose. This winter I became specially fond of the notes app and here are a few of the poems/prose I have written since late November.


The language switching, the old ladies who have the same charisma everywhere, the distinction between western and Chinese.

I’m going on a journey, to somewhere I haven’t been before.

But some things are familiar and have reminiscence of places I’ve been before, both externally but also within my self.

- December 7th


These words. Sometimes they spiral out of me without control, directly from my brain to my hands to my pen and into whatever journal or piece of paper is nearby. The content doesn’t have to make sense, not at first. But I write, I vomit onto the paper. My brain releases and I can stop and look at its contents. I can make sense of what I see. These thoughts no longer silently control me because I can see them. They are there on the physical paper. I own them and I have authority over them, they no longer have authority over me.

But sometimes I can’t get anything out. The words, the sentences, the thoughts, the ideas they strangle my brain until it can’t articulate anything.

Until I feel nothing at all.

- December 23rd


My body moves through space and time.

Through endless streets of delicious fruit, smoke with the smell of meat, dirty water, smiles, sweat, a language I don’t understand.

My body moves as I try to figure how it fits here, which way to turn, which stall to stop at.

Through endless wonder and confusion.

Through sites that seems oddly familiar yet refreshingly new.

- December 30th


I like the rainy days. The ones that make you say oh it so gross outside. The ones that are a perfect excuse for the over indulgence of hot chocolate. The ones that feel like home because California isn’t yet that. They’re the best when you’re inside a warm place. They’re also wonderful to walk in, to feel the earth, to smell the rain and to acknowledge how small and infinite you are as part of this universe.

- January 17th