My first sonnet was lonely, so I wrote another one to keep it company. This sonnet is about some of my intrinsic values. I am a very self-conscience person, and this reflects how I feel about myself most of the time. There is a hint of self-acceptance at the end much like Amanda Palmer's "In My Mind". It is a very uplifting song if you need to get out of a state of depression.

Sonnet II

I wrote a short story because I found a very old rough draft of one. I decided to completely rewrite it and I feel somewhat satisfied with the way it turned out.

The setting of the story is in a bookstore. I wrote my first draft of this story three years ago inside a Borders bookstore I was quite attached to. Other than that, the rest of my story is fiction.

Coincidences

P.S. I was deeply inspired by the book Shutter Island.

“Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real as words?”
(Oscar Wilde)

1. Find the creative side inside of you. Start with a nice cup of coffee at your favorite shop, buy a fancy new journal, write in green ink like Pablo Neruda, or whatever color inspires you.
2. If you come up with a BIG ___________________blank__________________________ Write down anything. Start with what is in front of you. Use your five senses. How does your coffee taste? Does it have a pleasant aroma? Is it hot to the touch or cold? Does it look dark as your soul? Does the sound of coffee beans being ground annoy you? Don't forget your sixth sense. Don't have one? Pretend you do. It always makes writing more interesting.
3. The coffee. It sucks. It reminds you of your ex-boyfriend. Watered down, cold, and boring. There. There's your spark. You're incorporating memories into your poem! Combining the present with your past makes beautiful writing.
4. You tried to sweeten your coffee with some honey when your fingers got all sticky. After returning to your table with some napkins, you're completely stuck. You can't write anymore. Don't panic. Google search your favorite poet or musician. Listen to the words. Let the words inspire you to finish your poem.
5. Finally, you feel somewhat accomplished. Your poem has a beginning, middle, and end. Then you realize it's hardly poetry at all. There's no rhyming, no rhythm, or devices used. Don’t let this dishearten you. Go back and add them in. Instead of that clique simile you used, turn it into a motif. Open up a thesaurus, go on RhymeZone.com. Never publish a poem until you finish your fifth draft.
6. What gratification is there in writing a poem if no one is going to enjoy it? Present your poem to a loved one or post it on a poetry community like PoetrySoup.com. Someone out there needs help with step five.

I would like to begin this post with a quote, “Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore” (Andre Gide). I know this quote by heart because it is tattooed in Chinese characters on the left side of my significant other's chest. He and I both understand the powerful meaning of this quote. Traveling takes courage, adaptability, and respect. These are the three fundamental elements that represent my life.

(I was going to write a transitional phrase just now, but then I realized life and death are opposites. If I wrote a transitional phrase, it would expand into a short novel. What you're reading in parenthesis now is so you understand that my mind does not simple wander, but rather it thinks so expeditiously it doesn't have time to explain. I hope this suffices.)

When I greet death someday, I hope my last words will be poetic. Perhaps I should prepare something now because my death could tragically appear at any time. I was thinking of something short and to the point. Something I could whisper under my breath effortlessly. It occurred to me that the best type of poem for this occasion is a haiku. A haiku has a total of seventeen syllables. That is three less than a rhyming couplet written in iambic pentameter. So here is what I have written, hopefully, I won't be reciting these eleven words any time soon:

The autumn waters
Of this world enlighten me,
From this delusion.

Autumn represents death because during the everlasting cycle of the four seasons, the climatic changes of autumn appear to be withering. Water represents an inescapable force as well. I am not sure if there is an afterlife, but if I could have whatever I wanted, the afterlife would be a gigantic library of everything one has ever desired knowledge about. All the world's universal truths explained at your fingertips. I hope Heaven is enlightenment.

Next week, I am going to give a few tips on writing poetry. As an aspiring English teacher, I should take this "how to" guide seriously, but writing a parody of one is far more entertaining.

Lately, I have been reading Chinese poetry. There is a beautiful collection on Chinese-poems.com. The poems I read are naturalistic and would make Wordsworth himself take a deep breathe in awe. I find nature equally beautiful, but I find it challenging to write about it. I am not accustomed to seeing nature. Living in a desert and a city, nature lies only in the imagination. I come across more concrete buildings, flashing lights, and litter than I do plains, rivers, and forests. I feel like I have substituted artificiality for nature in my heart. For instance, each day I walk to school, I like to think of it as a little journey.

Yes, it’s time for a stream of consciousness.

From my apartment to the campus library, it is a forty minute walk. A lot can happen in forty minutes. Within the first five minutes, I walk past an empty lot that used to be an apartment complex. Pieces of colorful tile still lie stuck to the ground there. Tumbleweeds, pieces of glass, and other miscellaneous items from the past of where these people used to live lie abandoned on the dusty, dry dirt. I admire this empty lot because it reminds me of a deserted plain. A place people used to live and call home. It is odd walking past there because I wonder if denizens who used to live there make the same trace my steps do now.

I continue to walk and come across a flood channel. Since I was little girl, I have always lived by one. I love walking by the flood channel because it’s rare to see water in a desert. I always find it awe-inspiring to walk by one when it is raining outside. The flow of the channel goes from a slow moving and peaceful river to a raging, wild rapid. On most days, there are clear skies and ducks floating in the channel. I often think about going down there and feeding them, or eating them, depending whether or not I am hungry.

My last destination is at UNLV. I always admire the trees over by the Physics and Chemistry buildings. The trees are majestically tall and leafy. Recently, their leaves have been falling off and I walk by there at night and purposely step on them to hear the soft crunch noise under my feet. I feel like I am walking through a tiny forest or a few minutes.

Even though I live in the city, I still enjoy nature as much as anyone. I substitute an empty lot or a deserted plain, a flood channel as a river, and a small patch of trees as a forest. I may not be as imaginative as I was as a kid, but I still like to make comparisons in my head.

Back to Chinese poetry, you may be wondering why I have picked up an interest in this. (Other than the fact that I’m minoring in Chinese and plan on moving to Shanghai.) I like Chinese poetry because I want a Chinese tattoo. I want to combine my passion for Chinese writing and poetry. Someday, once I develop enough vocabulary and grammar skills in Chinese, I want to write my own Chinese poem following a similar structure and poetic format as they do. The first thing I learned is that their poems are based off nature. So, I have a lot to learn until I can write my own poem in Chinese, but it is definitely going to be a fun journey.

Dead leaves are all you left behind
To break beneath my feet,
I hate to see you leave this land
Now banished by defeat.

A wanderer you have become
A wounded creature gold,
You leave red blood and bits of soul
A pathway for the cold.

You stumble on the roads of life
Each year we meet again,
And passing by you take my hand
And touch my heart with pain.

Old memories come back to me
Of years before the war,
The days before you fought the cold 
And taught the winds to soar.

You were my friend, we danced each day
And laughed in storms of flame,
I heard you cry each starlit night
Until the winter came.

One morning when I called to you
You did not answer back,
I searched for you all through that day
Until the sky was black.

Then just as stars begun to rise
Upon a field of frost,
I found a puddle of your blood
And knew that you had lost.

I'm not particularly full of ideas, but people look at me like hungry wolves anyway. I've been diagnosed with "writer's block" for a long time now, and I've learned that ideas don't flow. They come in bits and pieces. Sometimes I'm organized. I actually keep one of those Barnes & Nobles bookstore journals and actually write inside of that journal. Is that journal by my side when I actually have an idea? NO. Whenever I get a decent idea, there is absolutely no paper or writing utensils around me. My hypothesis is if I surround myself in a paperless environment, ideas will pop out because I don't have anything to write them down. My rough drafts are embarrassing to look at. They are always written on crummy looking pieces of paper ripped out from books, newspapers, and magazines. All my original work is always thrown away, haha. Much like Wreck This Journal.