#thoreau
Dear Henry,
You never knew me,
But your work transcended
Far beyond Walden Pond.
Two centuries later,
I find your spirit in my words.
I hear the wind through your cabin walls.
I trust that a man in the woods speaks louder than a crowd.
Thank you for being the spark that lit my voice.
You wrote my soul before I was born,
You dared my mind to try.
I'm honored to keep your spirit alive.
Aug 14, 2025
Aug 14, 2025 at 7:21 AM UTC
For a year or possibly more,
Decompression begins:
Purging electricity, electronics.
Fall away, Internet, Oh!
No more cellular,
**** the television set,
Except, perhaps, a radio,
Lest I totally forget....
Hello, paper,
Hello, books,
Come off the shelves;
Lose those ***** looks,
Warm again before my eyes,
Feel the press of my writing stick.
Thoreau, the fakir,
Left the social order
Just a year,
Though just how far
He really went
Remains foggily unclear,
And the fact that he returned
Suggests that Nature
Left him feeling burned.
So, like a diver,
Rising from the deep,
I'd take a while to meditate,
To let the busyness-es go
And put electric dreams to sleep.
Aug 5, 2019
Aug 5, 2019 at 1:26 PM UTC
Relaxation
nothing shy of a superpower.
In a world of distractions
it's hard to stay strong.
To find real stillness and
peace in the moments between
all the happening.
These are the moments that count,
That i'll remember in the end.
The times Thoreau sought after at walden,
Kerouac at Big Sur.
The times I seek now
that keep the fire in me burning.
Making me believe that life
really is the gift
I once thought
it was
Jul 3, 2019
Jul 3, 2019 at 5:04 PM UTC
Walk the nature trail when it's dark outside and the children are fast asleep, tucked under blankets stitched by their immigrant grandfathers. Let your shoes soak in the muddy ground, collecting dirt and crushed leaves, as you walk deeper into the forest. The birds weep as their lullabies get lost and twisted in the shadows. A deer or is it a gazelle hurries across the dirt-trodden trail, leaping into the a patch of ancient shrubs. Somewhere, miles away from civilization, is a city running on the labor of your Vietnamese father, his hands caked in red brick dust and pollen. Currently, all that matters is that the tab of acid you've taken has settled in your belly, as you cross the corroded wooden bridge to the other side of the trail, where the young adults are playing the ukulele and drinking Heineken.
I am empty like the pill bottle on my brother’s nightstand.
Jun 2, 2017
Jun 2, 2017 at 4:25 AM UTC
I did love you once.
-Hamlet
Light floods the road
invisible from the pavement
turned into beds of beggars
begging for the godly hope.
People plainly pass
perennial plot of pretensions.
Peace tonight is fragile,
so fragile that car honks fade,
so fragile that tire screeching
dies in the night.
Above are stars eaten by smoke.
The father and daughter
shared the night
with the blanket of stars
made of dusts.
(The night so fragile can’t hide their stomachs growling)
1.
Clarita, 24
let the night pass
under the warmth of coffee
and her broken press
whose myth died years back
but never in memories.
2.
(An old woman passed by with her cane fiddling the asphalt. I can hear her wishes. She wants to die.)
3.
It was Clarita who smiled
to all foolishness of childhood. True.
It was her way to ****
the marrow of life
knowing Thoreau or not,
from the threads of forgetting
& horrors of remembering.
4.
Her communique
falls flat from what she supposed to say
for she can’t utter a syllable
so ironic that she just tend to pretend
she never remembers
she never cares
for all what she need
is to let things reveal themselves
so apocalyptic that even herself
don’t mind when.
5.
(Lovers passed by with their hands swaying, either by gravity or by air)
6.
Her mother tried her luck to pick cherry blossoms.
Her father stole her past.
Clarita killed them in the vignette of her neurons.
7.
If only she can turn back in time
and live like her diary’s wishes
Clarita, whose heart pierced by a chance lost
will redeem what she has to,
& sleep like a child in a dusty bed
where the blanket hide her
& her universe.
8.
The phone rings. She can’t ignore the line.
9.
She hates the feeling of falling in love
like how she hears the phone ringing
in the middle of the night
where insomniacs finally sleep
from a distant snoring of customers
barraging like thunders of senseless
predicaments and tongue-tied promises.
10.
Tonight, Clarita made a promise.
She will let the night pass.
Dec 9, 2016
Dec 9, 2016 at 10:38 PM UTC
The complexity of coupling is an exponential increase.
No matter how perturbed life may be, we strive to linearize it,
thank you Laplace. You transform us.
It is integral to simplify life.
Like Da Vinci, Like Thoreau:
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication”
“Our life is frittered away by detail…simplify, simplify”
Let us not differentiate between the good or the bad
the high or the low.
Life is too brief to quantify, qualify, and compare it to others.
It is yours alone. Embrace the change over time.
Feb 18, 2016
Feb 18, 2016 at 1:01 PM UTC
Abscond from your digital world,
Fall into the rhythm offered by Mother Earth;
Bathe in the glory apparent before you,
Endeavor to obtain a new birth.
To think one is living,
One must go through the motions;
To know one is living,
One must see the valleys, forests, and oceans.
A man spends days inside his home,
Completely and utterly alone;
Sometimes he delivers messages
Or uses his telephone.
Yet even then he is so integrated;
So controlled by technology.
Thoreau thought no man could live such a life,
And still be considered free.
"We do not ride on the railroad;
It rides upon us - "
These words from Thoreau
We need to wholly trust.
The creator is often imprisoned
By the creations he has birthed;
I think a life so wasted
Has very little worth.
Jan 12, 2016
Jan 12, 2016 at 12:30 AM UTC
One foot in front of the other.
Days passed by.
Walking was said to be a spiritual practice which yielded many dividends. The replenishment of the soul and the connection to all around you. Pilgrimage to sacred sites, walking the labyrinth, meditation. Strolling, cavorting, frolicking or wandering. As we stretch our legs, we stretch our minds and souls.
Few philosophers and writers had ever penned the absolute, gut-wrenching torturous boredom of the walk as Ronnie James now experienced it.
Fifty-six bones, one hundred and twelve ligaments and seventy-six muscles of dull, throbbing pain.
Who could tell how long it had been? He had but only the tedious task of counting his steps to judge it by. He'd long ago lost all track.
Sauntering alone through the barren ocean of sand.
Indeed, Thoreau wrote that the word itself, "saunter," may have been derived from “sans terre.”
“Without land or a home,” murmured Ronnie.
With every step we take, we leave some ghost of ourselves behind,
He who sits motionless, watching life pass by through the window, may be the most awful vagrant of them all – but the saunterer is no more vagrant than the meandering river.
Days passed by.
Aug 19, 2015
Aug 19, 2015 at 3:18 AM UTC
A written word is the choicest of relics,
It is something at once more intimate with us,
And more universal than any other work of art,
Just as books are the treasured wealth of the world,
I wanted to live deliberately,
So I went to the woods,
And I found it wholesome to be alone there,
For we need the tonic of wildness,
A single gentle rain,
Makes the grass many shades greener,
So our prospects brighten,
On the influx of better thoughts,
We should be blessed if we lived in the present always,
And took advantage of every accident that befell us.
Jan 25, 2015
Jan 25, 2015 at 8:59 PM UTC
We need the tonic of wilderness
the land and sea. Indefinitely wild.
Unsurveyed and unfathomed.
A taste of beautiful cultivated outdoors
I wanted to live deep
and **** the marrow out of life
but we loiter in the winter
while it is already spring
The surface of the Earth
soft and impressable
carving deep
ruts of tradition and conformity
I’d rather go before the mast
on deck of the world.
Mysterious and explorable
amid the moonlight and mountains.
Jan 23, 2015
Jan 23, 2015 at 4:41 PM UTC
Clouded days,
Snow in sight .
Darkest night,
The moon's a light.
Quiet frost like crystal- glows,
Burning fire makes warmth flow.
As branches feel the weight,
we learn this winters fate.
Do we let our hearts freeze along?
or learn to sing winters song?
We can only sing together-
to make warm this cold wicked weather,
and I wish for this good to come true
And find warmth in others, in You.
Clean and white canvas anew.
Is it easier to leave it or create in hues?
Winters ice freezing many of them all,
and we hope their cold Hearts might come around next fall.
Jan 8, 2015
Jan 8, 2015 at 9:24 PM UTC
I see Thoreau as a token
You and my airplane ticket.
I never get it why you only declare your love for Thoreau
Instead of something darker, Hunter S Thompson,Marijuana
Or me.
Traveling in Denmark now, I guess you'll eventually head to the Netherlands.
Where your true colors shine through your eye socket.
Oh, so I still admire you
Dreaming of having a walk with you beside Walden
Having Arizona ice tea in the dessert
I beg Thoreau to win me an airplane ticket to
The unknown
Nov 24, 2014
Nov 24, 2014 at 1:06 AM UTC
some chose the company of fine wine
while I enjoyed the company of Thoreau
images of flora and fauna
woven into the spine of the book
with renditions of romance
between human and creature
humans are so self involved
the gravitational pull of their ego
can swallow an ecosystem whole
all things beautiful we destroy
we hunt, we cut, we want it all
every last ounce for ourselves
we have long strayed from our instincts
rather we strayed from purpose
into castles made of sand
with every grain being selfishness
the pursuit of belonging
the gathering of things
the celestial purpose
that once we revolved
now has turned to dust
we follow blind
hand fed ****
were told it's truth
but the "fallacies" are more legit
what do we strive for
another dollar made
moments that are priceless
give you more
than another pair of shoes
or fancy clothes tucked in your drawer
I'd give a million dollars up
to see a sunrise from a mountain top
then fade under the Los Vegas strip
to see the stars dance with northern lights
than the light pollution of NYC at night
for I have seen more than the one who has not stepped in the forest
for I have seen a process thousands of years in the making
the circle of life
of symbiotic connections and mutual gain
the soil the plants of which gave birth
to the food we eat and the air we breathe
to the nutrients infused in the ground beneath our feet
May 4, 2014
May 4, 2014 at 11:17 PM UTC
Blanketed gray skies
rolling in,
Something bout the rain,
Raises goosebumps on my skin.
Yet were all inside under cover,
Cherishing the long nights,
Nights that cause me to write here and wonder.
As the wind whispers my heart does too,
Putting words to the paper,
Ink in hues of blue.
The quiet hum of the rain surrounds,
Dimmed lights,
Soothing sounds.
Apr 29, 2014
Apr 29, 2014 at 9:46 PM UTC
What We Are: by Dakota Pizzi
Have you ever wondered how the wind howls through the trees?
Or why the leaves tremble in the breeze?
Theres no use to wonder,
No rhyme or reason too.
It just makes sense like me and you.
And 'though the cold winds comin down,
The snow is burying us in.
I know the sun will shine again,
Just like it always did.
Its like asking why the sunshines as it comes over the hill,
Or why the earth moves slowly at its own will.
Theres no way to calculate,
Its just meant to be,
Thats why you belong with me.
We are the wind speaking through the trees,
We are the sun coming up to please,
Theres no reason to wonder why we are what we are, its the way its meant to be,
Yes, it's the way its meant to be.
Apr 28, 2014
Apr 28, 2014 at 10:18 PM UTC
Winter's Song:
Wind whipping through my hair,
White fluff swirling without care.
Icy flakes, descending snow
bustling people saying "lets go!".
I feel the freedom, all it brings.
The silence of snow, how nature sings!
And I will sing along,
For sure we all know this song.
The symphony of peace on white canvas
To which life choreographs all its dances.
And in that easy light of winter snow,
I sat by the candles, feeling their warm- amber glow.
Apr 26, 2014
Apr 26, 2014 at 5:11 PM UTC