I was on vacation this Christmas to Texas, the state I arrived to when I first entered America as a Chinese immigrant. This poem was inspired when I paid a visit to my hometown.

Critique welcome!


Do you appreciate the present?
Do you appreciate the life?
We languish in our insularity
The empty illusion of what we lack
So shall you flounder in enticing lies?

Standing in that courtyard of fragile promises
Seeing the sullen sky reflected in peeling paint
A dry swimming pool drowning in dirt and weeds
The cold balconies where I used to run
Am I blinded by the inferior?
For, even then, I dwelled in the life
Even then, I was happy

Do you appreciate the now?
Only when faced by the sacrifices of yesterday
When doused in the past's raw truth
Do we realize
What are the infinitesimal steps of the present
That take us to our futures?

A humble home
A humble town
How can I now disdain the meager
When so faced by my own provident hopes?
Was this the nascence of my dreams?
Was this the dawn of my future?
That day I watched an unpromising sun
Bathe in overcast shadows
Meek apartments
Modest shopping plazas
Those striving souls so similar to the yesterday of mine
And for the first time in eons
I witnessed the sunrise

Do you appreciate the present?
Do you appreciate the life?
Do you dance in those simple dreams
That define the current bliss?
Or do you drown in those demons of envy
That whisper of all that you lack?
Because the past brings us to the now
And the now does not endure for eternity

I dare you to live your life

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Wow, that's really deep! I really like it. It has a really strong meaning to it and I love the ending. I can't think of anything bad about it. I love it!

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thats really deep( blah, i know cliche), its also really good...i cant find anything wrong with it...