CD

The relics of old times like cassettes, I see you disappearing into the shadows of the DVDs and Blue Rays. Some laptops don't even have CD drives nowadays, just a couple of USB ports to connect a CD drive player. iPads don't even have that. I remember you in the old days. Let me reminisce the old days. Even though I'm only 19 years old, and old days isn't really that old.

You installed my first video game, Starcraft. I played it off the CD drive making that familar whirl-whirl. I didn't know what CD crack was, and if I lost the CD, I was screwed. Literally dependent on playing off you. Like playing music off a vinyl. Without the vinyl, the record player is worth less than a lampstand. Thank you for all your playtimes with me 'til you were scratched and bruised.

You held my movies and musics. No grooveshark or internet to stream them music. No piratebay to hunt down the movies. (Even though I never used the website to get them movies.) I remember then again, I watched it off a DVD most likely. However, you guys are like siblings. And your younger brother deserves some credits too. Both are on the way of disappearing slowly.

Like your father floppy disk and your uncle cassettes, you too are in your middle age years, CD. You still work, but your yuppie brother DVD and son, Blue-ray, are taking over the family business. As well as those kids from your high school everyone ignored, the internet and USB are encroaching on your family business. Things aren't so golden now, but I still know you.

Maybe I'll talk about you when I'm old. Really old. Old enough to tell my grandkids that back in my days, we had round donut shaped disks. Only could hold five hundred megabytes, which would probably be not enough to hold a single item design in diablo 7. Still I won't forget. Like a curmudgeonly old stereotype thinking of the good days. Maybe I'll play my music CD I got for last Christmas. Although it is Katy Perry.

-Wren

Coinflip

Fifty-Fifty, fairness divine.
Toonie-Loonie, debates resign
Of who starts first after the toss
In a game to find win or loss.

The deciding judgement hast been cast
Into clear air, roundest silver
It goes up slow, and comes down fast
Justest outcome coin delivers.

Sometimes just go toss heads or tail
Then just do it, success or fail.

-Wren

Tree

Up, up and up. Towards the sun.
Through decades of time and seasons.
Leafs sprout, grow, drop and again they grow.
Like springtime greens and autumn grain.
Barks and branches move to and fro
In winter wind or summer rain.

Up, up and up. I see it go.
It's unstoppable. No, no, no.


-Wren

Red and Blue

If a man from matrix gave you two choice:
One you know and love, filled with reality
Or born into reborn into a world you don't;
Everything goes your way there. Get the money,
The women (or men), the things you want,
And whatever you desire. You don't worry
About god or wars or cruelty or poverty
Because everyone's satisfied and at peace.
Your thought controls the world to be
The way it must operate and your wish
Is the driving force of this other world.

Which would you live in? The former or latter?
For me, with no doubt be the former.
The latter is an imaginative hell on earth.
A man can't feel joy unless he has learned of pain.
No satisfaction of food comes without hunger.
A sense of achievement is robbed without work.
Success feels nowhere good if you have never failed.
It'd be like watching your favourite team win
But already knowing the future they'd win.
Everything would go the way you imagine it,
But won't that be the ultimate boredom?
You'd feel smug and brag to your friends,
But you already know how they'll respond.

Your lover will just do what you imagine there:
Ever predictable, not outside of what you want,
Only feels pain or jealousy when you dictate it,
Monotony rules supreme. Insanity soon follows.
What good for is peace, the abstract intangible,
Without knowing the atrocities of warfare?
What good for is crimelessness, if everything
Is already given to you for free and limitless
If a thief stole your Ferrarri, you'd hate him,
Only because you worked blood and tears for it.
If you can get another one instantly, why hate?
Ultimate monotony, everything's cookie cutter.
In the end, you'd imagine for the other world.
But that's the only thing you won't get back.

I toil, strive, and work. In the world of reality,
I sometimes win, but usually lose out more.
When I gamble, I don't beat the house odds.
Hunger I can feel and poverty I've seen,
Aftermath of war and crimes on the news,
Pain of rejections and loves that never fruited,
All makes my success worthwhile and joyful.
Those random windfall make for surprise,
A bite after a full week's fast is heavenly
Peace is loved after seeing instability and pain,
Appreciate little conveniences in life to full.
This is the world I know and love. A villain.
When you beat it, you just gotta love it.


-Wren

Pathways

I've met my old friends again recently at a noon-lunch
After much cheery reception and sating the munch,
We talked where we were, what we're doing nowadays
One's a disciple of mechanical engineering that pays
Another one guides foreign learners to the university
Campus, he learns physiology to fullest capacity.
A third works in a biology lab sequencing DNA
Searching the marks of ancestors of green algae.
The fourth moved from the Burnaby mountains
To UBC, studying summer econ by the fountains.
How diverse we split. It's been only a couple years.
I wonder next two decades. We'll have changed.
Future us would laugh at current us over a couple beers.
Laugh at our joys, pains, burdens that we managed.

I look forward to that day.
But I also still love today.

-Wren

Looking at the Black Ceiling

The lightbulbs phase out black;
A vortex of void and dark;
I close my eyes. I see nothing.
I open them. Still see nothing.
Blind as a blood-smelt shark.

No heaven-starred night above.
No wolf-yearned orange moon.
A sense of unseen tranquility
And the scent of silence soon
Overwhelms me into serenity.

Follow the ever-forgotten Morpheus
Into deep down the hare burrow.

Wren