Shanhu Lee

– Parody of Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise”

You may shame me with your finger,

You may scourge me with your lies,

You may smear me with your hatefulness,

But still, like the Moon, I will rise,

And still, like hummingbirds, I will bloom.

Shanhu Lee

1. I feel every night the Moon rattles the poems that I want to write.
2. I feel every house should have a dogwood.
3. I feel I cannot remember anything after reading a book.
4. I feel I never can remember the names of plants.
5. I feel I want to eat breakfast all day.
6. I feel I want to stay in bed and read all day long.
7. I feel I will never be able to finish writing a book, even though I have so many great ideas.
8. I feel my life-time-accomplishment is that I have saved three rescue dogs.
9. I feel people should admire my good body.
10. I feel I am a late bloomer.
11. I feel ashamed of my low voice after the menopause.
12. I feel I like talking about myself and I need to talk about myself less.
13. I feel two squirrels live in my house and make babies at the attic.
14. I feel sex is overrated, marriage is overrated, children are overrated.
15. I feel this is my home when wisterias spread on my fence in the midsummer.
16. I feel lucky I don’t have to marry someone for a green card, for money, for sperms.
17. I feel I really cannot stand bullies.
18. I feel I want to support underdogs.
19. I feel I see only red houses and red trees and red mountains when I walk at the sunset.
20. I feel I see more what I miss than what I have.
21. I feel people are lazy or dishonest.
22. I feel more than 50% of people are not qualified to become a parent.
23. I feel I can never find an interesting show to watch on the TV. I really wonder what people watch every evening.
24. I feel a little bird is singing when I see a tiny green leaf on the dark branch of a completely bare tree in the winter.
25. I feel sick when I think of my father who died alone in the hospital at the snowing night in December. What did he feel? Did he look for me? Why was I not at his site?
26. I feel the most important daily ritual for me is to get up early, sit in the crispy air, and listen to birds chirping in my back yard.
27. I feel I have more sex in my dreams than in the real life.
28. I feel Nancy Pelosi is a hypocrite.
29. I feel I cannot vote for a Democratic president anytime soon.
30. I feel my house is much prettier than any places I visit. When I travel, I miss the sunset I see from my living room.
31. I feel sometimes Bocelli sings to me when I drive through the flowering Bradford pear trees.
32. I feel there are racist people everywhere.
33. I feel irritated when someone wastes my time.
34. I feel my two brains constantly fight. In the morning I awake with the right brain, and at night I asleep with the left brain. Instead of becoming a scientist and a poet, I have become a poetic scientist.
35. I feel my green jade ring is the most beautiful thing I own in my life.
36. I feel I own too much stuff and I don’t want to acquire anything anymore for the rest of my life.
37. I feel my neighbors watch me whether I have Christmas decorations or not.
38. I feel I want to stay in Eric’s island home in Martha’s Vineyard and have a breakfast at Black Dog.
39. I feel my body and mind live on two different continents.
40. I feel sometimes spring is colder than summer.
41. I feel my greatest regret is that I didn’t allow Aspen to sit on my sofas and sleep in my bed.
42. I feel Apsen II is an incarnation of Aspen, and Aspen is an incarnation of me-in-my-previous-life.
43. I feel I am a mom and a dad and a sister to my brother. I feel my brother will break like a delicate glass vase, or just disappear, if I don’t take care of him.
44. I feel my another brother is living with me.
45. I feel in my entire life I tried to change people around me while I even cannot change myself.
46. I feel de ja vu when I think of Dingle Peninsula.
47. I feel I wish to buy Ko Pha Ngan, my namesake island, the most pristine coral island on Earth.
48. I feel I am most proud of myself for being honest even at the cost of being punished wrongly. I feel I am most proud of my integrity.
49. I feel content when my house is filled with invisible fragrance of the Tibetan Sandalwood Rope incense.
50. I feel I can tell the God that I read thousands of poems (and published one).