each of the seedling kindnesses you plant
every small deed you do lives like a
giant redwood year after you're gone--
all your goodwill skipping over time's
lengthy lake to ripple

They have started dressing as civilians waiting
for professors outside their classes taken, even if
they are residents they are arrested to be deported.

What dream of democracy have your tucked
in your shirt's pocket like a card you can pull
out and say "here, free speech" just for show  

Where is it? where is the discourse that democracy connotes?
suing law firms that bring cases against your point of view
because if only your opinion matters then what is freedom of speech ?

And what is freedom of speech used to harm another
but something as untamed and vicious like this country's founding
Who says they will not come after you?

first them, then you ? first the folks on the margins, then you?
you samson , you lie with delilah. your freedoms one by one
extinguishing like candles over constitutional cake

They have dressed like civilians and started taking people. They have dressed like civilians and they are taking people. They are
not upholding a democracy: they are taking it away

sometimes its the little child in your ventral cavity
that overwhelmed with storms of emotion becomes
flustered & suspended in its gusts, unable to touch ground
this youngness of a heart shouts not at the person
in front of them but for relief--

a cherub's hand are as soft as your anger
so do not judge yourself for your irritation, it is the softest
part of you exposed, places you wish to control
carrying the phantoms of a hurt done long ago

gently slide your anger onto my palm
even outrage has a purpose

sometimes all the softness in the huecos
between cavities declare themselves present

You took all your negative thoughts and built a box around your head. The sky only as  high as its cardboard ceiling.


It’s time you start to tear through it. There is another world with its  pull of potential
                with its immense
positive intention
                                             waiting for you

You read about antiquity, believing it is far removed from you. When did those ancients begin to be ancient? When did the world of old end and swallow them? As you walk out your door with your children, the sidewalk is public. You step onto the park and head for the playground to let them play, and the playground is public, and so is this entire park, and so are the bathrooms and the basketball courts, public like the libraries. And just as your day winds down, you open up your phone without realizing it's a new age—your phone is a public space, too. The ancients of greece told that Medusa's blood gaves birth to Pegasus. Now, the devices of constituents surveil Pegusus into birth. When did the world of privacy end, is it in the process of swallowing us up or is it still digesting us all?

it is wild this breeze
                that leaves me       half-tossed
              on the coast
  of my hometown
today it is the clear,    sharpened
chirp
   of a
     bird
       that
        sobers          
           me to
              the world      somedays
                 it's a smile
                    hoisted by
                      a edges
                       of stranger
                        lips
                       other
                      days
                      a boundless
                    certainty
                   of being  
                  I find
               in the               confidence
          of round pebbles
next to rough granite