When people give their hearts to poetry, to music, to dance, to art–
to the arts
do they know they are giving themselves back to life
do they know that there is no separation

“I am__” does not matter. You are life

Hi little star we made many mistakes
tumbled to the mercy of old habits
found at the very tips of our being
touched deep wells of sorrow

little star there is nothing I want more
than to make sure your path gets better
and that from here on I am better, too

we did really roll down the hill and into the lake, but moving in water is starting to feel refreshing

we made many errors but that is what takes me from pain to humbleness  to continual humbleness  to refreshing humbleness to liberating encompassing humbleness

I am cataloging the thoughts that pull me into a whirlwind of incompassionate self-talk
observing them
carefully watching them in hopes of not repeating old patterns
in hopes of breaking away
in hopes of being more conscious of the way I live
and the way I want to spend this life
my little notebook and I held together by my hope writing down each painful thought we wish we did not have to admit to

We went surfing as a team of five
out into the water helping each other know when to catch a wave

we floated over the waves
and we fell often,
I fell often
always just 3 feet from the shore
everyone kept trying
and we cheered for each other each time one of us rode a wave

and every-time the waves were too strong that it knocked one of them over like rag doll
I saw their head emerge again from the water their arms reach for their boards
we failed together many times
but still we stuck together
in their bruises a similar purple to the one in mine

A tinta de meu coração fica púrpura como el suéter de mi avó paterna
me aquece
me envolve
me traz calma

It is good to travel alone, to venture into my being
no people to distract me
no vision of tomorrow to blind me
nothing but
me
and everything I neglected to feel together in one room

my body naked in the morning rising
to shower, rinse and pat dry
my headscarf over my wet hair
the peeling of an orange
the boiling water inside the kettle
my willingness to face the day

I send photographs to my mother
she calls me her butterfly, her bird
her brave girl
on a wall of my old room she
had painted “fly “

and I think back to being five years old holding onto her leg
scared of letting go on the first day of preschool
anxious to swim in the ocean for the first time
shaking at the thought of rock climbing

I thinking back to her smiling
telling me to go and be free
this her greatest gift in this world bundled in words of encouragement often too harsh
she used to get mad, that at first I would not take it
but I know I treasure it
her toughness, her zest, the courage it takes a mother to open her palms

my nakedness to feel, the nabi flying
                    my obsequió is
meu vida pra ser quem sou

I know that I don’t know
and that whatever I am is big enough to hold all brokeness and large enough to absorb all sorrow
it is all encompassing
living in the rocks and in the leaves swaying on the branches of the trees

I know that I do not need to know

le dije que ya no muero
que algo en mi despertó

que siento la vida surgir desde mi costado
un punto definido y la totalidad de la inmensidad
a la misma vez uniéndose
enlazados en la misma cosa

mi ser está en este mundo
mi cuerpo sobre esta cama
pero yo no me habita la habitación

es que desperté del infierno y desperté del paraíso
desperté
es que desperté un mañana profunda, una mañana clara, una mañana sin ninguna ilusion desperté de un gran sueño
dónde todo estaba dividió ahora
todo es

The doors’ music plays from the speaker at a pub near namsan tower and friends point at me “L.A woman” and we laugh.

when I first listened to this song I was 13
i guess I am a woman and I am from L.A

Are you modern poetry and am I translating you
can I run my fingers ever so slowly until I remember you so well
that from your skin I can craft an alphabet
are you
life so exquisite and voluptuous
that I cannot get away from you without wanting to write you ****** free verse or an ode to your blades of grass
a sonnet to your beloved sea so pristine when it glistens
that instantly I fall back in love

what about it does not make me weak at the knees? You just keep surprising me.

How is it life that I came to you ?How did I get this lucky?

What is birth and death as I hold them ? Are you really in between them ?
or have you always been there ?

they told me People who  buy books are older
they have money to spend on them
they have been around the mill
saw some wooden wheel of some sort turn and “know” they are “suppose” to know
But when I see them I wonder what kind of knowing they have settled for

Is it this knowing that build stairs and curates nature so that you walk down the same stairs
why
why must nature must be called wild
and why is
our wildness to be left out on the curve to wither like a patch of grass that no one dares water
why if nature’s accomplishes all in its timely manner would wild be chaotic
if nature accomplished all with grace
look at your hands
look into your eyes of your loved one is it a feral field of darkness, desolate and riveting blood,
has all hope and beauty been lost
why do you hold in disdain nature and call it “wild”

It was added to me this sweet scent of summer that accompanies random days when the thought  of your smile makes me smile and cry simultaneously
reverence for life means
to hold in your arms the painful and soft

resignation that smells of a stagnant room fills and so does love and so does sorrow as does loss as does self respect as does truth

How do you bridge the divide ?
how many times do you try?
endlessly

what if the other person stops trying ?
how many more times do you hold out your hand ?
do you hold out a hand ?

Do you hold your own hand? Do you go so deep that duality both heaven and hell are traps. One an illusion just a tad better than the other but still an illusion

How many circles do you run in your mind before you realize life does not obey minds
that you are not of your mind
you are not the shovel you use to toil
not the earth on which you labor
that you are beyond the mind and beyond the physicality while at the same time one singular spot of material on earth

Duality is the kind old lady who gave you directions turn left and then right and then transcend me and you will get there

I soften into life
while I sit over a large cushion
reaching my left hand deep into my chest
pulling  out the heavy ball of yarn that has been sitting there
I gaze upon on it, at first I want to recoil in sorrow, but I keep holding it and decide I must start to knit
knit it into something like sweater that can be of use when the next winter comes
that can be gifted to someone else
that can expand into kindness

that is what I want to do with this
that is what I want to do with my life

It is pure magic that lies ahead
scent of lessons hard won and learned
lead me to the edge near the resting bodhi tree
near the cliffside the wide sky
calls me
and I close my eyes
–all my courage shapes into wings
and I flap rousing the dust below
wings wider than ever before

Liszt and the leaves sooth me
and I sway over the pavement looking up at their foliage

if there is an answer it is there
in their rustling, in their meeting of the wind and in the simplicity of the mystery

They, do they realize I have had the same friends for 20 years now
And that inevitably we have stumbled through youth together
oscillating like sonic waves
closer, further,
sawtooth
we have been human
humanness so imperfect that we hurt one another with our carelessness
but they always stay there in discomfort with me
on park bench
in grocery parking lots
in side streets alley and took responsibility
their action
and allowed me the chance to speak the them and atone to mine

they might think it was impatience, immaturity, abandonment but
it was love this great big leap of love for myself that I took
this courageous willingness to state what friendship meant to me
and when it fell upon deaf ear

I could see him standing again in the alley “ saying we have nothing to be sorry” or something fuzzy that resembled nothing to say sorry about.

Did he not understand I had sold all my belonging, moved across the world to stand there, did he not see my naivety, my willingness and my faith in him, my wild belief that I could break any norm,

Did I not see this heavy wistfulness, my lack of love that I would bet my life on crumbs, on song that promised love, did I not see that two others a woman and girl might deserved to wake up to who they loved, did I not see all the ****** up swirling dysfunction in my head,


The last time I came to see him,
I smiled because he is so good at what he does. He radiates.

–And I thought of the troublesome times I have come to see my dearest friends through my short life
and how they and I
–we stood there in discomfort but finally patched it up,
took the muck and held it. Tried
got angry, cried, asked for forgiveness, or stood silently until we could agree to meet again, until slowly we could atone
The gift of friendship that we always offered after mistake and mistake–


But he left ...
and I kept dancing at least there was music playing

At least my intention was to liberate
, to come and to see someone
look at them as something more that a fiction of imagination, see them with flesh and blood and not keep them clouded villainous or a story too skewed in my mind  

and if my intention got stuck under sheets of thoughts and misunderstanding over lack of phrasing, over more of youthful stumbling it is because it comes with the territory of being this young, this tender, this foolish, this whole bag of everything that is me
and i am not ashamed of every mistake I have made
slowly I am learning
appreciating friendships
the renewed bonds
The 5 years, the ten years, the 15 years, the 20 year long connections I have worked with all my might to feed with devotion
passed all my insecurities, past all my self doubt, past my own pride, past my self to see them standing then just as they are

I see the longing in their eyes and heaviness
and I want to tell them you have still got life to live
and the body it goes
and I do not know that plot of land you inhabit but I know life is always here
that with tenderness we can hold all our lives’ sorrows and see the gleaming bread of beauty that remains
for that which we have been
is the wool in that yarn string

I see clearly
who I am in the mirror
where I excel and what I lack
I writhed and I cried
and burned
and ran like a wolf alone in the forest
awoke next to a lake
fur still damp
but to the water I turned my gaze
and I could finally recognize who I was

humbled by the moon and its giving light
I stood there shivering and out of my mouth spilled the courage to howl

and the wind accepted my offering and carried it off

This is where I start
I see my humaneness,
my everythingness, my interbeing
and so I your blurry figure comes into focus
and you are just another human

the kind who stand in front mirrors
writhe, cry, burn,are reborn and
run like a wolf
until you howl out too
to the greater in humbleness





I am back to my being
and you can call me by my real name
the one we share

And there
and here
I transform
what you give me
all the splinters
****** to open
a small surface protruding
into my life
but with intention
find it laying over a flower
Over the smile of a stranger

They think people should domesticated with culture. They think that someone having the audacity to be who relax and be natural to be who they are is wild. They think wild is nature and  they think everything will fall to pieces of it left to be wild and natural,but the flowers still bloom and spring still comes in harmony accomplishing it all
–no chaos, balance–
that is the way through balance

( the mind cannot take you there)

I will not tell you what to fear or believe  instead I will show you
what brilliance can stir from the wells of one being when it grazes upon spring and with a sorrowful heart decides that all starting points are good enough starts
and proceeds to slowly walk under the timeless rain nursing  in its belly the desire to not just to live life but live a life of wellness

it was just that the rain reminded me of you
and I had to hold all the unspoken words
and all my tangled web of misperceptions without clarification in a bag
apart from what you are
who you are
who knows who you are

and I hold what you might think of me in a bag, too

and I know the mind cannot arrive at truth
it can only circle around the field  
and drive itself dizzy
until it collapses

so I close my eyes and try to sense
what does not have words

I am happy to be who I am
every single sorrowful thing, and every small glorious moment swirls in communion

I am happy
just happy

I enter the sacredness of this existence

Hold my life with respect

My friends say that I am like a solitary monk
that I am a hermit
a recluse and sometimes
I believe them like I believe the calendar that tells me it is April

Who really knows what “April” even is
the name of months are birthed from languages’
named just as babies are named
and in their vowels and consonants can be found  
nestled
a promise of life’s yearly renewal
cyclical forgiveness,  do-overs

but I do not know what April is I just agreed to it like the rest of us and do not know what a monk is so perhaps

The sparrow's songs blossom like azaleas
until they  become an open chorus sung in rounds amongst the trees
ever circling and deepening
they remind me of what life is truly like when we venture back
away from the illusion of thoughts

Today I changed my agreement with the world
and I am willing to become what I want to see more of
I am willing to not just to fly low, but soar
I am noting afraid of not landing over land
I am strong enough to land
I am wise enough to know I am not the flying, the altitude or in any way extraordinary  
I know I am ordinary
and I know deep down who I really am
and so we begin arms open

You need to speak
you need to set boundaries or everyone you will ever meet
will cross your yard and stomp in the dark over the tulips

You cannot wait for someone to hit the fence
trample over what you planted and loved
you need to speak up
not run away or at some point in the dark of night
anyone who comes to greet you will step over your boundaries
over and over and over until you finally are so offended
that you can no longer take it

you need to speak, speak your boundaries or the same story will repeat

How did my father survive the streets of LA
a young dark skinned man
a mixed blood being in his prime

I flash back to the time he shouted at me while teaching how to drive
a  simple thing like me hanging  a small dream catcher from the rearview mirror
was enough

“They can stop you for any **** reason, Pita” he’d say.

what I didn’t know was that he was right
and what he did not account for was that I would not be seen as a dark skinned male the day I got pulled over in Davis, Ca by a cop and I stepped out of the car and walked straight up to him and he walked to meet me and asked me “Ma’am have you ever been pulled over ?” I replied “ no, this is my first time” and he smiled as if he’d popped my cherry. “I figured a small and smiling girl didn’t get of the car with the intention to start a fight” that is what my father did not understand
and I wish I could say I understood at that moment
and I wish that officer would of understood too that the only reason he did not pull a weapon on me was simply based on what I looked like

there was never a willingness to communicate always a distance always a trying to guess and understand

how can anything end up well when you do not communicate
when misunderstandings are what make up your whole story

how can you really know?
or why did you never want to know ?

were you looking for evidence
were you looking for reasons

Did you finally find them amongst all the actions you never asked about ?
Or Coiled around all the feelings you never voiced ? The anger, the sorrow, the missing,the failure,the hurt, the righteousness, the apathy and the lingering love

did you ever want them?
was ignoring a strategy ?


what was your intention ?

It almost felt like this season would not come
like I would be stuck in this perilous
winter but then the flowers showed me
with their colors that I could paint my world another hue
and the off shoots on the side of the branches that were trimmed showed me that a new branch can grow from something that has been severed
I smiled and I knew it was spring

I feel like thanking you and if you need to hate me to release and if you need to find me sinful or weird do so
every one has got to do what they think is best with the tools they have
including I
you
everyone

I could have never said or done the right things
and someone might say it was a bridge that lead to nowhere but it lead me to me
and compassion even when someone will show me less than respect because it is not in their best interest
sometimes people are just too hurt
and I know what that feels like

I learned what I am and what I am not

I hope we get something better. The world is always beautiful and surprising I hope there are more  joyful moments on our separated roads.
deep down I know it will be so :)

The great thing about getting older is that you start finding out what you are and what you are not
and it does not mean you  cannot cultivate what you lack nor does it connote any amount of permanence it’s just that you can finally recognize and now start
from where you truly are
with a clear view over the land
and you just have a better sense of the territory
you have a better starting point that’s all; that’s what I like about getting older

A frog does not sit starring at the water deciding the right time to jump in

it is led by the powerful wisdom woven into its nature

there is never a “right time” to jump
that is part of frog and “once upon a time” stories
it is the “right time”
it is time when you decide

Anywhere I go and anywhere I land I will be okay

I want to keep my beautiful and big heart more than I want anyone
I do not want it to shrink and when it does I want to be courageous enough to stretch it again
I want what I am as I am
and to preserve and cultivate the loveliness within me

And then with the eyes of a red tailed hawk
I can see the  what is needed is courage
and acceptance
everything that lacks is what I do no give
and I am strong enough having crossed winter’s terrain and walked through its dark canyons that I can sit in peace
and hold all that I feel
from this view life is but a blink
and in my nature is to show up
to care in such a way
and this is not because of anyone else
it’s just the way of my nature
and I become courageous enough to accept myself and who I am

I do not want to keep crossing lines people draw for me

So when my stupid heart want to run passed the painted line I now pull it back

I am not in-charge of redrawing that line
someone else is , the person who put it there is in charge of that

so I hold it, I hold this wild heart and comfort it
at least I am strong to comfort it now

and yes some part of me really wants to be there but there is that line

and I sink back down a little
and sink because I just don’t want to cross anything anymore
I want to feel to roam in someone’s garden
when I am invited
I do not want to invite myself when no one else has

Come sit with me on a bench
I long to ask you how you have been
but we could as well just sit in silence
and that would be enough

A loving presence that holds everything
and has room to hold everything I feel
       I try to shift to this
slowly with practice with devotion I will get there
i am creature of habit and devotion
i will get there

I sit in front of a glistening lake
so beautiful but so deep
I am almost scared to reach in further
so deep down that I tremble
but I want to look deeper at myself
I don’t want the things I push down to rule me so I do not wait for them instead I call them
“ what ever abides there within, rise so that I may hold you. I am stronger now and kinder and my compassion is wider. Now, I can truly see you. Please, come. “

How do we start from here
from this new expansion
from the rawness
from this cleansing
that rubbed too hard it left red marks over my skin
so deep in my being I will never forget
How do I lean into love more and stop turning towards sorrow
how to accept the warmth and let it cover me once more
for I deserve once more, twice more, and an infinity of more

We can love people that do not love themselves
and we see the mirror
I did not love myself

If I did why would accept that sorrow
do I not know avoidable sorrow is not okay

did I feel okay with countless suffering
why, how did I absorb this behavior
was it in the way my father drank away his sorrow
was it in the tv programs that said I had to always be a good girl and be sweet even if it cost me my own well being

Where ? Was it from my mother who thought it was best to raise her kids with a man she did not love anymore because that is “stable”
they were never stable
two separate stable ones would of been better

was it them or the world
who knows
but I wept because I did not love myself
because I was not taught
the relationships around me did not show me this and so I lacked it

I get up and make sure that I take a short walk. Any direction is the correct direction.

And all the feelings I have wanted to vanquish because they  seemed crippling, selfish, guilty and sorrowful walk like little children next to me

I pick them up and carry them
in my arms
we make our way around the neighborhood
holding them I can see they just are
like the trees above and the ground below
they just are
and they need to be honored
with a sacred prayer, with a ceremony, with a story of creation
a Popol Vuh

a pen is not present
to take out my phone and type, type , type

“The first four feelings...”

I just love someone
I just love someone
I just love someone
And  I accept it

And I accept that they cannot accept me

Busco el equilibrio como si fuera una destinación
como si no fuera balanza y yo la aprendiza que tiene que agregar, remover y volver a colocar pedacitos de mi

pertenezco a mi misma y yo misma quiero estar cerca de el balanceo
que mantiene mi ser abierto y tierno
no aspiro a ser amada
no aspiro ser admirada
no aspiro ser la excepción
y tampoco no aspiro a nunca morir

solo busco equilibrio
solo busca estar aquí donde estoy