I compose poetry on the subway
on my phone

People think I am texting

I think they are texting
Maybe they are writing poetry, too

Abrupt is the formicidae’s descend
into plummeting disapproval

this brisk ant mountaineering
over the hot terrain of my left foot

Is  not brushed off by my partner hand but my his fear of  a “crawly thing”

…
I tell him of my childhood-
alone in the garden with the animals - my mother in our home depressed- the plants and the insects were my friends.

I used to play with ants.
…

“ a life is a life no matter how small” i read in one of Dr. Seuss’ books. I would look at myself in the mirror– a worn out pink stool below my small eight year old feet. I was  in the third grade, but I couldn’t sit with my bottom on the chairs. If I did only my eyes and forehead would rest above the table. I so I began to sit over my knees and propel myself forward when I needed to grab my rolling pencil. Small hands reaching forward.

…
What is it about small things that makes someone try to dominate them to try and tell them where their place should be. When I saw the ants so steadfast move through their course I started to tear.
…
I realize now why, why I couldn’t let him step on the ant after brushing it off. Why I take take insect out of my office or my home in Tupperware.  

My life, their life  and our lives are  miraculous even if they are brief, even if from above we seem like those ants  scattered over green and brown splotches of earth; our cars lined on an overpass mimicking their lines.

(there is not such things as a small life)

**** cool

I could feel the difference
between a thin strand of hair
and a thin thread of spider web

I do not want to have the same seasonal wardrobe fashion
that everyone else has
I do not want the trendy jewelry
or to  make the same pose in front of a camera
I want clothes I can wear that suit
my mood
earrings with a story behind them that you can hear  
a candid that captures corner smiles

Frankly,I do not want to be anyone else
you can take
the “fit in” trophy and put it on your mantle because I am glad, glad, glad
Gleeful and cheerful that  I get this opportunity
To live and  to walk in this skin
with these gifts and this inner light

At the foot of a mountain, I come to bury the ashes of all my past lives. I come in joy to lay down what sorrows were of old
to empty my heart as if it were a pail of water to be soaked up by the earth below me

to build another mount to honor all the challenges that like rocks struck skin
those difficulties that winded across time and felt like chains
but that were really sections of a map
that were really my healing under a long period of time  
that were a gift worthy of receiving

I come to sing and play and love and be under the moon by the mountains as I commence the burial of all which weighed me down

He has a life line that runs right across his entire palm
so his grandmother used to tell him he would do great or fail great
( we all fail great if we live long enough and do great if only we can see how stupendous our simple acts of courage and kindness are)
He listens when I am

angry because my ego (my little I, my concept of “me” with all its stories is in full gear) activated dancing circles around my sanity,

sad because I cannot see past the veils of ecstasy and sorrow and peer into reality (where these is no story attached to anything, a pencil is pencil, ) for that moment,

hopeful that the small caterpillar hanging from the tree will survive and enter chrysalis ,

goofy dancing  good bye as the train doors close and he’s off to his home  and when I talk his head off about the albums I have been listening to (most recently everything Branford Marsalis has played on)
at the foot of the mountain and ask that he please be my climbing partner.
                He hikes. He hikes  though the forest in summer with me despite the inevitable  encounter with his arch enemies (the mogi) the mosquitos 🦟

stretching my hand out he reaches for it and we take a long peaceful walk

The Sierra Nevada is a dwelling
for the old limbless sages
rooted firmly into the ground  
three thousand years slid off their annual needles
like rainwater in front of them I disappear into the fog; there together 
   We meet like old lovers while outside
  the others cut tree trunks and ask for more lumber
     And of me demand  my hands and their labor
They want our lives to be spent for them but in the mist alone we know that the clearest things can be hazy amongst but not lost in the madness of our cultural weather

“You can love the whole world” floats from up to the surface from the ocean in my chest

I can love the whole world within
me–the love affair commences
in the  limitless heart there we are introduced
so eager, so light and meaningful such small fleeting things are like a smile, the sound of steps and the tips of another’s  cold hands warming when you cusp them to try and hold them although they are like water destined to change and move along without you

These are the girls that dream
one speck of dust turns into a planet
orbiting their soul

To all the beauty in our hearts that will never end
to that infinite microcosm pumping
in each lub-dub love is dubbed in physicality
(as is to be expected in this world of form)

Lean in further
to lick the iron of the rod
that used to stand in your way
now it has been repurposed
now it seems timely to taste

(how it reminds
you that there is iron in wine)

grateful                  life      
Be                 an/a                   well of
    constant is        infinite

the full moon is a fresh cut catalina
mariposa lily that you placed in a vase
next to your virgencita de guadalupe
(the one you hung by my little bed, I'd yell
when you'd ask me to dust off stuff)

in the childhood  blanket of my dreams, the inquiry glittered

Just appreciate your youth
go wear silly & funky stuff, cut
your hair ,change your hand writing
go for a new pair of shoes
Dang, pick a favorite new color every week
until you cycle through the rainbow
and then do it again
change what you think young is
Pull of the masking tape that says 20, clean off the sharpie lines that read 40, laugh at the fact that next it you wrote 60, baby head for the jugular and once and for all liberate yourself, no age is the right age
for feeling youthful and fully alive
no age comes with requirements

When my mother plays foreigner, I know she is sitting on the carpet playing tracks  pensive or standing by the stereo alone dancing in the living room like I would find her alone and eyes closed. Sometimes drifting into the kitchen for a drink. Which in my mothers case is lemonade or manzanilla tea because she doesn’t “drink”. Today, within the song she picked and shared,  I saw her at the precipice of heartbreak as I have been many times.I saw her palms and her eyes in my own face reflecting off my hand phone’s screen as it auto locked.

There are two boughs but only one
below the water bending, breaking against the overflown river’s current -its bark moist. His actions raining down drowning him. The lifebuoy are his roots growing amongst  surrounded in the dark soil. It’s absence of light propelling him to grow.

First he pretends not see Lily. Then, she comes near. And he says “Away Lily”
“Shoo Lily” and she responds with calm “ but you howled so I came”. He pauses tucking his fangs

I see the outline of the milk gallon carried - domestic errands-
in her left hand that holds a black plastic bag. Her body is over tilting
like the stem of a flower to the right side to compensate for the weight carried, for the age and the toll of years on her body where canyons are scattered and her short black hair has thinned as does everyone’s time on earth

I feel the weight too, as the ripples of a pebble
tossed in a pond within my heart,
and I wish to carry her bag but I am turned down

The collar of her shirt red rose petals tilting outwards still fragrant and beautiful to watch slowly descend the haebangchon hills

When you come so far to be left
   with no response for months, years until

It feels like an eternal dance floor where hope has propelled
  you to stand at the periphery watching as they dances with another

When you come so far to be the last kid chosen for teams
  only to be told that to include you would be one too many (odd you)

It feels uneven, but not uneventful how your heart                breaks
  and still the blame is never split like you wish it were
       (some for you, some for them, some for time and some for life’s  required modules) 

the candy during recess is not  split fairly  
                     When you come so far fairness dissolves
                     off of  the countenance of the other kids as they begin
                      to grab what they can

And you wonder if that is what they did to you
                   grabbed what they could and left
                   or if that is what they think of you
                    
It feels like a tragedy or a terrible comedy cast,
                  staged and off broadway now
                  maybe they feel the same

The dancer who does not want to dance under the disco ball and the ones that want to dance but are standing around waiting might just feel the same.

There is a lake in my eyes that fill
and dries with seasons of life.

I cannot predict when its shoreline
will recede out of joy or sorrow.

I simply know there is a lake.

I have no intention of ravaging
through the piles and aisles of consumer goods in my mind

No ravenous hands that will do the hunting
deed and feed a primal thirst of mine, aching
to satiate a beast from an old fairly tale

Long, long ago is over. Long long ago in a faraway place
is no longer here and now, there are no beasts
except the ones I indulge and tonight- the room is empty

No high wall outside my window
just a half moon of solitude
and its ray of acceptance shinning through

En tu luz madrugadora se caba
La oscuridad y en el abrir
De tus ojos se despierta la conciencia

Tu no me tienes que decir
que no madrugas que el sol te come
los ojos. Yo se que el ***** calor
de la noche es mas attractivo para perros que olfatean
las penas que haz enterados

La mente de nosotros es como un teatro
para toda tragedia y comedia.  Dictando
nuestro monologo, el que solo cada uno
de nosotros puede escuchar

You are carrying the frame an old  brick house of pressure determined
to go in your intend direction
your quest to get ahead
in life blinding
you are too busy to stop and really see
all the growing things
still you ride on with your oversized load over the highway

don’t worry you will laugh
at the notes with tea rings
at the your mental doom scenarios
chuckle up a storm
because everything you wanted
will come, and you will sit
with it and think back
at all the your self strapped misery
that like a wrong sized belt could only serve
the purpose of weighing you down
rejoice, giggle like a big bellied baby
at the way your heart’s wishes are fulfilled
at the right time

My heart loves a young man who dances salsa with me
he said “wow”
at the live band
I love two people at the same time
May time help me love only one

giving and receiving
sitting alongside each other
is loving

openness and free discussion
knowing you will be on bridge
at the same time vulnerable
to the elements and the weather
of a too unpredictable life

assures me, soothes me,
serene I am
when I face the day knowing
I am loved by you

I see you all like mirages
in a room
you become clear
the further in time
that I travel away
from you

You are becoming more beautiful
not because more people like you
or because more people agree with you
You are becoming divine
because you are in the closet pulling down the cobwebs
In your home, brewing your tea to cultivate moments of attention
in your heart adoring what great effort
you body makes to keep you here
you are beautiful because you try over and over see the miraculous

I ate fire
and I swam with it
in my belly splashing
my arms around

beneath my feet
the ancientness
of dirt called
for the wind
that once helped
cool the magma
that became long
stretches of continents

(The firm rock under
my floating forehead)

I dram your hair was buzzed and over the back of your head a shaved crown with a yellow outline. You are well; my hope is that you are well.

I chuckled in a starbucks
a capitalistic touchstone of experience
because my old high school boyfriend
my then long haired metal-head is an environmental scientist
what is more heavy metal than saving the environment
as quintessential as a green logo-ed mermaid is to visual culture
so is the aching guilt of living now...slowly killing this earth  
At least when we talked about making the world a better place,
he was telling truth

I am on a documentary dive
the way I dived in bars or went on pub
crawls

I am all in and after two glasse of champagne baby I want to cut my hair
I want slick Bob on this frizzy curly mane
of mine but I wait for Friday

Friday night when you are home and we can have three drinks each and sunk together I  will have the same recurring thoughts of a shorter cut to maintain the coolness on this hot humid summer night
and I will let you cut and the next we will wake up and go to the hair dresser where they will cut three more inches off my head of hair

I read through a box of old letters, old emails,
“old” said from my mouth sounds cleansing
feels like Saturday cleaning
greasy oil over a iron cast giving
way to dark rivers until finally
they run clear

an old me rises for the words
and I run to hug her
“you are so sweet” I tell her

“better love is coming” I want to blurt out
as cheesy and as intense as a first love
a young teen gets
like parting gift of encouragement I want to squeeze her and deliver my message
But, I stop for fear she continue to wait
some sad dark haired Rapunzel

Becoming a jamless  lover of jam waiting for a jar of guava jam when she’s got a whole guava tree in her front yard. she has just got to pick them from  her own tree ,and cook her guavas over her own stove

When I smile there are beautiful lines under my eyes
and I do not want to hide them

I bear with great joy this life of mine

que tierna
la alas de
un pajarito

que de su  ser
trajo a otro ser

liviana es
su despejar

el viento
a las alas
carga

el viento
mi amor
levanta hacia
mi viejo padre

today
I set another boundary
painted his face with forgiveness


I whispered lovingly
"thank you for raising me."

today, I unfriended him
my reflection answered
"But you look like his mother."

my jawline with its sharp line
history seems as linear, but I do not
want to fall in its linearality  

my will flutters among
the company of monarchs
that have come to represent
the migrant women and men
of the Americas  

a monarch like
my grandmother once was
while she inevitably stood
in front of her mirror, I am placed
in front of mine

all my aspirations
grow wings and set
their destination for a healing
climate

"thank you for raising me
but I cannot let you
break my wings, too"

thank you,thank you
thank you

You seed your war in my home over my tongue
and I refuse it
ten napkins, 11,12, 13, and 14 cannot suffice
to clean policies or gunmen
or blood on the cement of Asian seniors pushed
to the ground because their ancestors were
not white. Those napkins cannot wipe off or wrap around the feet of mother and child, and when their bus arrives from TX & AZ
to DC seeking asylum
it cannot clean the dirt of free labor and a system of incarceration for the poor as its substitute from the spine of an American history book
You seed war in the only home I have ever known
but I plant words of  remembrance and accept the past with its flower of responsibility
In the only home I have ever known, this earth, I plow &
toil for the possibility of a dignified life for all tender creatures under the sun I cannot refuse to the manuring, the irrigation and the weeding for someone else did the soil preparation and the sowing and they will do the harvesting and storing

my eyes are two ponds in each a Fernald's iris floats
...
that night in each picture taken the light, shining off the optic nerve, moved from left to right like two dancing irises reacting to the ripples of my tiny apartment life full of books, domestic cookery, Bluetooth Son Jarocho canciones, and the bright reminder in your eyes that closed of laughter because I passed you the fork instead of opening the refrigerator door. Your lashes looked like the sun's rays your joy traveling to me at their speed before we locked eyes you stood still and gazed at me as I were you and you were me. One cannot laugh at such moments, the profound inclination to smile when one sees the beauty of a sunset over Dockweiler beach or the inevitable beauty of wild northern California flowers swaying in the wind disarms you of all, all mixing spoons and guitar music went. my ponds  silent witnesses  to the bright promise in your eyes,   I thought we were so close to the lips of world peace
...
what is your wish he asked me "I wish we could see ourselves as each other" he laughed "If we could do that, there would be no need to be here. There would be peace on earth "

She is a seamstress pulling
strands of words from the ether
into the wooden loom beneath her

Despite all the sorrows, I love the first ominous eye blinks
that come with my body’s rising
to meet this new day; they signal
I am alive– I take the gift of open knowing they must close. Blink. Blink. All material lives close. Life, my life a blink in the cosmic morning. I blink starring out the window, how much I love this life even this monsoon storm.

I live and die by         poetry

      I live hundreds of lives            notebooks
of lives
     I die 100’s of times       in the silence 
of a spiral
                       And I am reborn    
To this wheel of                            samsara    
           
           ­      with every turn of the page

he did not just push off her center of gravity provoking
her to fall and then exclaim "watch out where you are walking"

he did not just slap her across her face and call her a "puta"
insulting her and forcefully ****** her until he fell asleep and she slipped from under him

he did not whisper in her ears "I'll **** you"
like once he so boldly declared to my brother with the more metaphorical phrase "I will put a bullet in your head"

this time he beat her until his sisters showed up  
one of them was silent the other  preached "she deserved it"

this time he beat her: combo-ed  his attack and added whatever strength was left in 60-year-old body

that in our video chat my mother was bruised
all over her petite frame

this time after a lifetime of abuse, she did not defend her honor
she did not stay for fear of losing her golden cage or for her children this time she left safely picking the right time with her son

filed the report, got a lawyer walked up the steps of the court
battered-
                                                      ­       and lighter
                                                  lighter­
                                         becoming    
                                 up
                      step
     in  each


to her freedom, I sing a praise, and I reach my palms up to the heavens; they are open,  and I weep for the years she stood there always the "one to blame"

Me rindo
ha esta vida divina
y fatal

Look at little things
profoundly–
they will do more
than whisper

“When we are trees are we dead?” my niece says
“no, we are trees” my little nephew tells
me over video chat
I smile so deeply that I shatter passed the notions of “ me and tree” and I wish my life as a tree offers as much shade from the harsh sun as I hope my life as a human does until there is no sun, no we and we are one

I am on that boat
don’t you know

I already sailed off
can’t you see

Come on’ bruh
you gotta know

ain’t **** you can do
to scare me off

if my boat sink
in the sea of love

at least I dared
and peace be mine

for all babies
are my babies

And on that boat of love
I will cradle them

you want tell me they can’t be mine
well then with your logic
this earth ain’t yours
so why you hacking it up

I on my boat of love
cradle all them babies

I am swaying them in my arms
peace on earth I sing to them
“ peace on earth”

I do not care if anything is slippery
it is coming out onto the floor of the page
swiveling, punching, crying or half dead
but it’s coming on the page