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

so much of me is being destroyed
so much being hammered off my copper implements  
so much is being excavated
so much is being fished out of my Patzcuaro heart
so much water seeping through the dirt of Quiroga
so much gold is found when sieving my Californian rivers
so much crumbling at the altar of life
so  much cleansing me
so much is gone mamá that can you recognize my zapateo  
last time I stumbled y pare but today each zapatazo
retumbé

Sometimes my skin falls off and I step down the streets naked of all thought
the wind fresh touches the wet saliva on  my lips
my skin tender it shivers
my soul light it feels only calm

Do others find
the things that  I find
beautiful
beautiful? Did you ever travel
through that question
on your way to getting older

Do they find him (in the crowd of people)
beautiful?  the old man sitting
on concrete steps under the the street lamp reading a newspaper
at 10:30 pm his sunken cheeks and eyes darker his hands moving slowly
and gently
beautiful

the young woman on her motor-scooter stoping in the side of the road, the light on her phone illuminating her face as she stares at a map pulls back in the handles and

Little specks of flora
how they bloom over every rock
and color pink and white the *****
and the cervical mucus

Sap dripping over a tree at the beginning of summer
makes me think of dripping rain’s viscosity
How fast can droplets from the sky make their way down a an electrical pole to the drain
And if I dare climb it at what speed would my body descend like cat vertically down

Poems are do not need length
they need depth

to the ever rotten glory of drying rats
at the entrance of a drain in L.A

they scurry like acrobats making the tight rope
electrical wire journey in a few seconds
"wow, look at them go!" spills out of an apartment window
it might as well be talking about the rats and not horse races
  
fluffy like your neighbor's dog, scruffy
elegant only in the way our wobbly daughter completes
her kindergarten ballet practice
these rats could be gloriously nimble chefs

the sticky finger you get after summer watermelon bites
I bet these rats get after pulling apart market bags of garbage
to find food is this new Los Angeles landscape that the 1850 compromise exacerbated along

I dreamed I carried you close to death
dying
over my shoulder
and your  breath so weak

I asked you where you like to go
“ to the place we met” you could not speak
“It’s too far, right” I answered my own question then I awoke in pit of sorrow
in a pool of my strength the next step was over the floor into waking life

Then, I knew that I accepted
I would be there when you died
,if you like me to, if I was still alive


I would not promise a life together
the arrogance of such promises
are mythologies of the old world
dying
of old humans wishes to exceed even life itself, control what on lips of heaven
neither angels can affirm

but i knew if you were willing and if you are able
I will join you on that day

every child I see is the light of day
how could they not be

everything is reconciled
memories, body, weight of stone on back, superfluous adjunct thoughts, miscellaneous socks still unpaired
all is looked at and then accepted

My heart caught on a hook flung out of the water and into the air
did three somersaults before it was hit with an iron cast frying pan
dropping into the current of the River
where there the rays of sun peering through could not offer warmth only show  me the color of blood dispersing from body
in that state, I drowsy
could not recognize myself
from that murk of suffering
yet to know if I would survive

like all things left looming
over the water, I was afraid
that large fish would devour
or anger’s current with its companion wind of bitterness would rest my soul on the side of the riverbank

I would like a night left alone with poetry
when the darkness of the sequestered  wishes that went ungranted swirl above the root of their conception
where all ill is met with the frankness needed
to climb a mountain in which the elevation is high
the feelings dizzying enough to make it easier
to want to trek down

I would like a single night to be multiplied  into months and years that chip away the ice top peak of such quiet black midnights
hidden at the crescent moon of my experience

Ten times you can circle over the same high peak
cycle through the seasons as you dare not to mountaineer
but every mountain of feeling must be felt
there is no way around such peaks
only lowly grounds where the merit of sorrow is the only badge you hold
and a hefty heart gets heavier with each
time around

To every heart that shivers
let me shiver with you
we along way from the beginning
have the same end

we all suffer
cycle in and out of fortune
can answer to the heaviness
of pain and transform it
(lets us be wise and gentle everytime it  comes)

he started to pretend with me too
a handshake delivered
as if his eyes had never met
the irises of mine

how many people had I ever seen him shake hands with? did he know
one well enough to feign a smile

he made me think of smiles
as masks. I tried to smile
and then I could not

the allure of numbness hung
close to me. I felt in presence of a lost
sincerity or that of an absent friend. I waved
while he sat in his car
with his child and his wife
And so I sent my wishes
for his good fortune asking

that they too multiply with every rotation
of car’s wheels
that the child be fed
that the roof be sturdy
that love bind well the frame of the automobile on the highway on their way home

Mi alma es brisa
que carga el fuego
su viento invisible
sostiene mi mundo

ella llena mis heridas de flores
y cada gota de agua de su trapo blanco es un lago de alivio

Tu corazón lleva fuego en su interior
raíces precolombinas, gitanas, negras  mixtas para que la  llama arda
como solo ella arde cuanto se prendió
durante la alba de tu nacer para darnos
tu sol

I have hugged a three thousand year old redwood tree and asked it to remember me
someday  tree will use marrow, absorb my nitrogen,  my iron that I grew accustomed to seeing in my youth drip red drip
every month clearing my ****** to grow its own leafy children
I will be locked in it’s green splendor
come spring and summer
and fall I will die again as I did before, and in winter I will disappear as I have done before o my to defy death with the help of my ringed friend. We together. A redwood in my heart my heart in a redwood

Among my prairie of tears, I planted
sweet corn singing

I hand you a flower and you open your palm and place a coal stone

I smile
after many years your flowers were pressed
died and combined
made dark but I do not just see one
I see the bouquet you gave
(The years and the darkness of soil mixed with all the gentle things in your heart)

Ten rivers lift
and become clouds
over the ocean of my heart
Light, I am light enough to float

what song can a bell make
that does not pierce the heart

(what melody can I sing when love entangles me to form
music does not need to be seen, so why do I gulp at the thought of their deaths)

the people sauntering
around us are their own celestial bodies detached from the outside world
in their mind, inside their screens —they are far, far away.

we pass pedestrians on the street, towards
the same corner park, where we sit and chat, but we are light years from the other folks and from one another. and i wondering if i tilted my phone and aim it’s reflection into their eyes if they’d receive it, if the speed of light is really all it’s cracked up to be then how quickly can it reach them play my golden record of connection “hello, from this child of planet earth with oversized limbs”

La lenta sabiduría de la lengua
escurre con corriente fuerte y llena
un frasco entró
¿quien se entera? si cada lengua pide
ojos y cada par de ojos suena
en diferente lengua

¿y qué tal la sabiduría del corazón?
la que dicen que no tiene razón
¿cuantos frascos podrá ella llenar ?

Tectonic plates of memory crash
close to the filament of a blooming
rose that sits with its three sisters over
over the midnight flora, as I prepare
to rest my head over a pillow they collide

the stitchery of the past lifts off
and circles like Angeles the crown of my head
I follow the morning and
I peek into a 9:00 am mass to listen to prayers. I try to find my grandmother so I look at the same row she would sit in. In a different city, in a different church, in another bench but instinctively look at the third row on the right. There is an other women bowing like the others as the priest cues with his words. She is not my grandmother. They are not my grandmothers but they are someone else’s   If I had opened my eyes here
on a hilll in Haebangchon as did
my dear friend 15 years my senior
Then one of them might know my name
but they smile as if they do

The evening prepares to fully gulp
the sun, the car engines zoom contorting the sound scape and twisting gravel into their menacing rubber wheels

I have been well positioned by your love
picked up and delivered over my own fire’s hearth so close I was fanned
by your bellow into the firebox and that is why I am warm
my flames powerful and controlled
enough to set afire the thin veils of deceit
I practice cracking and melting fake plastic trees
I watch their flames burn dark. dark. Darkness leaves my hearth it no longer stays

there is nothing to chase
to fill you
so there is
only giving

Tight glam rock pants are back
mullets  have made a comeback
with the ladies and short fringes
are all the rage
curly hair is edging in

put everything behind
you. they are
good lessons to springboard
from. Put
everything behind.
everything
in your life are lessons
to springboard into
the now- springboard
into putting
a little more of everything within
your life
Springboard–
this is
your life.

the blossoms were pink and iridescent
I painted them purple and added blue
hues to the trunks of trees
the tip of my round brush swirled
like the petals caught in the breeze

I dream of wolves resting over the grass. Wolves two times my size, together, gentle, resting/ calm like my childhood dog blackie/muzzle over a kingdom of green fescue/they are creatures of god

I dream I am there next to them, my hand stroking their fur/ for some reason I am not afraid/ when  hiking in the wild I was taught to stay away from animals/ some how I am not afraid/ there is wild wolf in my heart/ I am not afraid

You walk and breathe and claim your stake on earth
with every blink
the sun arises and sets
For you I grieve that I cannot
come

To the quiet tiles and the slow rocks
that are
to flesh over bone that is
To the body and the mind that are time bound
and to the cosmos in my being which are not
The dweller, the dweller cannot die because it was never born ☺️

I wobble, sail, simmer under the sun and swing in the park
watching human flowers of the earth bloom alongside tender grass

Lorca viene por la puerta y le pido
que se queda
qué hay ciertas cosas que en la noche se pueden discutir
cómo el resplandor de la luna
y la partida de amores que llenaron la copa
O cómo cada copla puede ser escrita bajo
los escombros de la noche
bajo los luceros que conjuran el nacer de la mañana

he sets the phone on the music stand it is tilted
so I get to see  half guitar, half chin
and a left hand sliding like an elegant dancer over
the frets of his classical guitar,
it has got L.A in it ,
east L.A,
Candela's east l.a  to be precise

Segovia, Bach, Buckley,  my wish to hear flamenco are  all
tucked under the sweat of his brow
when he is done with each piece
the world ends but when he smiles
and asks "what do you think?" it begins
again our chatter , fast spitty and through a smart phone

a lime bursting
cascaron agrio I bite
where is the mescal
and motown at 2:00 am