when he kisses me I sometimes crumble

I love him but not as much as I loved the one before him

when he kisses me it is joy delivered
and sorrow brimming
from the wet kiss
the other never pecked
softly over my lips


when he kisses me I want to forget
the love I held for the one before

When he kisses me it’s like a tectonic
plate of  sorrow meets a tectonic plate of joy
and the earth shakes
and I quake
and I crumble, crumble again and again
every time  he kisses me I know why earthquakes rumble

his daughter had long hair in my dream
he was sitting next to her
I simply hugged him
and everything else
was a blur

my palms can grasp the calm rocks adjacent
to you. they are sturdy granite; they have ancestors
too like you and me. This fiery ball of earth cooled and created
these rocks. my sturdy world was built from an inferno of lava cooling. i wait
for humanity to cool, too -end its wars.  For our continents to melt together and create not just subduction zones, where granite
and granodiorite cool deep down in the crust,
but a world culture where we are encouraged
to live without exploiting
the earth and each other. Grateful
because this grip on this life is temporal
oh how more soothing its breezes becomes
when you are aware and can feel it  
hear the heart of life buzzing off with the pulsing
bee and drop onto the pistil
of a flower. This world is no more than pollen.
The wind carries this mighty dust and harvest starts
not just in the fields but in our fertile hearts

Life is no longer for rushing
it is for full steps, sturdy and calm

No longer to deceive
ourselves, it is for honest conversations
not just in-front of the mirror but with others

No longer for stagnant
patterns, it is for frightening
change rumbling the asphalt
below your feet construction underway

no longer for the accumulation
of traumatizing
behavior, it is for the cultivation
of love

I do not know
how long it takes
I just know
I am healing

Kurhíkuaeri  naci depues
de tus dos nuevos fuegos
case al terminarse el mes

quizas fue en un sueno que me vi caer
en la noche deste lo celeste hacia  esta tierra
mi ser  encendido como un cometa
forjando camino por al atmosfera

Es por eso que me siento como fuego ardiendo
Es por eso que mis cachetes son calientes

Kurhíkuaeri, soy parte sol como tu ?

my once in a lifetime
sets like a sun over me
as I learn to love
someone else slowly

the emptiness of a room spoke
to me. For over a year, it dragged
me into a closet, it buried
me in winter sweaters, ruthless
wired bras, and band shirts reminding
me of him

my once in a lifetime sorrow sinks
into the past as I reach
for someone else’s hand, grasping
tenderly I see my sun rising

it is now a once in a lifetime thing, too

I know what has been
just as you know what has occurred
but I still want to dive
into a cold lake or wiggle
my toes under a long cotton towel, laugh
because it is still here, this immense
light warming me, daring
my heart with fullness so plump
I just softened with affection

My heart rings with every bell
this life has struck me. I am wake.
It’s tolling glorious; it’s sound still reverberating through me

every bridge that collapses is an abutment
of hands and elbows tumbling  over

every hurried step urgently taken out of the office pasture,
is from a cow readied, conditioned and willing to get its **** pulled for the milking

every time I see them depart it saturates the pastoral painting
begun during my youth, the base for the subsequent layers never dries

the picturesque manifest destiny  propaganda of the early 1800's
with "California " spelled on it.  
sit next to the paper with a bounty for put on native heads
over a poster of the runaway slave


"the pursuit of happiness",  that is the name of my painting
but the underpaiting never dries

so much turpentine but it seems most people never arrive there, laboring at drugstore or at a big warehouse si

never getting to use the linseed oil  

how savory some of us must taste
I weep at this thought
what is there not to weep for
if life is still sold
you and I headed like cattle



how it is too easy

la forma en la cual te decapitan
es normalizada igual que el esplendor
del sol, a cual le llaman cosa cotidiana

la forman en la cual callas sin saberlo
es naranja siendo pelada
mas no la muerdes la regalas

la forma en la cual una pandemia te desboca
es dentista jalando muela
y despues hasta le tenes que pagar

la formal la cual la estacion apgujeong no te facina
es la misma forma por la cual hollywood y vine tampoco

trabajadores en rumbo hacia todas direcciones para
no morrir de hambre

They said you get what you deserve
and I got you
something far, far better

so good for me
that it makes me thankful that all the rest left me alone
so you could find me

so that we could dance late at night to a guitar man playing Sultans of Swing on the side walk with a baby blue guitar and a small amp

You swung me out of your arms and back into them and I twirled you

You met a wise woman
who told you to laugh
and then you knew wisdom
she was not just smart



wisdom is the mind and the heart together at their best

I want to travel São Paulo
and Oaxaca with you, since you have already been to Mexico City.

I want to be better at seeing the world through your eyes too

“it is not taken too kindly when a woman speaks out and is direct. It’s seen as aggressive. Ask your wife”

“ No, that’s not true” said the cis gendered man, as he responded for his wife

I made it from hot to holy
from holy to hot
from toothpicks next the counter
to a foreign metropolis
from palm oasis to squished buildings
so pressed at the sides, they can only grow upwards
I made it from feeling like fire, a woman at the top of Neguá to feeling like a fire and all of life

The end of sorrow came on the second day as I understood that as I lived I died

I have sung 365 songs with your name in them butnever have they touched your shoulder. In the dark alleys, holding friends up as they tell me how angry they are. How disillusioned they feel. In the morning hours I lay our all the  evidence on the dirt street like chess pieces over a board not to try to convince but to show them that their  “ ****** up__”  as **** as it has been is also what life has been. No redrawing,undo, no control z but that the  flash of light is also as brilliant and potent as the jet black in their hair, in the alley, and in the hands of who ever hurt them their neglect.

On the chess piece I lay a shoe for times I was dragged from under the sofa and beat for leaving a can of coke unfinished, on the board I leave a piece of hair for the chunk that girls in elementary school ripped off my head after school, on the board I leave picture of a naked Barbie for the times I was molested, and to the corner I leave a small receipt that was left in my bag the night after I was too drunk to say no and did not know to call it **** until a few years later. On the board I leave a flight ticket for the love for a man for which I crossed an ocean, and in the middle I leave a white flower for all the times I willed myself up alone from the floor.

I can only show them. Some days I leave some parts out; some friends only know some parts and some of them have no laid their pieces on the chest board and we all all wept for the things that have been lost


Cried in a living room to Marley “no woman, no cry”


At the end I throw over the chess board and watch the chess pieces fly off in different direction. So what
So what
So what
I still have this life to live

tucked in her ******* is the paragon
of devotion, dripping
from her ****** into unfruitful
barrels of nothingness, she mothers
the absence of empty fridges
and messy closets.
"Soon" she whispers
soon there will be someone else here to
drink of her milk

I halt my jogging to stare at the moon

I forget the moon is a floating rock  is suspended in space
how marvelous everytime I remember

poem writing is a slow art
cannot just cultivate
your mind, you must train
your senses,
your eyes, sculpt
a beautiful mind
and become a deep sea diver coming up
for air at just the right speed

the art of poesy is the art of living
with age more profound

we were born
the same year. we have three
white hairs near our forehead. we will
become two silver foxes,
you and I.

you ask me
if we can take the elevator
to the roof.

the cool air is irresistible.
i stare at you,
as you pull your shirt off,
over the roof top
and I proceed to pull
mine off too.

there is no difference to me,
that you are labeled as a “man” and I
as I “woman”.
I am too old for gender norms to keep a sweaty shirt over me, when I could cool
down too.

the cool air is cool.
my chest is a chest.
you and I exit the web of fiction
and emerge naked of them,
as if rescued from a sunken ship
–we inhale the air fresher
because we chose.
we chose.

over your head
you can keep ten cloaks
hide behind enough distance
so that everything might be
half life and half made up
in your mind–
but I want to witness supple miracles
tucked in reality’s silk slip, it’s splendid
tales so unbelievable
they shakes reality’s vines to offer
the juiciest of grapes
I honor all creases, all bruises
all howling nights if it means
I can see the day breaking
so bright and clear over the my life’s
horizon

The deep crease in my eyes
is as deep as the ocean
and as profound
as every word I sincerely
wrote to you

I swallow, all the light
in my cup, all the light and hope
my father poured, when
he would take us out
to protests

It feel it ,warm light, traveling
down my throat, my white
ancestors atoning, my black ancestors surviving transatlantic ships
still praying,  my indigenous
ancestor watching their home
burn down and still building
a new one

I swallow all their light, amidst the sorrow…
I must not coward…not now… I cannot …
I drink from their light on days like today

For all my lives lived and lost
I cry for none of them

for now in understand
What a gift this mystery is

for all my lives lived
I am thankful for each of them

Sometimes it pulsates in pain
and I ask “ is death near?“
but then I think when has it
never been near
from the time
my mother birthed me
it’s been looming
over my head
holding hands with my nativity

There is a smile on
my face
I toil in small increments
towards dreams

How dear this living is to me
I wake and whisper in its ear “good morning dear”

How dear, how dear
oh how dearly I do love
this living

the people, the flowers, my heart renewed by our shared existence
how great this living that broke the eternal solitude of the cosmos

we keep ourselves company in different forms
the space between two stars overcome with the embrace of our arms

I can now see it
I can see the time I am in
I can see where I am in history
the player at the board looking at the pieces

“this one I can move”
“this one I cannot”
compassionate, strong willed, wiser now

I can now see
but what I see is only a fraction
but I can see my fraction
I can see it

This is enough
walking down the stairs as it opens up to a wide corridor, these people, this place and me
as I am –enough

and all my dreams in the bending
of my wrist
all of my heart can be found
spread out inside  pulsating chests
within all the people around me

My whole existence a blink and simultaneously
an eternity in the shared
look, that give my loved one
eyes to eyes endlessly suspended
in this sea of living

over our small dinner table I could be finite
and I could be infinite

I like like like art
even fashion…

I can look at the rack
and see 80’s shoulder pad fashion
the oversized, big collars almost
on every shirt

but I
leave them hanging
from the rack.
I’m going for 90’s
silk skirt
tight at the hips
because it feels
more like me. I don’t care

about trendy; I care about “Mmm
it feels good, when I slip it on”.

my life is in the details
I like like the details

Benny Moré’s music cushions my night
his voice plays, as I open
and then read a hand drawn
card by a dear friend

how with all her joy
my joy as well wishes to come out
in celebrations of the beauty
she has found
in sunflower seeds, in plants
and the learning Spanish

Let me never again allow
someone to stand before me
and tell me
“I knew you were suffering but well…”
as they proceed to excuse
not sending an email or
calling back
as they play–
play me
play me a rendition of “ I just stood by because”–

let me be quicker to take
my “alarm setting and special date on the calendar marking” habits elsewhere

let me be like lightening
when it comes to honoring
how devoted a lover I am,
with my deep dives into music archives
and books to fish out gems from the depths
of this wide ocean of archived living, that
we take for granted
as we scroll down or peruse old books, images
of paintings, stereo versions
of songs and psalms
and recorded lectures with
sounds levels so low you really
have to concentrate
and within the relief carving etched into my chest

my own soul
let it speak to me loudly
let my love be bigger, that it can help me smell the sweetest scent, while I wander through the night
that its whiff can walk me downthe path of less sorrow

sometimes nothing, is kinder for everyone

sometimes someone can be trapped in their need to self protect at all cost
believing that this world and it’s rules allows them to set others welfare, others  feelings, real love aside and dub it meaningless

Let me never again take
their blade in my hands, let me walk
away, when I see the glinting of the knife
they hold towards me
even as they smile,

2.
He held a glinting knife, as he smiled
did he know he was holding it,
so close to me
the pain of its point confused
with the pain of heartbreak
when there should of never been pain
not in something as sweet as love

What we were yesterday falls away today
the mascara dripping under the shower head
the introduction to said mascara, the time our a best friend brushed our lashes
not one by three times claiming somehow that would make them nicer

owning things
Being “__” because it matters

Matter for what reason?

all the yesterday’s fall away no image
worthy of being clung to

all can fall away
and what remains below is what can never go

I pay my dues with each poem

I always waited for them to be sure of me
the way a weatherman is sure about the forecast, before I decided to settle in a certain country or city
and perhaps they waited for me to decide to stay before they were sure of me
but what is never asked or addressed never can be transformed

Nosso corpo pega as barreiras
e con sua mistura de sangue
e as desfaz

The time I tried to delete and wipe him from my life was not with the intention to hurt him
it was with the intention of cultivating self respect

It was me trying to liberate myself from being pinned under intentional disregard towards me, constantly being ignored, and engaged without the intention of helping my soul (of lifting my spirit)

The way I had let him treat me showed such a lack of respect for myself  that I had to try


It was never about hurting anyone; it was about being better then I had known myself to be

It was growth or being a doormat
and I ached to grow and unfurl

I ached to return to my own arms

My smile combines with artistry, with intellect, with profound gentleness,
with my audacious willingness to dance, with my multi lingual tongue,with the rising of my chest as I lift it to prepare to catch a wave
it marries in my fingers, that were taught to play Spanish guitar in my humble demeanor the scent of the girasole, and the monarca butterflies that migrate to my mother’s state of Michoacán each year
their wings and mine a miracle

I wish to love this world with everything I have got
to be unyieldingly –the coming of spring
just as by nature I am the end of December

The start of the circle and
the end of the circle
are just ideas (perspectives)
both just the circle

The flesh and bone my home
the organs and palpitating heart that is before me the one I should look upon with eyes of appreciation
“Look at you and that shine in your eyes” “look at you and all those years that have opened up your smile”

Look at life, how dear it is
how I wish to ripen my blood and the creases of my eyes with wisdom of truth

this momentary mass awake moving through the bead maze

How tender are they the young and the old
Am I tender, too ?

It is so hard to see what’s so close to us sometimes

Oh dear how we wake up to hold the clouds and the sun
The rain and the splendorous shimmer of our being: lightness on this earth

Oh dear how, how can I cry for this long without being seduced by the trees,
the flowers, and the howl of my own deepest nature

I cannot
so I run off like toddler smiling towards today
“Come on” I tell every part of myself

I sit with myself, take each unloving sentence off the wall and continue to cultivating this love, this smile that surprises me in afternoon, these hands that help sing to the birds and draw those I love in sketch books

I sit in my own well of joy knowing it’s the only one that can truly fill my thirst.

Some days I still cry for a love that never lifted a hand but claimed with love songs it’s presence
still I wake up some days sad  

I sit with pain sharing a of drink in the morning
And eat biscuits of hearty realigning perspective
My worth placed over my two hands like a small tender bird
I must take care of it

You came like a lightning bolt
quick and parting the rumbling  skies

if I had let my sorrow drown me I would of surely missed you standing there lighting up part of sky

you are indeed one of the gifts of remaining painfully open, lovingly open, open and touching life– touching your face in the middle of night

something kinder and gentler has finally come my way and I can see it in your electric smile which does not go over me
I see your glow and soon I have no doubt you strike the land

I will finally hang Rich’s “Final Notations.” above my door

It will be a 8.3 x 11.7 rectangle holding space for my courage and my will
to not close or shrink from life

it will substitute as an answer to all the question I want to ask you
because I will not ask you for how long
you will hold me at peace in bed or for how long
you will get up and meditate with me over the cold linoleum floor in  the morning, I will not dare and ask you for the sun and
the moon or for the things that bloom eternal

I will just behold you there folding the laundry with me, there cooking next me while holding up a spoonful of soup to my mouth,   
“there,there” as I cry and tell you all my sorrows

I will hold out my two palms towards you in the same manner as I do when we start to dance over my grey turquoise carpet

I will open not just my hands but my heart so that you can come in, so that you can hold me as the sun begins its morning trek, so that you can sit so close to me during morning mediation, that I cannot help but sync my breath with yours, so that if you find the moon or the sun on your way to me
you can lovingly show up with them in your eyes or tucked in the width of your smile and I will be present enough, enough
will recognize them
so that if your love springs eternal you can show me and I will believe you

I will hang her poem up because I believe
I still believe
even though it has not been simple
I believe enough so to welcome you and let you show me who you are and how you can love me
I will hang it needing no guarantees
I will hang as the answer to all my questions

When we dare sing into the world a new song
we do not lead it
we follow it and watch
how it cozies up to us and comes through the body

each year a bucket that if it were not there
the song’s rhythm could not be played in streets of dirt road and in the town where soul is more abundant than money

And it is
that this is who I am
I am not chasing
any kind of glory, that I don’t care about being the best at
something worldly I care about being the “ best me”
nourishing my natural gifts in order to share them

I am not competing. I am not running on empty or on misguided comparisons( I save my energy for what matters)

I
already everything I will ever be in motion towards my inner and outward destination
sit calmly because it trust again not a man or a womyn but myself

What someone can take is only a fraction of the real strength, courage and authenticity that flows through me
I am really human, fragile and sensitive to the touch
small and unassuming like all life on this earth grateful for every rotation in this galaxy.

I know what I really am and I call upon it and it calls upon me and we smile together
one in the same
this is what I am

with love for the little things that hold me up
this earth
that dark soil
This mount of well earned tenacity and gratitude

with love i behold everything that makes me up