you are across the street
and so am i. we are walking
in the same direction. the sky is dimming preparing its arms for the dark lull in
which only stars sing.

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

we pass them on the street towards
the same place light years from one another wondering if I tilted my phone and aimed it’s reflection into their eyes if they’d receive, if the speed of light can carry my message.

let your heart settle down, let your years sink in
let the beauty within your heart cleanse you “you are human” and your being loves you for it

Were there a better way to soften your pillow,
I would
like a massive online shopper at the drag of a mouse and at the click of a button I would choose to check that box

Mind of mine I brought you some rubber gloves, a bucket and some soap. Mind of mine we must dust and rearrange; I know change is hard but bear with me. We must make it a little nicer since lots of our time is spent here. Mind of mine we cannot quit as we get older we must continue to reach for growth, and yes relax a little more. But right now we gotta clean so put on your rubber gloves it’s time!

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”

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

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

It just gets deeper and deeper this
never ending route inward
and there is and less and less  resisting
And I want to laugh with myself in-hand and “say stop just relax. isn’t it nice to just be”:)

I don’t now what it is about the way skin is fragile and tender to the touch
no matter whether young or old that makes smile and love our little boats islands of flesh each so different, each so radiant and full of beauty

I trust that whatever crumbles will give way to something better
that cutting to the core will reveal the immense loveliness
that never departs my side

“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

**** cool

What gifts can I offer
What can I give
I want to make beauty so that it surrounds the human heart
comforts it and wills it to carry on
What can I offer, I ask again
should I draw a hand or paint a beaming ray of light
Should I sing lullabies back to the night

What questions can I ask
What statements can I make
which requests can I utter
Are
Guide me, grow me, make me forgiving and more gentle
appropriate
Do I need more reverence for life
including my own

I do not like stagnation I like rivers and how they naturally flow
I want to make beauty

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

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

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

yo y los girasoles
amamos la luz

los girasoles y yo
retoñamos naturalmente

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

Somedays I have no words, so I do not send correspondence, instead I send you a silent prayer.

Light and warm, so that it can rise and be carried by the wind outside
where ever your feet roam
and over whatever pillow your head rests

What can I do if my tongue does not want to stretch. I boil some tea in hopes that it will loosen its tea leaves unfreeze this iceberg of a lengua
I am an ice picker just trying to carve this **** thing but it is stuck and ten Hail Mary don’t warm it up, two miles along the river do little to exercise it; only my feet feel the distance but where in the world is my tongue–daydreaming in my mouth.I drink more tea hoping that it will be jolted awake by the unbearable heat of my pu’er tea like a woman who feel asleep at the sauna reddened not only by embarrassment but by the sheer heat.

when you gave it your whole heart the
baked porcelain shards you picked up from the kiln
tell you
there really was so much there
too much
so much moisture that it expanded too quickly
too fast and you exploded
landed over by the thermocouple
hit the reflective coding at the top of the kiln and
was hurled down to the corner
that pieces of you even hit the center, too
and that others landed over the vases other artists had fired along with yours to bake

your whole heart did not rip or break: it blew open


fell into every part of the kiln, ate space and unwillingly
in a burst realized  expansions

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

One deep breath
and the day rises with your chest

the beaming has always been beyond the tiny entrance
of that cave, a cave you could not fathom
would be so deep and so profound

One sparrow chipped up a storm
from a light post
adjacent to the worn bus stop’s bench
to the patch of grassy forest behind it
then proceeded with its city pilgrimage flight from light post to the grass three more time on the fourth descent,  I
was surprised it landed next to me chirping, I couldn’t not help but say hello and smile

I do not need to be your lover or ever be your partner. I do not need the title of spouse or fling. I can be your friend and see you through in that way
But what I do need is to be fully myself

have people who can forgive me
and see my through
and love me more because I dare to try again and again

in all the in-betweens where i tucked my notes of sorrow
                        I have set little fires that

i move around putting out fires from year to year

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

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

I saw a little bee caught in a can

It must of gotten stuck after feeding off of the remanence of a soft drink

“little bee, oh little bee we all get stuck sometimes”

I ran into the kitchen grabbed a knife and used it to poke a hole through the aluminum and then used a pair of scissors to cut open the can

“Little bee, we all deserve to be free”

Once I opened the soda can it did not fly out;  instead the little bee stayed, and I let it be.

I came back an hour later curious as could be and the little be had buzzed away at its own time with its own wings and at its desired speed.

I am standing in the middle of the room surrounded by the ends of yarn *****. Each of them rich in hue, varying in thickness and weight.

They are beautiful to look at and worthy of being knitted as they lay circularly on the floor around me; I know I could make due with any of them. All of them would be good enough,  but then I close my eyes and picture the warmth of your smile and the natural tint of your lips coalescing with your aura –I know which thread to pull.

the verandas come to us and the sweetest smell cannot be dispelled from the california orchards blooming,
each season has them blinking food
into existence
and the momentary insects, birds and grown children pick the ripened seeds to nurture their bodies during one rotation of the earth around Huitzilopochtli

It is the cool basin of her skin I curl up to i press against my calmest self
and savor the fresh invitation within my own hands

Sometimes I press my hand to my chest when this feeling comes and I close my eyes
who is it?
who calls me at this time
sometimes it is my mother or my brother
sometimes my childhood friends
sometimes it feels like an older brown eyed man
each of them different strings
but when I concentrate I can work my way back to the source
I don’t know how but I don’t need to know

I have spun up a mountain of silk ideas to cushion "my shelter in place" habitat from making papaya bread to challenging my malinois to sit still –I am well aware one of these will prove to be impossible– she has got more energy than me.  

I turn on the oven and decide to leave out the eggs and oil from the recipe–respice finem baby. I crank up my headset and delve into post-90's Columbian pop.

Risky domicile nonsense and dreams of well-behaved dogs make up the soft web I inwardly sit on while Juanes plays and I wait for the oven to preheat to 350 degrees.

It is raining outside but close to me
it is dry and warm; monsoon
season rests in my chest
rain descends consecutively like each living
second–
one after the other making both, life and rain, seem endless.

the clouds trickle their misunderstood grey-ness into my yogurt bowl sweetening my existence; each droplet a new second held in time so I count: 
 1 - 2 -3 -4 …until I arrive at endlessness, presence and peace)

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 ?

My name short was uttered with reluctance in a room in which I was not in. Why ?

I wake up in the morning, and I understand why.

Friend’s home and laughter/smelling the skin of a passion fruit/ her brother grew/ /coffee beans from El Salvador/we giggle and drink late night coffee


My mother‘s home under foliage/ wind carrying guava leaves / this hour murmurs/ the old earthenware from our people/before they told their names


My home with a desk facing the window/ the books eating ledges/ my dreams are  wolves that cross the desert / silver are the steps of the moon/ still I walk into thirty-two in the green gown

estoy con la almohada en la boca
con el sentimento que escurre
parezco fuente que fluye

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)

a pair of padded pants to save yourself from winter
you look at the next title more padding for the cold that makes you shiver inside

I can see that my heart
is held in kindness
and so is yours

and that although I cannot express
myself to you
I know every thought we nourish and every hope we
release
in the name of a more loving existence
for a more harmonious world
seeps into us all

and I can see how your heart wishes to open
how hands are wider when their fists unclench

The peaks of illness spike in one city, then the next
from one country to the other
within all people
it goes from mild to severe  
draping all with a gown of distance
  
Disease calls for more than the cells to recover

The peaks of healing will spike in one town, then the next
from one nation to the other
within all people
it will go from shallow lesions to the most profound of lacerations
blanketing all with a shall of amelioration

Everything became it
and it became me
and toggled between matter and gi

There is always hope to lift us in the morning hours and gently guide us
quietly without a word

Hope that presses against us like a little purring cat
like the penetrating ray of light
that comes in through the window
and bathes the whole room

There is always hope

and if we have it and we add to it courage
then there is no need to despair
we can change anything
how lucky are we that a few decisions
can bring about inner change
and in turn outer change to

She crosses bridges  (they are not to be venerated)

"She forgot God," the old man murmured, when she did not want to enter the parish.

It had been many years now, that the “what will they say" had become a spider web–ancient and swaying in the wind.

She knew that bridges are necessary.

“You have to cross bridges
but you shouldn’t venerate them ”

Her mother taught her that only God is to be venerated, but perhaps venerating  was not the point, “you have to cross;  you have to be in communion” she thought

Inside her chest she had found a corner where her soul would dissolve, and mix with the infinite energy of "everything"
and no religion would deny her that

And although the old  man knew about bridges he didn't know how to cross them.

The afternoon was slowly becoming evening, and Fatima decided she’d best stroll back home and enjoy to the fullest whatever daylight was left.

It could be the stars could fall on me tonight but I think they’d turn tiny if they touched the earth’s ground
where I would pick them up
and place them in a blue plastic bucket

The mountain’s soil is now soft
enough foliage has fallen
on the forest floor to make it
a thick springy mat
the delicate sorrel grows
its pink flowers
over the duff layer
where all that breaks down offers
nutrients

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

May there be joy in your heart
I know it’s absence and may it never leave your company
May you be blessed with the kindness of one sunrise after another, a new day after another new day
and may ease sit in your belly