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157 · Nov 2023
Oatmeal
I see the oatmeal boil in hot water.
That is my mind I think to myself, and that’s all human lives lifting as they are born and sinking once they died
156 · Sep 2019
Bike and Compass
Bicycling down  a year of pavement on my way towards your direction without fear of disapproval, failure or regret

Watching the greenery on the sidewalk perk up

I do not need to be certain
I just need to head that way
patient and peddling
each time a little closer

The compass ‘ red arrow knows where I need to go.
Dame tu abecedario para comérmelo
para finalmente tragarme todo esos límites y esponjarlos para abonar las flores que nos quedan por plantar
each of the seedling kindnesses you plant
every small deed you do lives like a
giant redwood year after you're gone--
all your goodwill skipping over time's
lengthy lake to ripple
me gustaría sentarme y decirte
que yo siempre te quise
y que si no te conocí bien me disculpes
no es fácil saber como moverse
en sincronía a alguien mas aunque haiga amor
hay que saber cuando tomar un paso hacia adelante y un paso hacia atrás –hay que saber bailar
ella llena mis heridas de flores
y cada gota de agua de su trapo blanco es un lago de alivio
153 · Sep 2022
quietly coiled in my chest
I have tired to release too many times
but it’s like a spiral winding inwardly

and I accept it’s traversing and infinite nature always coiling and surprising me

at how it is still there
“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
Sometimes people think and operate with certain idea of the world, that they do not even know they are operating from.

I had a conversation with cis male about this and I found that he didn’t even stop to think of asking his wife. The opportunity to know  how she perceived things lost –compressed out of the conversation. Perhaps she perceived  things the same way as him. However, I think the response could stem from a place where the individual has been conditioned to not think twice about consulting his cis gendered woman partner for her perspective. Somehow it is acceptable to seek for women.

That is what I am trying to call attention to with this poem. Especially as seeing Roe vs Wade, which allows  women the right to decide over their own bodies, was being called into question in the courts.
152 · Jul 2021
Untitled
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
Nuestros cuerpos parados de lado a lado
nuestros dedos entrelazados mientras el sol convierte el atardecer en mañana

Aquí la boca de la tierra exhala formando gotas de roció sobre el pasto de migraciones passadas

nuestras manos son flores cúspides
que se extiende más allá de las tierras altas occidentales a tocar gramática de las cuencas costeras donde la avenida Central recorre la parte media de la espalda de Los Ángeles.

Desde allí crecemos flores de cosmos para alimentar a los colibríes
con nuestros dulces néctares
y los colibríes viene y nosotras sonreímos
Quería volver a visitar este poema por que creo que al movernos por la tierra entre el viento nuestras raíces perduran. Y no necesitamos continuamente sentirnos solos. Lo que fue viene con nosotros. Nunca caminamos solos y también somos recipientes de la sabiduría delas vidas de nuestros antepasados. De ellos podemos aprender . Ojalá que esto le dé a alguien la confianza de aceptar lo que fue y abrirse a lo que es hoy.


En el poema el orador ve el pasado (migraciones passadas, la gramática que es afectado por la unión de diferentes lenguajes y elige crecer la flor nativa de estas áreas la flor cosmos en su jardín para hacer lo también un lugar donde los colibríes se pueden encontrar. Ve el pasado y toma agencia sobre su vida y crea algo en este caso el jardín
They only try when someone else wants you. When I want to sit next to you, they pick up the slack and show more love. You become like a fish in a pond they isolated you in. Then, they proceed to reel you in year after year. Every time they sense another they throw in more bread crumbs and you swim with hope that dethrones your gut. But  if they were sitting there in same house as you suffered without offering to lead you to the ocean do you think these love bomb crumbs they start to sprinkle into the water make up for more than a decade in the pond of never good enough,  never pious enough, never quite right as you are so they have to change you? Does it make up for all that sorrow of not being who you truly are?
152 · Mar 2020
Pulsations
you come with the little whispers of the day
with the silence that finds me unconsciously speaking your name
even whist dreaming–
I find you–
I feel you when I am awake...
...at odd hours of the night;
a warmth between my ribs that begins to pulsate
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.
for my father
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
My brother picks up the phone and speaks slowly to me. My arms and legs tingle and begin to buckle beneath me, I am simply grateful I am seated in a car on my way home. “You did good” he says. “Today was a test run. You learned your limitations”. I tell him I wanted a book. So I tried to go to the bookstore but ran out energy. He tells me, I overdid myself not because of the book but because upon exiting the bookstore I joined a march around the block to protest g e n o c i d e. The timing was perfect. I thought it as a sign to join I mention. He laughs while holding his phone almost 6,000 miles away, asserting that I should take care of my human needs and rights especially after my injuries. I laugh again. He is right. I laugh some more but I begin to cry. The book I bought was by bell hooks.

In the preface, she describes how turning away from love in our society “risks moving into a wilderness of spirit” one from which it would be hard to find our way home. Is that what I am witnessing, I think of the picket signs. I think of the lovelessness war connotes.

Have we lost our love of this world?

Are we so afraid and so broken-hearted that we merely theorize about love? But will not stretch our open palms towards it? What does it mean if collectively we cannot conceive of love’s open palm or the love of others to makes us smile at a stranger or cook a dish for friend.  
I like a  falcon in her gyre of words spin in their warning. When suddenly, I hear my brother’s  voice and I am on the ground watching the falcon turn in gyre, his voice soft like when we were kids. I return to his voice, I return to the comfort of sibling love. Each block of joy we have built since children and I cherish the placement of each one.

I think, the world is not too far gone. It is like this. Waking up to the sudden voice of love that will breathe life. Suddenly able to see clearly with awareness where we stand and where our hearts have stood and will stand until the end of time—in love.
Prose poetry draft
Contemplating bells hooks “all about love”
Look at the very edges of yourself

the wall studs that have always been sturdy
from corner stud to corner stud you have been built well               you are made to fit

each end joist, brace and girder right where they must be
you are harmony and beauty just as you are

Look at yourself every edge constructed with purpose       and the space left in
between purposeful, too
I laugh the way the earth giggles when it’s sure that
storms come in and out of the atmospheric frame at their due time

I laugh in joy that at least I still got enough soul to wake me up

That I got tenacity, and freshness of  lilies
to keep me
148 · Jan 2022
We sunk into ourselves
We sunk into the melting ice dissolving over the Han River
changing icy thoughts to free flowing water

everything was water
clear, cleansing and clearing
148 · Jun 2022
Paradoja
Me rindo
ha esta vida divina
y fatal
the small glints engird me
these lightsome keepers
keep no tongue

below their soft palette
there is only space unchallenged
no edict, no menschy thought  

their presence is scintillation
unwavering comfort
attestation
to that in the dark,
there is light

country womxn to sorrow  
and servicewomxn to joy

they make no claims of augury
they are quiet onlookers

silent glisters that surround me
amidst the umbra that stands cavalierly
at the door of the locus
slowly nurturing myself back up
147 · Aug 2021
parte sol
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 ?
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
Have a wonderful partner helps you and guides you back to yourself 😌

My little homage  to Radiohead heheh fake plastic trees 🌲
147 · Jul 2022
Untitled
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
145 · Mar 2021
Untitled
Soy poeta disfrazada con una arcoíris
soy energía colorida
riza contagiosa
y amó los sonidos raros
y beso a la música alta por traerme placer
145 · Feb 2021
Mornings
Surya Namaskar in the bright morning sun

every little part of me comes alive

and my fingers lift me off the ground

pressing powerfully

how wondrous are we

breathing, living, conscious beings

standing mountains

all equal

vast as the vastness
Tomo los retoños de primavera y los siembro en mi hombro
tomo las hojas que nacen pequeñas
apunto de volverse sobra sobre mi
y las cultivo al lado de mi pecho abierto
tomo todo lo bello que se asoma
en cada minuto dentro del día
y con ello procedo a lo que es
y a lo que aun día será
our bodies stand side by side, fingers intertwined as the sun comes turning dawn into morning. Here earth's mouth exhales
forming cold dewdrops over the pastures of past migrations

our hands cusping wild cosmos stretch past the western highlands
to touch the grammar of coastal basins where central avenue runs down the middle back of Los Angeles

there, too we lift our palms to feed the hummingbirds with our sweet nectars of wild cosmos


Translation to Spanish:

Sueños de tu y yo

Nuestros cuerpos parados de lado a lado
nuestros dedos entrelazados mientras el sol convierte el atardecer en mañana

Aquí la boca de la tierra exhala formando gotas de roció sobre el pasto de migraciones passadas

nuestras manos son flores cúspides
que se extiende más allá de las tierras altas occidentales a tocar gramática de las cuencas costeras donde la avenida Central recorre la parte media de la espalda de Los Ángeles.

Desde allí crecemos flores de cosmos para alimentar a los colibríes
con nuestros dulces néctares
y los colibríes viene y nosotras sonreímos
Tzintzuuquixu a messenger from the gods

the humming bird of the P'urépecha

Aurora means dawn in Spanish
My body feels drained
from what ?
I take the stairs and rarely take the lift or the escalators to emerge from stations onto populated streets

Something is leaking, energy is constantly leaving and I can’t put my finger on it
on what is leaving me so tired, so, so very tired

Little by little I sieve through water like a miner who headed west during the California gold rush

I pan through the river until my motion becomes part of the scenery by nature of its consistency

I kneel and feel as though an arm & a leg are missing
as if my energy is absorbed into a phantom limb
circling out of me into something else

What could it be ? I keep panning
Words of self awareness are like harpoons

that hit the places that are already wounded

                From those wounds blood still flowed but now as the second sharp point penetrates

It becomes clear that it is there what we must begin to heal
143 · Mar 2020
no me rindo (deshago)
la vida se disuelve
y la calor de ayer persiste
en las temporadas adequadas
y al imaginar tu cara frente a la mia
yo tambien
me quiero disolver
      
          d
                i
                    s
            ­    o
            l
          v
             e
              r

entre esta primavera
con la esperanza que mi coctel de átomos
llegase como postal a tu dirreccion  

en noches como estas el pacto que hizo el alma
con el cuerpo se quiere deshacer
pues me gustaria ser libre
para ir a sostenerte

y preguntarte <<¿Que te pesa?>>  
<<¿Te puedo ayudar a cargarlo?>> 
 y finalmente decirte
con sinceridad que <<por ti no me rindo>>
por ti, en tiempos como estos, me deshago
143 · Aug 2020
Coalescing Prayer
One of my mother's best friends lost her mother.  She told us she would have risked the flight home but would have been quarantined for 14 days, and thus she would have still missed the funeral. Instead, she'd hold a service at a local Buddist temple in Long Beach, where the monks could help move her mother to the next stage.

...
We drove 20 minutes on the 710 Hwy to the temple. We pulled into the parking lot, walked to the entrance, took off our shoes, and then proceeded to look for her among the mid-sized crowd.

...
We met eye to eye and exchange greetings. Her slender frame and thin arms joined ours as we embraced.    

Simply, nothing could be said. Silence. No words from my mouth.
I could not think of a sentence that could alleviate her sorrow or could raise the landlocked wings of the jetplane she couldn't take.

...
My friend's mother is strong; a passing stranger on the street could easily mistake her petiteness for fragility, but as she walked back and forth aiding the monks and helping the staff at the temple prepare the food –her strides told you otherwise. It was clear that she mustered all her strength and kept it on her like a coat completing task after task. Someone else that might have kept their face stoic or pushed it all down, but she allowed herself to be all four seasons,as she continued to make her way through the temple.

...
White taped 'X''s spaced six-feet-apart over the carpet told you where to sit; we inclined our head and prayed, hoping the intention of our words would coalesce with theirs; that our Spanish could shed its cultural coat and join the energy of their prayers in Khmer.
In the time fo COVID, one of the hardest things you can do is try to travel. Whether it be from your home to the store or from the your country to another.

My mother's dear friend lost her mother and could not attend the funeral because of the current international situation.  As I have not yet lost a parent,t I cannot imagine how she must be feeling.

I try to process events through writing and so I wrote this.
I am the light and I am the dark
I am the keeper and shepard of all things,
For I am you, as you are me
And in this world of forgetting
It is profound to remember.
Se lo quieras ser
y selo completamente
que te acompañen los racimos
de cada flor y cada fruta
a la adecuada primavera tu y ellos madurarán

Lleno y llena
bajo sol y luna serás
como toda flora y fauna
      vivirás y morirás
         madrugaraz y hacia el sol te volteas

puedes arrumbar las historias, puedes derrumbar la reja como raíz que busca  encontrar la ruta más corta hacia la luz
recuperando la tierra y tú recuperándote a ti misma

Se lo quieras ser
y selo completamente
140 · Mar 2021
Untitled
After the storm there is peace
Incomprehensible peace
A Lhasa de gusta el baloncesto más ,aunque es alta, ella es pésima con el balón.

El arco se le hacia lejos y lo más nerviosa que se pone lo más que se le aleja ese arco anaranjado.

Más cada día a ella le gusta llegar temprano al gimnasio de su escuela
para disparar unos aros.

Los más aros que dispara, los mas que se acera–la distancia se desase frente a ella.
The wind in drift
the leaves rustling
The sounds of creeks
pouring like their water
into my ears

Here we are on the other side of the moat.
“Beware the lucid dreaming of the starved” they whisper

deep in the lagoon of your mind, cross the moat
this one is a wide ditch filled with empathy
This one is the one
the one you hardly cross beyond

“Some things are obvious” they whisper

“I guess we’re all crossing the lagoon”  I say
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
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
138 · Oct 2020
Me gusta (y es como si )
Me gusta escuchar a Silvio Rodriguez
ciero mis oyos
y es como si me cantara a mi

Si, no sola soy maza
tambien soy alma
y me gusta cuando escurre vida
desde las bocinas
desde un libro
desde una pintura
desde la risa de los peatones

Me gusta ecuchar
lo que la vida a sido para los demas
me gusta vivir
y es como si este mundo me hablara a mi
138 · Aug 2021
draft 1
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
137 · May 2021
Untitled
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
137 · Mar 2021
El corazón
Aqui el corazon no cuenta

pero para mi el corazón manda

Yo vengo de culturas donde todo

trataron de borrar y dejar en el olvido

donde una forma de vida fue destruida

y cuando te queda nada

y no tienes pertenecías

y tú juventud se a ido

te queda solo el corazón


Por eso es que el mío manda
137 · Oct 2021
Untitled
I seek peace and reconciliation
everything else:
the silence
the arguing
the finger pointing
the largest vine extending from the past to a future I project I cut

Pruning this life from all stories, no past, no future only this spacious garden of presence that I hold it all
On the tips of dried grass, I walk
bare footed aching to discover
where else a sea can be found when I am nowhere
close to the pacific roaring waves of my flat coastal city where angeles hum by the sea
and concrete kisses are copious to the flat soles of the huaraches,  plastic sandles and warm enough to be called friendly to the rubber soles of long haired girls on skateboards riding down the boardwalk

Where is the sea in this winter
when the chest holds tight to the air and wishes to expand for terror of the cold

long hours pass, dried stems come into focus
when the parched
glory of brown reveals itself as an abundance of  blades of grass marchitas to the two traveling
arches of my feet

what is grass in winter if not my answer
There was a time when I would run to your door so wholeheartedly with sincerity as my bread offering along side a red wine full of my clearest intention to simply see you smile and be more confident in your own beauty

I would melt  like a small chubby stick of butter and feel like perhaps in those chairs we sat we all melted and became yellow viscosity –inseparable

There was a time when I foolishly saw my mothers eyes in you, her broken unhealthy relationship cloaked the room perphaps more present than the music-even you were clocked with it. In my mind, If you were my mother leaving my father, I would be the lover who showed up with open arms to offer a new safe shoulder

What heavy cloak that was. What an illusion. How I thought perhaps life was calling to stand for my love regardless of what others thought. This heavy cloak came off the day that love did not stand for up for me.

this cloak was so thick so heavy and when it came off and I could see by the non stop crying  and rapid way in which my eyes reddened around the lids and pupils
that I was wrong

that I was a truly alone in a place so far
But still my life in MY hands
136 · Feb 2020
Lice (So and so)
In elementary school the kids who had  lice in their hair were sent home. During recess, you’d hear it through the small sneakered  grapevine while playing on the blacktop that “so & so go lice” –choruses of “ew” would erupt from the girls and some of the boys. In a few days the “so & sos” would return with a freshly shaved head.

As far I knew, lice were akin to fairies in their size and exclusivity. I’d never seen a louse or a fairy.
                              ...

There were many stray cats on our block.  When I was old enough to have a decent daily allowance I would save each dollar within my backpack’s side zipper bag until it had enough money to buy cat food in bulk.

I would get home three hours before my mom and pops, so I’d take my sweet time feeding the stray cats in the backyard. I got so confident that my parents would never catch me doing the deed that I bought two large silver cat bowls.
                            ...
My parents never caught me feeding the five stray cats. However, they did catch all the lice the cats left in the back yard.

I remember my mom running into the house screaming “ ¡hay pulgas!”

                              ...
On a Saturday, my parents made me help them spray the entire backyard. To teach me a lesson they said.
                                 ...
They were tiny and fast; they had that “now you see me, now you don’t” kind of speed. I wanted to catch them, but every time I tried I failed. Until I swatted at my arm, and squished one through pure luck did I know what a louse looked like.
I wish I could find the photographs of the fishermen and their long glorious nets near sundown at Lake Pátzcuaro

“This is a little piece of your heritage” my uncle said to me. “You must know the people and the history.“ he drove me through artisan towns and stopped at the side of roads so that I could talk to the ceramicists, wood workers, and weavers. All of them had inherited the craft from their mothers and fathers.

My uncle’s study was full of books, it was a little paradise I took for granted instead of frequenting it I spent my hours with my cousins playing in the orchard and running through my aunt’s flower garden. We stayed half the summer hidden behind an 8 foot fence. Only coming out to travel or  walk two blocks down the road to my grandmother’s house that was falling apart.

At the time it’s was as if her house was me, my walls crumbling, my doors creaking, the spirits of the old loud and  in the mirror brown eyes peered back with more questions than answers.

How do I bridge these worlds? How can the conquered and conquerer find peace?

One day the wooden beams of my grandmother’s house pressed too heavily into the adobe walls and the left side of the house collapsed.  They moved her into my uncle’s brand new empty house, the one he’d constructed expecting to grow tired of living in the States, which was located on the same large plot of land.  

Just like that it fell and one day they tore the rest of it down and built it again.

One day, too
I just decided to tear down all notions, combine all the parts, honor every ancestor, and be everything I was. I didn’t have to belong to one place; I was by nature many things.
A girl who stood at the shore of Janitzio taking photographs of rising nets and the smell of Tzintzuntzan was still very much a large part of me. I wanted those photographs to remember.
My heritage on my mother’s side.
135 · Jun 2020
Em Um Carro (Villa-Lobos)
Heitor Villa-Lobos plays in the car. The colors spurting onto us. Chromaticism opening the janelas para outro mundo as we ride down the interstate.
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