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

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

Aveces me enamoro de los puentes
fácil y fatalmente frecuento lagos de ideas
en esos charcos anchos me gusta salpicarme en el <<quien habrá caminado estos rumbos con solo tiempo como el factor de lejanía entre nos >>

the alarm rings in Guernica
All wounds open with this one

The first verse of Dalton’s Como tu
“I love love, life.” witnesses as
All wounds speak with this one

Ingram’s interview with Ms.Goodman
the Jews Hamburg taken to the Mintz Ghetto stripped of clothing  and then shot
All wounds unravel with this one

The way I cannot speak the language of my ancestor and the violence it took to strip our tongue away but not our lives
All wounds open with this one


Refaats join Jara
All wounds open

And as they open still mothers and fathers wipe the clean the face of their dead children and smile

My your god and mine have mercy and smile upon us again as these wounds open I begin to understand a smile is a treasure

Your finger twists the typer’s hand to squeeze out of their tongue the many truths

but they keep them in their pockets the prescripted speech that’s someone’s got their interests tied around
Like some money hanging off some pretty lady’s hips who wraps around a pole, that’s what clicks into place like the sound of an old vhs being pushed in and made to play, but you got the wrong tape
it’s a well dressed dude, making you feel bad that you ain’t as solid a consumer
as him
Ka-ching affluence
He’s got all the right signifiers
Ka-ching
like a dog has got the right canine chow and the right collar to tell you someone owns him
because if he owned himself
you know he’d already found his worth

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

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

I love you with the compassion, the deepness of self forgiveness, and the  jovial self belief that I love myself with.

I love you knowing you are nowhere near perfect,but knowing this about you
just sits right with me

and your will, will be yours to make
and not mine to restrict or try to change

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

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

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

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.

Donde la vida te lleve
ahí se abrirá de luz

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

And it radiates from your eyes
this joy and you become fuller
and your eyes girl
they become so much more beautiful not because you are right but because you are kind

Dame tu abecedario para comérmelo
para finalmente tragarme todo esos límites y esponjarlos para abonar las flores que nos quedan por plantar

You are in mine
too
So much so
that I quit trying to get you out
of the veins
that flow like rivers
throughout the entirety of me

We talk about our cultures and I tell them I come from very expressive and outwardly loving ones

that I am hugged and kissed on the head by my older cousins male or female
that even now immersed in a different culture
when I come to consider someone a really good friend, I want to hug them and kiss them on the cheek
that I tone myself back so much!

that I was taught to be loving and direct

That I want to dance when I hear some music! Dang! Like I really, really, really wanna groove

That I struggle with perception here
because instinctively I feel:
that to not be warm
feels like someone is intentionally
being cold: a sign of indifference

and to not be direct
is intentional disrespect :
seen as if you are wasting someone’s time on purpose by beating around the bush

that I always have to stretch myself to try and understand
that I must give up my notions of what is okay
and give up what something as simple as outward displays of affection or directness mean

It means pulling myself at the seams and seeing what remains underneath all I was taught beneath the performance dance these cultures schooled me in
their religions, their power systems, their moral codes, their values

what is underneath is truly me
just as human as any other
same same in every part of town
and in every corner of the world

A tinta de meu coração fica púrpura como el suéter de mi avó paterna
me aquece
me envolve
me traz calma

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

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

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

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

He asks me how I know that song
it’s piece by Satie
I can’t remember when I first heard it playing
“I am no not sure” I say
it whereabouts lost in the fog,
grown small in the rear view mirror of my life
I stack words like children blocks to say
“I grew up around musicians” I tell him

Knock them down with a a first of “ I have listened to a lot of stuff involuntarily… I was just there like a sponge absorbing”

Satie will play on…
I will keep far away my uncles guitars and cousins counter with wires and pick ups
my brother’s nylon string and my grandmothers singing
“ I just really like music; who doesn't?

I touch the insects bites
that have swollen up
and become bumps
on my right arm

I run my middle and index fingertips
over them and trace the Summer Triangle: Vega, Deneb, and Altair

I think to myself
It’s July, I should be able to walk outside at night and see them shine brightly in the sky

correct all the mistyped words
with correction tape
bestow upon me the click of the roller as you turn it
with volition
yield me the appropriate inches
of mental space -margins
as I type a new year of life away on an eternal canvas
let me place them as numbers over a birthday cake
so that all the thoughts are eaten by the white space over  a rainbow sprinkled cake

In the sprawl, we both call home

the city sings in colors
what it couldn’t speak before

I hear the crooning,
the two soft syllables
every stranger finds in your name
every time you exchange a “Hello”
and I am immediately back
right next to you

Me rindo
ha esta vida divina
y fatal

“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

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

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

Te extraño
soy rama del arbol
que cayó en la agua  
sobre la sima de la montana

gajo bajando con el rio
siguiendo la corriente
hacia tu paradero

desde aqui la jornada se ve larga
pero nunca le e tenido miedo
al torrente o la prolongación

si algo hace el tiempo
es profundizar lo que ya existe

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 ?

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

You stretch your hand and this time you will grasp not because your hand is long  but because the line of love that like yarn was made of prayer, of hope, of courage to bring about change by others is strong enough to hold your body as it high lines. over the canyon. You prepare because you know this will take all your focus, all your wisdom, all your agility, and your discipline and all your human heart. Others may shy away but you will not

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

You swirl in a sweeping of leaves up to the heavens, and I stand again at your grave
your songs spin and join the dried foliage, I hear you sing my name and the flowers you gave me, now dry, spin in air too and so does my grandfather’s songs at your window, my uncle’s guitar before he passed, the tuning  of my cousin’s bass and the strumming of my brother guitar melt into the canvas of today’s fall skies. And just when I feel so close to surrendering, I feel all these dried parts of myself begin to lift.

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

Go find people who will talk to you on a bridge, who will meet you in vulnerability. Who will not leave you in silence under a street lamp. Go surround yourself with those who will ask “what ails you?”
You deserve to find respect in the way someone considers you. Find those who are sure of you, who can see you are a charm not a thorn. Folks who make you feel like you belong; folks that choose you. Do not spend your life crying over those who could not hold you. Forgive them and forgive yourself for asking the naked for a coat. It may be that you were naked, too. Hold nothing against anyone just be on your merry way, see where other roses grow and what spring looks like when winter releases its grip over your heart. You cannot stay in the past, no matter how sweet or how troubling it seems. You are here on this “x”. Take heart and go find people who like you –wish kindness, love and joy for all those around them. Go, go bravely, go quietly into life.

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

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)

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