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

“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

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

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

It transcends me
it goes right through me
it is linked
I accept it
I will walk with this

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

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.

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.

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

I look at old photographs of picturesque
places we’d traveled to together our faces teeming with a burgeoning smile
that is locked and keyless over pixels
that remain unchanged by time they so dutifully remind me that we used
be together and happy within this gallery of sorts

I want silence.
I want the sounds of the wind and the leaves to be the only music I hear. I want my friends’ voices to be the light posts I stand under.

I want like all summer wishes to turn into Fall. A deciduous.

I pushed myself, I listen to the little voice and I shed limitations
painful and uncomfortable but I learn and I grow and that this what this life is for

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.

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

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

Life is here in the dust that falls over my masked face
It is here on the small damaged earth
you handed back to me as if you had simply borrowed some cheap 99 cent rubber ball
I ask why it’s so *****
you answer “ “
It’s surface soiled but  in it less flowers bloom

I ask you how you will mend it
Tell me your rides here your carpooling with your mom’s friends

that you will try to help but that I
Should figure it out

(But you borrowed from me all those who came before you)

For the first time I feel uprooted
and I want to cling to the earth
I want to belong to this body

I want to search for my place of belonging
I am done hustling for affection

I want true partnerships
I do not want the fear anymore
the fear of losing you or anyone
because I came too late, was born too late
or said the wrong thing

...
Baby I deserve some real sincere
****, **** me all night, cry with me when I’m not doing well, walk in peace with me,wow lets work together to heal that, you got your life I got mine kinda love

I just want a shot at the real thing
not at illusions or romanticized stuff
I want my place of belonging only if it wants me back
...

I am going back to art and words
into creating expansive landscapes. I have the need to grow me like a lovely cactus in this desert I find myself in.


...

I reach for this very human brokenness to hold it in my arms and nurse it. I reach for the true beauty of life and for the me that can be
...
I close my eyes and see a kind hearted woman, devoted to many things, always learning always growing

I see this body boldly aged and I can my hair long and white
an elder
full of wisdom and my soul light as a feather

I am happy to be who I am
every single sorrowful thing, and every small glorious moment swirls in communion

I am happy
just happy

It is good to travel alone, to venture into my being
no people to distract me
no vision of tomorrow to blind me
nothing but
me
and everything I neglected to feel together in one room

my body naked in the morning rising
to shower, rinse and pat dry
my headscarf over my wet hair
the peeling of an orange
the boiling water inside the kettle
my willingness to face the day

I send photographs to my mother
she calls me her butterfly, her bird
her brave girl
on a wall of my old room she
had painted “fly “

and I think back to being five years old holding onto her leg
scared of letting go on the first day of preschool
anxious to swim in the ocean for the first time
shaking at the thought of rock climbing

I thinking back to her smiling
telling me to go and be free
this her greatest gift in this world bundled in words of encouragement often too harsh
she used to get mad, that at first I would not take it
but I know I treasure it
her toughness, her zest, the courage it takes a mother to open her palms

my nakedness to feel, the nabi flying
                    my obsequió is
meu vida pra ser quem sou

60's and 70's Latin American rock
EL extraño del pelo largo
Spinetta
Pedro Aznar
Hay tanto y quiero escucharlo todo

4 hours = about 4 albums

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

Thoughts: I observed ducks in the lake comfortable in the cold their plumage  warming them. I thought about what my plumage may be. If the plumage were a metaphor what is it a metaphor for. Is it wisdom, is it skill, is it a learned capacity? I pondered  and then I just laugh because my mind is conditioned to find patterns and metaphors that somehow I momentary lost the point… I don’t have to know. I can just sit here and observe & be present.

2. Thoughts: … ☁️

There is no need to put yourself in harms way anymore
no need to try and figure out what you can say to make it better for someone else’s comfort
no need to always try
and try
admire the flower that grows in winter
the same way you would admire the one that flourished in spring

I would still love you
set ablaze ten suns with a match
and run after a wild rabbit in the forest even after dark

there, I am sure I would not fear
even the rustling leaves

there they could punish me, bring down the inquisition, accuse at the stake, but I still would find a way to forgive and smile in your direction

I would still love you
sometimes I do not think it good
to feel such things

What’s a maid doing running into the woods after a cow
what’s the earth doing revolving the sun
don’t ask me. Don’t ask me anymore.

There was once a woman who spoke to the moon. She was so delighted with the moonlight, that one day she reached her hands towards it and sunk her thumbs into it.

While having the moon in her hands, the woman hugged it held it near her chest and whispered with affection, "you light up the darkest of my nights"

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)

A heart so full
It knows only love.

A hand so soft it can only be
gentle.

a heart that feels the absence of love
can then recognize its presence
once it comes slowly trickling in like water


A hand that feels the rope slide through its  palms and becomes burned
knows again of the tenderness of touch

A heart that keeps opening and cracking
knows of the beauty of wholeness

A hand that knows the ****** blisters grows new skin and knows the allure of the cool smoothness of marble.

Tengo que tirar todo lo que pesa del cuarto de mi corazón, una cuchara no sirve para vaciar tu sal ni su arena de mi costado tiene que ser esto, un adiós
un no mirar atrás

Tengo que despegar la goma de mi querer buscar las nubes y seguir el viente que las ejerce que las mueve a otros cielos tiene
que valer la pena el dolor
un no olvidar jamás

Aquí en mi ser te velo, hay una funeral
los gorriones del pasado atienden
pero ahorra ellos y yo cantamos, damos gracias y nos alejamos de ti

I chuckled in a starbucks
a capitalistic touchstone of experience
because my old high school boyfriend
my then long haired metal-head is an environmental scientist
what is more heavy metal than saving the environment
as quintessential as a green logo-ed mermaid is to visual culture
so is the aching guilt of living now...slowly killing this earth  
At least when we talked about making the world a better place,
he was telling truth

Poems are do not need length
they need depth

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.

I trust the swirls of color and light that bounces from the window into my eyes to help me see.
I trust that I will arrive at my hearts desire and that this living is preparing for what lays ahead.

am I bee
be am I
Bee I am
beeee
I am
am I to believe
that I am a bee

Every poem I read today
made me weep
spoken word and hip hop coalesced
brought the concrete streets and grit
and pure relentless of yesterday
pushing it through my lacrimal sac

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

I am here to hold you my uncertain sorrow, hold you my jubilant cries while holding with my other palm the shrieks of excitement. I am here to walk alongside you as you walk back from a dead end road you thought would go somewhere. I am here in the rain–unwilling to abandon you when you spit out words half peace & half misguided renewals of sadness. I am here for the sentimental-girlish **** others refer to, to lift your chin up and say “baby girl you got this”. I am here to squirm and dance with you when no one else will. I am here to hold you. I am here. Here, to break bread with you. Here to drink of the same cup and comb your hair when you’re drunk.

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

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

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

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

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

que tierna
la alas de
un pajarito

que de su  ser
trajo a otro ser

liviana es
su despejar

el viento
a las alas
carga

el viento
mi amor
levanta hacia
mi viejo padre

I compose poetry on the subway
on my phone

People think I am texting

I think they are texting
Maybe they are writing poetry, too

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.

You seed your war in my home over my tongue
and I refuse it
ten napkins, 11,12, 13, and 14 cannot suffice
to clean policies or gunmen
or blood on the cement of Asian seniors pushed
to the ground because their ancestors were
not white. Those napkins cannot wipe off or wrap around the feet of mother and child, and when their bus arrives from TX & AZ
to DC seeking asylum
it cannot clean the dirt of free labor and a system of incarceration for the poor as its substitute from the spine of an American history book
You seed war in the only home I have ever known
but I plant words of  remembrance and accept the past with its flower of responsibility
In the only home I have ever known, this earth, I plow &
toil for the possibility of a dignified life for all tender creatures under the sun I cannot refuse to the manuring, the irrigation and the weeding for someone else did the soil preparation and the sowing and they will do the harvesting and storing

Find my hands in the water of the graces that do align

Be an opening flower
the touch of  warm rain water over your  petals releasing
the smell of your lilies

Your smile-sudden and blooming with laughter,
                                                                ­                          I see.

Tasting rain water with my tongue,
                                                         ­                                 I understand

Hear.                                                ­                                 Clarity. Clearly

The flowers is on my bare chest and I become we. And we delight in each other  and in the rain and in the turning of the earth’s soil and in the material dance of form. The way that the sun makes us both perk up let’s  me know we both recognize where warmth is and where it is not.

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

Prove someone wrong
chose the person
chose the exact words

prove someone wrong
run into another hamster wheel
until you have proved you are “__”

make “__” your motivation. Add another layer to your persona; keep your ego fresh sautéing those words over it

jump into that wheel
do it, again
and again

and when your finally exhausted
find out that living for someone else is not as powerful
as living for your own being

proving is over. you do not need a hamster
wheel. proving is over. You powerful
when you are fulfilling your own heart. Proving ends and you begin