It is just that I want to do right by this girl (myself). Nothing is worth her peace of mind and nothing is worth chasing after to the point of exhaustion. She needs true love and she needs inner fulfillment. She needs to keep her spirit oiled –and her garden nourished.

When you ask me if I have ever tried a burrito,  I should sprint to the bedroom grab a cover and completely wrap myself in it and then proceed to run towards you screaming “yes!”
immediately followed  by
“But she did not cook it. I got it at Chipotle “ sung in legato just to make sure none of us make it out of this situation without feeling uncomfortable

The rain refreshes
with each drop skin,
stem and silt loading
on paved roads

brings water to my lips
I, a human flowers, feel

Hiding in your smile are the fresh flowers
in the vase and the hours you spent decorating your mind with book lines
Hidden in your smile is the mediation cushion
and the feeling of your healed sprained wrist touching the mat

Hidden object in your beautiful eyes
is the dark soil with dying insects, and crumpled brown leaves you turned
into a radiant garden

they see, but who knows
if they really see
water in a cloud
or the challenge in your expansion

Still maturing…
never too ripe
always eternal
and with one foot
in time

I see the longing in their eyes and heaviness
and I want to tell them you have still got life to live
and the body it goes
and I do not know that plot of land you inhabit but I know life is always here
that with tenderness we can hold all our lives’ sorrows and see the gleaming bread of beauty that remains
for that which we have been
is the wool in that yarn string

Mistral en la costa de mi corazón se lleva el noble arrullo y la sigo hacia el un mundo de sueños

he did not just push off her center of gravity provoking
her to fall and then exclaim "watch out where you are walking"

he did not just slap her across her face and call her a "puta"
insulting her and forcefully ****** her until he fell asleep and she slipped from under him

he did not whisper in her ears "I'll **** you"
like once he so boldly declared to my brother with the more metaphorical phrase "I will put a bullet in your head"

this time he beat her until his sisters showed up  
one of them was silent the other  preached "she deserved it"

this time he beat her: combo-ed  his attack and added whatever strength was left in 60-year-old body

that in our video chat my mother was bruised
all over her petite frame

this time after a lifetime of abuse, she did not defend her honor
she did not stay for fear of losing her golden cage or for her children this time she left safely picking the right time with her son

filed the report, got a lawyer walked up the steps of the court
battered-
                                                      ­       and lighter
                                                  lighter­
                                         becoming    
                                 up
                      step
     in  each


to her freedom, I sing a praise, and I reach my palms up to the heavens; they are open,  and I weep for the years she stood there always the "one to blame"

Keep him well through spring as you did through winter
as you done for years
and you have given him breath
keep it steady and constant in his being
deliver him joy
travel swift like the morning dew
and be there when the new day comes

At a dinner conversation she said
she felt relieved to be able to touch her partner’s toe to her own on Sunday nights

She said “I don’t think you can relate”
And I stayed quiet and thought of a life lived years ago
when I woke up with you upstairs cuddled and warm
Your  mother and brother downstairs.
Holiday near Mendocino lake
where I met your cousins and uncles
driving to Bay Area because that is where you grew up and meeting your old elementary school teacher the one you had crush on

waiting for you cross legged on the roof of my car

flipping through cds and vinyls in Berkeley -Rasputin and Ameoba
grocery shopping and you towering over
always having to lean down to kiss me
It seemed like a life lived years ago but it no longer seemed to fit or feel mine so I remained quiet
that girl, that world is outgrown

Toes on a Sunday night
were a gift from a past life

If you look away from the horrors of war, if you ignore reports, personal accounts told, videos of children with amputated limbs, the dead, the dead and many more dead children, and a whole family lifeless on the street next to their car as they tried to flee with now only mosquitos alive circling the camera man who found them–know that what is rotting is not them. It’s our society’s humanity. It’s the lighting of the Christmas tree at square with the reporter standing on a roof instead of on the ground because the area was filled with protesters. That calling for end of  g e n o c i d e when you continue to watch the dying and hear the mourning calls is not anti- anything is simply who continue to watching thousands of children die. Inside the rumble rotting are our values of justice and freedom for all, our great dream of democracy, they push towards the West Bank as they pushed towards the westside of the what became the U.S. manifesting cruelty this story too old and too fraught with river that runs red. Inside the rubble of the past and now the present– along side that dead will lie our humanity and our soul if we look away, silent.

The thin layer of burned bark sits black
over your hand no more hostile

than a passing thought preparing to exit
for a new one to emerge

from the mind’s entrance

I miss her

“Who is your favorite Beatles member?”
This was a serious question as she was a self proclaimed Ringo fan, and anything Ringo related  she could get her hands on she did

Some people are just so sure of what they like
of things
of life
that they make you want to questions what you like
They’re like a strong river, and you have to make sure to keep obedient to the nature of your own flow

I remember turning towards her bracing myself to be met with vehement disagreement and saying  “ Harrison”.

“Oh, okay” she said and kept digging around in the crates filled with vinyls

Among my prairie of tears, I planted
sweet corn singing

Without the piercing
arrow of the night
who is to say
what daybreak is

I am loved and I should soak up the small gestures of kindness by friends and let them marinate. I am loved and able to let unkindness slide off me because it not a reflection of me; other people are my teachers. And no one can take away the love that is  already mine– everything everyone has poured willingly with into my cup. I am loved. I am a bright beautiful being and so are you.

“One day at time”
I say to myself
when my eyes redden
and my body feels exhausted
and the bathroom mirror is too close
and reveals me
to myself

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

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

It’s in the small moments you being to steal my heart, scooping it with your hands as if you have known well what it’s like to have an ***** decompose, return to soil, recycled to nourish once again this earth

It’s in the small moments when you play out 1966 salsa albums, Ray Barretto, Robert Roena that homesick in Jamwon-**** near the station in our tiny home, that I the dust begin to rise

that my heart, my being just as immense as all of life, mundane and earthly dances in our small kitchen. how much I love that in your hands you hold me and I don’t sieve through; I get thicker.

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

I want to write about the way the stars swallowed with matter the emptiness
and how the moons began to orbit the planets and how the planets became
silent floating dreamers
witnessing a red giant’s combustion
the ardent way a life burns bright in the midst of such a universe as our
all inevitably traveling towards extinguishment

It is today I want to write about all the possible impossibles that brought me here
I sitting on an orbiting rock
my chest rising and falling with bones just below flesh and arteries pumping rivers of red blood through me

I like to see you smile.
I secretly wish I could keep it in my pocket
like a child wishes to keep light in a jar.

It’s a smile that is covered in joy.
oh, it looks so good on you Brown Eyes.

You are carrying the frame an old  brick house of pressure determined
to go in your intend direction
your quest to get ahead
in life blinding
you are too busy to stop and really see
all the growing things
still you ride on with your oversized load over the highway

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”:)

Lay down the thoughts that are like smoke
hiding the reflective mirrors of doubt.

Rest your mind well
and ease the racing predictions,
scenarios of doom and possible gloom
that chip away at good things.

Soften your glare,
here,
there is no need to worry,
life has already been so much worrying

This is the point you rest, rest deeply
in your hope

I hand you a flower and you open your palm and place a coal stone

I smile
after many years your flowers were pressed
died and combined
made dark but I do not just see one
I see the bouquet you gave
(The years and the darkness of soil mixed with all the gentle things in your heart)

I could hold a foam sword towards you
but only from a distance must it
look real, this bluff of mine–

unzipping my mouth like a coin pouch
to reveal its teeth would do little
no words would change into a charge of bulls

a faithful distance
for the harmonious well being of an  aging
heart that needs a steady home that I cannot provide, this bluff of mine is played –

adorned with this old regalia of indifference, so heavy it stops me from running to where you are, forgive me—

every time I grow silent and distant it’s a bluff not on you but on me who loves you. The bluff is one me—

I have hugged a three thousand year old redwood tree and asked it to remember me
someday  tree will use marrow, absorb my nitrogen,  my iron that I grew accustomed to seeing in my youth drip red drip
every month clearing my ****** to grow its own leafy children
I will be locked in it’s green splendor
come spring and summer
and fall I will die again as I did before, and in winter I will disappear as I have done before o my to defy death with the help of my ringed friend. We together. A redwood in my heart my heart in a redwood

Once and for all it all turned magic
and the girl could see she could not age
and she could not die

that all her loved ones whereabouts
were deep in her heart
because her and them were
one another
It all turned to magic
and the girl danced a calm and grateful dance
as the great spell that plagued humanity dissipated and from her countenance sorrow was lifted  

magical, the world has always been magical

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

I know I am a distant breeze. And though I wish to come close to you I think I am better off far trying to build a loving life
where I no longer run after you
no longer run after what does not want me

I know I am distant scent
And although I wish to reconcile
and laugh with you
I think I am better off trying to mend myself and build more staircases to my other dreams
where I can find my joy in being of service to others
where I do not run after anything
but instead wander into the right rooms
and truly find that which appreciates me
for being what I am

I know I am just on this earth for as long as this body lasts
And although I wish I could travel the world non stop to see myself in all others
for now I am better off appreciating the small womyn who stares back at me from the bathroom mirror
she too is sacred

This beautiful teeming orbit is not ours to take care of
it is us
“We breathe together”
it is inseparable
you and I
, it –our fate the same

I want life to flourish
and so earth must sing
i want a shift
a second coming of a loving consciousness
not as some man or some messiah (stop limiting divinity to human figure)
but to have us recognize it in the entirety of life in its miraculous omnipresent light that indeed does shine permeating all

my neighbor is named cricket,
she is quiet, pale perhaps in her 70's

my housemate says she lives alone
when you ask her a question she looks

her body softens and she walks closer
then she leaps back after giving an answer

Wildfires–

We are engulfed in fire
the soil dry and it becomes
drier
each year more homes
scorch
each year, the hottest year
recorded

                                ...

We are engulfed not just in California
as the flames rise higher but as a nation
surrounded by the indifference to facts

                               ...

Wildfires raging, images flashing from your screen
–wildfires in the mind igniting –
over the land and soon
over your old way of life

you burn too
slowly, inevitably
for the world is unmistakably one

one large fire of change made up of what
Galeano saw were small
little fires

ablaze creating fertile ground for new thought

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!

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.

I am being stretched and little parts of me are ripping off

but I want to, I want to grow
even if it’s not always pleasant

I want to be a womxn after her own soul
i want my authenticity far more, for I fear
I cannot compromise these lengthy rivers in me
they span too wide
and some too deep 
flowing rapidly down steep mountains
and over vast stretches of land
flooding plains, but also paradoxically
in arid climate nurturing seedlings

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

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

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

keep your feet moving
and look above at the full moon
it shines like your eyes
but it cannot see itself
how beautifully suspended
it is in time, full always
just sometimes it’s real face hidden
in the shadows

I am cataloging the thoughts that pull me into a whirlwind of incompassionate self-talk
observing them
carefully watching them in hopes of not repeating old patterns
in hopes of breaking away
in hopes of being more conscious of the way I live
and the way I want to spend this life
my little notebook and I held together by my hope writing down each painful thought we wish we did not have to admit to

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

A turtle dove brings its wings into its sides and dips
beginning it’s a descent into the air below it

like a seasoned diver with great confidence
gliding through the blue

Maybe for some people love quantified by the things your give them or the physical proximity of you to them, what will they do once you die ? Will they think you have stopped loving them?  

Can they feel the world? The way in which birds feel the air currents while defying gravitational law

Are they aware that nothing truly dies?

my dear tender eyes
the smallest things are the greatest things
disguised by nothing
their beauty standing on its own and like truth
it can only be recognized
so my dear tender eyes take my hand and can you feel we are made of that same tenderness that tilts towards love

To all the beauty in our hearts that will never end
to that infinite microcosm pumping
in each lub-dub love is dubbed in physicality
(as is to be expected in this world of form)

You are becoming more beautiful
not because more people like you
or because more people agree with you
You are becoming divine
because you are in the closet pulling down the cobwebs
In your home, brewing your tea to cultivate moments of attention
in your heart adoring what great effort
you body makes to keep you here
you are beautiful because you try over and over see the miraculous

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

At the foot of a mountain, I come to bury the ashes of all my past lives. I come in joy to lay down what sorrows were of old
to empty my heart as if it were a pail of water to be soaked up by the earth below me

to build another mount to honor all the challenges that like rocks struck skin
those difficulties that winded across time and felt like chains
but that were really sections of a map
that were really my healing under a long period of time  
that were a gift worthy of receiving

I come to sing and play and love and be under the moon by the mountains as I commence the burial of all which weighed me down