poem writing is a slow art
cannot just cultivate
your mind, you must train
your senses,
your eyes, sculpt
a beautiful mind
and become a deep sea diver coming up
for air at just the right speed

the art of poesy is the art of living
with age more profound

I am strong
I am brave
I am carrying my bright light
and my life calls to me
it does not matter how much you resist change or want to put me down or get in my way

I am not in opposition of life nor in opposition of  you; everything inside of me flows like water and I listen for the direction of the stream
perhaps you are not listening
maybe you are too caught up in other things
in that case my dear girl joy is a compass and your heart sees roads your mind cannot fathom

I am not afraid
I am trusting of this world
I am well able and I do not need to cling anymore to anything in desperation
for whatever I need
to get through
I have got deep in my soul so whatever happens know you stand facing a womyn who is full and wholly
And I would always offer you my hand even after you have trespassed
I am passed the black and white notions of life, of books, and dogma, of not searching inside of me, of shutting out my own inner wisdom to conform to outer guides
I only listen my guardians when they whisper through flickering lights
you cannot bring me down
there is not down here
where my being abides

And if he does not feel the same
I would understand
but I needed to be brave
because it means so much to me
he means so much to me
everyone has got their things( their no to great traits)
but i don’t need someone to put on a pedestal that is not what I am asking for

I am asking to see you further for who you are

Silence as you gasp and before you scream

Silence

A sigh is another place in which one can find the quiet residence of a lexicon

In complete silence women pray;
some do so in the zealous quietude of their rooms
where the silence is like a mime
sending only signs

Silence comes while the musicians wait attentively on their condutor to count them off

Silence is what we endure
when we believe we do not have a tongue


Silence

When a moment is full of beauty our mouths and minds lay cusped in that second’s ineffable existence

Silence

The great friend of fools and the great companion of the wise.

We looked at the state of our nation and there was only silence

what followed was drowned out by all the noise in a place
where there was no room for silence

How magical is life that I still want to open my palms
breathe the dust, pollen,  

and carry flowers from the fields
to my gentle resting place
How magical that we suffer
but that woe is never us

There is no need to churn the wind or try and turn morning light into thick butter

No need for truculent mirages of the internal dialogue to command the noon

breaking into the present with all your heavy layers of guardedness
will not suffice for tranquillity and true amity

Expect beautiful things: she runs to me and laughs with her usual pink furry sweater.  we combine “my mãe” with some English “let’s go” and head to the door

“my mãe, let’s go!”. We try to make out the door to downtown to meet her divorce lawyer.

for my mãe, mãe
I finished filling out a declaration and 5 other legal documents. Did her laundry, folded her hospital uniforms and cleaned the yard.

She laughs and smiles and sometimes looks off into the distance, my mãe

everyday we try to find something to smile about

I am not empty
                                               I am Full
even during the most
sorrowful
days

I am not
helpless,                               I Know
my words Create and
my thoughts
Can Built
worlds

Even in the darkest
of rooms, I Know
I am
not just the dim lights
or the darkness

                                                I Understand
I am Brimming with Life,
and                                         that I am
the Daughter of                    Possibility

even when those
around me
shackle themselves
to negativity, to stagnation
and to fear;
                  I Know
           my state of mind
                    is                            Precious
                                                    as is
             my entire                      Body

At the end
their opinions are
no indicator,
no meter or jury that
presides over
my Life’s                                Value
only                                        this Fullness  
of Spirit,
                                                the Wholly
nature
of my                                      Smile
                                                Can tell you,
Yes indeed
even with reasons
to despair
                                                I am
                                               WHOLESOME
                                               to my Core



                              ...
                Are you on the way?
Have you reached the same address yet ?
I leave messages on the eternal answering
machine hoping you hear them. Do you at least see the blinking red light?
                              ...
               We are wholesome,
                   Maria screams
                      as the orange being cut
                          over the counter
                 unfolds what’s in front of us:
            simplicity.
                               ...
The needle of
acceptance
suturing a wound with
clarity, let’s us know
that this cycle
of harming
of repeating sadness
is not the end point,
just a step before                    HEALING
                                                  OCCURS

Dear love could you see me with new eyes too
could we clear the slate and I could I love you
as I have always longed to love you
I forgive and I wish to walk down the narrow streets with you

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

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?

We get honest about the shadows
we get honest about the reoccurring feelings
we rip down our stories
so well woven spanning multiple pages that we gasp in surprise that we know them by memory

we hold space for them
and if that is crying
and if that a sentence that appears
floating from the heart to the surface carrying a message that  till then we could not bare to accept

...finally let’s not push it back down
lets look at it
let’s stop wishing things would disappear let look at what is true and allow its natural buoyancy lift over and over until
we finally offer it space and accept

I am another river—
indomitable. made in your image. mutable

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

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

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

All thought patterns need to be out in the light. If it makes me uncomfortable I dig in even more, see the thought patterns and give them a name

I talk to folks whose job is helping others navigate life and identify unhealthy ways of thinking and acting
from monasteries in the mountains to therapist over zoom
the classroom extends to the even the people around me
there is a teacher everywhere

much growth is in progress

I have sung 365 songs with your name in them butnever have they touched your shoulder. In the dark alleys, holding friends up as they tell me how angry they are. How disillusioned they feel. In the morning hours I lay our all the  evidence on the dirt street like chess pieces over a board not to try to convince but to show them that their  “ ****** up__”  as **** as it has been is also what life has been. No redrawing,undo, no control z but that the  flash of light is also as brilliant and potent as the jet black in their hair, in the alley, and in the hands of who ever hurt them their neglect.

On the chess piece I lay a shoe for times I was dragged from under the sofa and beat for leaving a can of coke unfinished, on the board I leave a piece of hair for the chunk that girls in elementary school ripped off my head after school, on the board I leave picture of a naked Barbie for the times I was molested, and to the corner I leave a small receipt that was left in my bag the night after I was too drunk to say no and did not know to call it **** until a few years later. On the board I leave a flight ticket for the love for a man for which I crossed an ocean, and in the middle I leave a white flower for all the times I willed myself up alone from the floor.

I can only show them. Some days I leave some parts out; some friends only know some parts and some of them have no laid their pieces on the chest board and we all all wept for the things that have been lost


Cried in a living room to Marley “no woman, no cry”


At the end I throw over the chess board and watch the chess pieces fly off in different direction. So what
So what
So what
I still have this life to live

I have learned that to clear the vine of grapes completely with two hands
is an act of love

no misunderstanding, even if the fruit fell
you turn around and pick it up
and with your words you wash them
                                         and make wine

the stitchery of the past lifts off
and circles like Angeles the crown of my head
I follow the morning and
I peek into a 9:00 am mass to listen to prayers. I try to find my grandmother so I look at the same row she would sit in. In a different city, in a different church, in another bench but instinctively look at the third row on the right. There is an other women bowing like the others as the priest cues with his words. She is not my grandmother. They are not my grandmothers but they are someone else’s   If I had opened my eyes here
on a hilll in Haebangchon as did
my dear friend 15 years my senior
Then one of them might know my name
but they smile as if they do

My heart caught on a hook flung out of the water and into the air
did three somersaults before it was hit with an iron cast frying pan
dropping into the current of the River
where there the rays of sun peering through could not offer warmth only show  me the color of blood dispersing from body
in that state, I drowsy
could not recognize myself
from that murk of suffering
yet to know if I would survive

like all things left looming
over the water, I was afraid
that large fish would devour
or anger’s current with its companion wind of bitterness would rest my soul on the side of the riverbank

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

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

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

And there
and here
I transform
what you give me
all the splinters
****** to open
a small surface protruding
into my life
but with intention
find it laying over a flower
Over the smile of a stranger

there is nothing to chase
to fill you
so there is
only giving

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

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

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

“When we are trees are we dead?” my niece says
“no, we are trees” my little nephew tells
me over video chat
I smile so deeply that I shatter passed the notions of “ me and tree” and I wish my life as a tree offers as much shade from the harsh sun as I hope my life as a human does until there is no sun, no we and we are one

gender constructs, piety, nationality, “goodness”  these frameworks I live in are unquestionable for in their deviation there lies true reason of  “understandable” ostracism “yeah of course, how dare they?” & “who do they think they are”  
I thank them for where they have brought us but that is not where we are going it is only where we have already been

as the disease spreads
transmogrifying terror into memes
the future becomes too blurred
the reality we are endowing; our namesakes –what is our legacy?

our vision too unfocused
partly closed eyes looking out the window
unable to see what is to come

When my mother plays foreigner, I know she is sitting on the carpet playing tracks  pensive or standing by the stereo alone dancing in the living room like I would find her alone and eyes closed. Sometimes drifting into the kitchen for a drink. Which in my mothers case is lemonade or manzanilla tea because she doesn’t “drink”. Today, within the song she picked and shared,  I saw her at the precipice of heartbreak as I have been many times.I saw her palms and her eyes in my own face reflecting off my hand phone’s screen as it auto locked.

How do you transform anything
now I know only with love

It is an honor to hold your hand in grief
as it is to hold mine while I weep

It is a privilege to see the books you selected on your bookshelf by hand as it is an honor see the titles that tilt on the shelves of mine

You are sacred and so am I

It is an honor to hear you sing in the morning hours and it is an honor to hear me sing to the falling rain

It is a privilege to enter the sanctuary of your mind and soul- the one you have watered with love, care and delicacy as it is an privilege to be allowed to enter the sanctuary of my mind and soul


You are sacred and so am I

Are you modern poetry and am I translating you
can I run my fingers ever so slowly until I remember you so well
that from your skin I can craft an alphabet
are you
life so exquisite and voluptuous
that I cannot get away from you without wanting to write you ****** free verse or an ode to your blades of grass
a sonnet to your beloved sea so pristine when it glistens
that instantly I fall back in love

what about it does not make me weak at the knees? You just keep surprising me.

How is it life that I came to you ?How did I get this lucky?

What is birth and death as I hold them ? Are you really in between them ?
or have you always been there ?

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

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

Speak your words
Take them, from the street signs
Tear them from the books, from the thoughts nestled into song, take them
clip them onto your chest, and once you are ready
pull each of them off and stack them on your tongue

Saliva to soak them is all you will need and when you feel like you’ve had a bite full and
it’s much more than you can chew

Thats the minute you will start choking up,
And that is when you will know you are back.

Move your body
Let it move in any way it must move
and make sounds
Any sounds

Now open your mouth
and speak
You are alive again, with your own words caressing your lips.

Transform my heart into something beautiful
something that knows of lightness and of the daily pleasure of constant self love and appreciation

Transform my eyes, so that they can see truth even when it isn’t spoken

And change me, so that I do not accept what is as a finite option
I want to be reminded that tomorrow can change.

So transform me, I am willing to shed all the things that bring me sorrow.

I am willing to let go of all the guilt I use to keep myself down under.

change me, I am ready

Like the earth, I too am in rotation aligning with the stars above me

I need good soil; no one can do things alone. How strong you are, how bright your light remains depends a lot on the richness of the soil that nourishes you. The less nutrients in it the more you have to compost the more minerals you must add every so often to your life just to get by. And now your adding more and more –without fixing the root of the problem: you need good dirt. Yes gratitude is a fertilizer and does great things  but you need to plant yourself somewhere divine & loving.

to the ever rotten glory of drying rats
at the entrance of a drain in L.A

they scurry like acrobats making the tight rope
electrical wire journey in a few seconds
"wow, look at them go!" spills out of an apartment window
it might as well be talking about the rats and not horse races
  
fluffy like your neighbor's dog, scruffy
elegant only in the way our wobbly daughter completes
her kindergarten ballet practice
these rats could be gloriously nimble chefs

the sticky finger you get after summer watermelon bites
I bet these rats get after pulling apart market bags of garbage
to find food is this new Los Angeles landscape that the 1850 compromise exacerbated along

Ella cruzas puentes (ellos no son de venerar)

“Se olvidó de Dios ” murmuró el señor, cuando ella no quiso entrar a la parroquia.

Más ya hacia años que “el que dirán” se le había convertido en una telaraña, antigua y meciéndose entre el viento.

Ella sabía que los puentes son necesarios.

“Hay que cruzar por los puentes
pero no hay que venerarlos”

Su madre le enseñó que solo a dios se le venera, pero tal vez venerar tan poco fuese el punto, “hay que cruzar; hay que estar en comunión” pensaba

Dentro de su pecho ella había encontrado un rincón donde su alma se desasía, y se mezclaba con la infinita energía de lo “todo”
y ninguna religión le negaría eso

Y aunque el hombre supiera de puentes no sabía de cruzar

La tarde se estaba convirtiendo lentamente en noche, y Fátima decidió que sería mejor caminar de regreso a casa y disfrutar al máximo lo poco que quedaba del la luz día.

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

I stand on the dirt arena, the matadors are my thoughts and bulls are feelings. Both strong and assertive. I watch them and breathe.

So I pour all the verbs into my own life
and it slowly feels so much better
and I am in no hurry for anything

I am settled and in the rhythm of this

I have these dreams
that keep me up.


There are golden pigeons that sing “come, come home” and you stand next to them.

I am scared every time I wake up that if I ever tell you, where home is you’ll laugh at me–think I am a silly girl.

The pigeons tell me to come home to you
to the land of the morning calm, across a sea from what used to be my childhood  house.

the pigeons sing loud and I wake up with their songs in my ears, and although I fear
I also dream awake, dream of a home and you standing next to golden pigeons.

This cracked vase, shatters
leaving only the space around it to witness

I pass my hand through the space
only air, I breathe–

The sparrow's songs blossom like azaleas
until they  become an open chorus sung in rounds amongst the trees
ever circling and deepening
they remind me of what life is truly like when we venture back
away from the illusion of thoughts

It was added to me this sweet scent of summer that accompanies random days when the thought  of your smile makes me smile and cry simultaneously
reverence for life means
to hold in your arms the painful and soft

resignation that smells of a stagnant room fills and so does love and so does sorrow as does loss as does self respect as does truth

I sing to you the way a butterfly sings to a still flower
I sing to you in the midst of winter as your petals wither
I sing not just to you but to the wind that shakes your stem and to the sun the feeds your belly, when I sing there is water in my breathe and the flower’s  carbon
food on my exhale
I sing because to sing is to nourish the earth; it is to breath with the everything
at once

if there is
if there is
If there is all the things that thrive within the being
those that never die, those that perdure untouched, uneffected by the outside lores
then there is always the presence of forgiveness
the room for second chances
and there is return

every edge of your body that slept
slowly awakes
how could slumber be
sweet when it robs you takes
your money and still asks
for the product of your eyes

What are you without vision?

Do others find
the things that  I find
beautiful
beautiful? Did you ever travel
through that question
on your way to getting older

Do they find him (in the crowd of people)
beautiful?  the old man sitting
on concrete steps under the the street lamp reading a newspaper
at 10:30 pm his sunken cheeks and eyes darker his hands moving slowly
and gently
beautiful

the young woman on her motor-scooter stoping in the side of the road, the light on her phone illuminating her face as she stares at a map pulls back in the handles and

To every heart that shivers
let me shiver with you
we along way from the beginning
have the same end

we all suffer
cycle in and out of fortune
can answer to the heaviness
of pain and transform it
(lets us be wise and gentle everytime it  comes)