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I have come to sympathize with the at home workout enthusiast and the tv show aficionado

my sweater of preference is a black zip up hoody whose two front pockets carry my hands when I get too tired of hanging them at my sides
                              ...
I lounge like a lizard. When sun is at its peak, I walk into the yard and lay on the warm cement walkway that leads to the backyard. Toasty. An Argentinian tegu in another lifetime.
                             ...
I’m the only lizard who regulates it body temperature. Toasty when I want to be.
                             ...
I rappelled back down to the group. I was unfastening my harness when my instructor turned to me and said “ you must have  been a lizard in your past life.”
in all the in-betweens where i tucked my notes of sorrow
                        I have set little fires that

i move around putting out fires from year to year
I am again a night owl
arms stretched wide to loosen
my shoulders  as I make my way across
the bustling square with black flip flops flopping
now if only I could traverse as silently as the owl, unnoticed throughout the night
Observing

throbs of pain that materialize from the air
i hold my chest,

i try to imagine two warm hands embracing
the heavy iron stakes of sorrow that pierce you and then me
Todavía llevo la esperanza del amanecer en mi costado
llevo la amplia gana de desacéreme completamente hasta revelar las delicadezas que aún que
me hacen parecer frágil
me dan vida y mi dan valor
para vivir con atrevimiento
Todavía te quiero tanto que
todos los días me pregunto cómo haz estado

Todavía te quiero tanto que
exploto
y no encuentro la manera de vivir sin ti
yo se que la existe pero no la quiero

Todavía te amó tanto
que siempre quiero disolver los grandes obstáculos
siempre quiero abrir mi boca y darte algo dulce pero me callo

me quedo con mis palabras porque
tu también tienes que poner de tu parte
pero esta vida no es fácil
y aveces te quiero esperar cien años
pero surgiría la muerte como otro obstáculo

Todavía te amó
hay un río con fuerte corriente que no solo me atrae a ti sino que también te siento dentro
como si me hubiera intentado salpicar en ti
más termine empapado

Todavía quiero tanto poder amarte
aun que seamos seres distintos
aun que seamos solo un puntito temporario
en esta infinidad

y hay mañanas cómo estás que camino hacia el mar  y al llegar desde la orilla veo el gran mar que nos divide y te veo a ti
y sonrío y se que estás  ahí vivo lleno de vida, imperfecto pero real con sangre que fluye, y muy callado con mente tan llena y te quiero gritar
te amó
nunca te olvides venga lo que venga

Y todavía te amó aunque esta sea nuestra realidad pero se si queremos la podemos transformar
She has died
40 books swirl in our hands
As we pass them from friend to friend
During dim light living room conversations
Or read them to our beloved ones to whom we wish
Could understand

We are perfumed by her once presence and uplifted
To know that transformation and love are the ways
The most meaningful of acts
Bell Hooks has passed away. I can just be grateful for all her work and her words.
How could your eyes come with a stranger
your hair pass with a friend and
your lips leave with another

How is it that your mannerisms wave
across the courtyard from one
person to the next
until
they gather like an accordion's
bellows into sound
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
Some things feel so distant so far
The time I tried to delete and wipe him from my life was not with the intention to hurt him
it was with the intention of cultivating self respect

It was me trying to liberate myself from being pinned under intentional disregard towards me, constantly being ignored, and engaged without the intention of helping my soul (of lifting my spirit)

The way I had let him treat me showed such a lack of respect for myself  that I had to try


It was never about hurting anyone; it was about being better then I had known myself to be

It was growth or being a doormat
and I ached to grow and unfurl

I ached to return to my own arms
My best friend’s girlfriends name is Kat. We talked about jazz, Palmdale and drummer, writers, poetry, therapy and love– outlives transformed by it. The sun rose where I was and the sun was setting where he was. It said it was so beautiful and he started to cry and I started to cry. We said “I love you” and ended our call.
I want to be brave and in my hands hold this ball of love
“I can be anything or anyone. A tree, an ant, a human, a bird.”  
Hold this love in hands so that I am never scared. So there is never “the other”
This ball of light I hold onto let me courageous and let me not forget

this ball of love and light in it the same
knows no separation no boundaries
Too
Too
I rake the leaves from the floor and gather them into bundles and make them into adornments

I see their beauty
and I want others to see it too

I do not care if someone watching
finds it odd
the majesty of life  can be found in a leaf, too
and in all the small things
in the tinniest of creatures, too
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 can see myself loving again
I can see myself helping nourish the plants and creatures around me
I can see myself walking in a long dress with flowing hair
with little heads around me peeking into bushes and trying to feel everything in sight
I can see myself singing to my friends
and reading them poetry
sketching the neighbor and feeding the stray animals
I can see dreams being woven inside of more dreams
dreams being expanded and liberated into the hands of the all
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
I have lifted the mug to quench my own thirst. I content,—— a middle line, silence, full as I always was find myself beautiful and find you divine. I need no other reason but this deep love of ours here on the spin-off rock to smile.
it is wild this breeze
                that leaves me       half-tossed
              on the coast
  of my hometown
today it is the clear,    sharpened
chirp
   of a
     bird
       that
        sobers          
           me to
              the world      somedays
                 it's a smile
                    hoisted by
                      a edges
                       of stranger
                        lips
                       other
                      days
                      a boundless
                    certainty
                   of being  
                  I find
               in the               confidence
          of round pebbles
next to rough granite
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
point of arrival:
what I want to convey


rats as nocturnal animals that have seen the boats, the cities, and the people change as an entry point California history that addresses the slavery of native American population, the racial mixture of the Californios/ Atla California history, then annexation into U.SA in 1850 .
Did you know you glow in magnificence? how you beam and stretch across the darkness just by offering a smile or a warm hello you hold back the night or you deliver me the stars
you see your hands and make them meaningfully toil to get closer to your dreams to get closer to your heart
your divinity and beauty is in no competition with any other womyn
you are calm, sturdy and resilient
you make it out the door with an air of faith and the scent of grace that works through you onto the hands of all who witness you
For all these and more I love you
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
I will construct and cultivate beauty in my life and tend to the soil to make sure I thrive

I will pay no mind or turn my head back to acknowledge those who look at my life
and wag their finger
where I see the beauty they can recoil in disgust
I do not care
if what I consider lovely
and the everlasting source of my light
they consider deformed or wrong
this world is too vast and there are many ways to live and express ourselves through it

we must make something splendid something extraordinary even if it is only significant to us
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 remember the sway of paper boats in the tub, their short lived buoyancy seems fragile now.

The hair dye my mother uses, gets a shade of brown lighter each year when more of her hairline begins to whiten.

My father’s light brown irises float in a sea of sclera; they look deeper.

My brother files my nails trying to prep them to classical guitar standards  and makes me sing scales with him. I’m always flat; it makes us laugh.

I sit on the porch steps writing poetry– tearing the unsuccessful ones out and folding them into airplanes; how far will they fly?

(Noon goes, and despite the cyclical rotation of the earth when I close my eyes I feel grounded; how can a second feel so infinite? )
Where ever the water leads, I go … trickle trickle, trickle no longer ice
no longer thick and sturdy
and willing to carry anything
light and fluid I rest
to nourish what’s around wherever I go
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
I lean into trust as if it were a warm bath
my skin bare and submerging into it’s therapeutic waters to be embraced and calmed
Trust
can I trust you?

Again,
can I trust you ?

Can I trust you will treat me with respect?
Can I trust you?  

But really can I trust myself ?
...if I cannot trust you to treat me with respect ?

Trust, great leaps of courage on the road to trust
                                 ...
I see no other way to live deeply then to take great leaps of trust

Can you trust me ?
Can we trust each other ?

on this path that bends in so many directions great leaps of trust await

open hands with the intent to trust remain
gentle and willing to try
Trying to map out my thoughts as I try to renew trust

I find it is requiring I decide to let go of past hurt.
over your head
you can keep ten cloaks
hide behind enough distance
so that everything might be
half life and half made up
in your mind–
but I want to witness supple miracles
tucked in reality’s silk slip, it’s splendid
tales so unbelievable
they shakes reality’s vines to offer
the juiciest of grapes
I honor all creases, all bruises
all howling nights if it means
I can see the day breaking
so bright and clear over the my life’s
horizon
Tu corazón lleva fuego en su interior
raíces precolombinas, gitanas, negras  mixtas para que la  llama arda
como solo ella arde cuanto se prendió
durante la alba de tu nacer para darnos
tu sol
I could carry two suns on my back
and walk across the galaxies tread the universe because I am your dream of life

the legacies of the conquered, the conquerer
the slave and the prosecuted whirl within me “mixed”

I carry your sorrow
it used to feel endless and forever gaping

it was easy not to see the cord that binds to this earth but I discovered that when I closed my eyes
I felt it
and I let it guide me
through the terrain
through the the high mountains

Now I understand I carry your strength, too
Endless
You carried two suns on you back when they gave you new calendars and new names, when you forfeited ever placing eyes on your home again
when you got up and walked you had two suns on your back

I carry all your strength
your unparalleled boldness to reach for life
for hope
I can carry two suns on my back

thank you
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
What if I am watching myself grow more and more beautiful
inside tulips bursting
what if I am also like one of  the monarch butterflies that migrate each year to my mother’s state in Mexico
what if I, too just emerged from the cocoon
Off the coast of the Bronx
at the western end of Long Island
before ships landed: the home of the Siwanoy tribe
once the training ground of the 31st U.S Colored Infantry Regiment
according to records, a prisoner of war camp in 1864
later referred to as  "Potter's Field" or "City Cemetery"
then a quarantine station for yellow fever patients
as well as a women's psychiatric hospital & a tubercularium
on the west side of the islands
between an empty 4-acre space lived Solomon Riley's vision of black coney island during Jim Crow  
after the stay and departure of Pheonix house
Hart Island
now is the final resting ground for New York City's covid-19 victims
whose family could not or did not hire a private funeral director and so they were labeled "unclaimed"
Tragically, over 150,000 people have lost their lives and continue losing them.
I saw a picture of a mass grave and traced its location to New York City's Hart Island.  
I wanted to research what victims of Covid-19 were being buried at Hart Island in New York City's mass graves. I also wanted to explore the location's history in tandem.
Overall, it just breaks my heart that federal negligence has contributed to the loss of life. A first world nation with one of its wealthiest cities burying bodies in a mass grave; this is the state of the United States of America. I wish it weren't so.
My mother says "tomorrow is your birthday,
and we haven't bought you a dress and a pair of matching slippers"

I laugh

She's been so busy packing for her next trip
that time snuck up on her, again

I smile and lean my head against her shoulder
I want to tell her she is enough
of a present for me

and that when I am old
and unable to find her
I will observe her here –in this moment–
And I will dream of waking up in her house
under the bugambilias, again
Her caress sweet; her flesh warm

As I understand it, we all become momentary pilgrims
gracious wayfarers recounting our life's blessings, as the body reaches
its end, so whilst at the beginning

all I can manage to tell her is
"sabes que esas cosas no me importan"

she smiles
I think she has always known
You might think I am strange
but I am no stranger than a leaf

Nor wilder than the flowers
who grow across the desert

Nor am I more alive nor less alive
than a rock

I know I, too circle
in unison with Rilke
"around the primordial tower"
we circle
with no need of knowing
if its been a day or  thousands of years

El cuero arde
cómo arde el cartón,
como arde el presente, en los dos hemisferios

Hay lugares donde los pies protestan,
donde la impuntualidad es menos sutil  
y se disfraza con vernáculas y un buen traje  

Lugares donde hablan tu lengua
y donde hablan las mías
mientras se sirven un plato de comida antes
de despedirse y ir por su día

Donde se enfrían los pies,
y coreo un rio rojo
Donde se escurre la vida sagrada
en un palomar de discordia

2.
Ahí nadie vuela
yo quisiera decirles que de ese recinto
ninguna persona toma vuelo

Sin falta de acuerdo,
nadie vuela
y cielo azul,
azul de ahí se ve lejos

De ahí veo las manos de los viejos levantadas hacia cielo
en balanceo
y me quiero ir.

Camino hacia mi madre.
<<de aquí nadie vuela>> le susurro a ella  
 en el oído
pero ella levanta sus manos más alto
y me ignora

Me trago mi nudo de garganta,
y decido ir me,
pues de aquí no e de volar

3.
El creer es necesario-fe
cómo es necesario
el hacer-acción

Dos hemisferios, en un solo mundo
y tú plenitude de vida
acatan la flor de esperanza en mi corazón.

Se que todo vuela, cuando viene el viento del cambió.
Pienso en el cambio de actitud de la cual nuestra generación debe y tiene que tomar para reinventar nuestro mundo colectivo. Es fácil hablar de esto usando abstracciones, más en nuestro día a día es difícil explicarle a alguien quien tuviese la fortuna de haber nacido en un país rico, que deben conservar agua, reusar lo más que se pueda ...que deben en corto cambiar sus vidas. Pero lo más difícil es hacerle a algunos usar  sus manos, resistir lo ser pasivos.

Hay muchos que temen lo que será de nuestro futuro, pero yo veo los bellos niños de todas partes del mundo, inventando nuevas telas, avanzando tecnologías, y dándole a la vida un buen arranqué. Ha ellos les debemos cuidar este mundo, pues son sus herederos.
My unprocessed layers dance over me
I peel and peel and try to take off each layer
and the anger fades, and there is no blame, and there is space
and there is a vulnerable heart
who does understand and just wished to also be understood
and cared for not divided by a line
or relegated to the outskirts as I felt

there sits a weeping part that needs nothing but to be acknowledged
and I sit with it granting its wish
I have to sit with all my “I don’t knows” until I know –until a clear answer emerges.
I open my palms, and try my best to liberate you
but then the wind picks up
and I start to cry
I cannot even hold onto myself
for those few minutes I feel half dead
and sun it feels like it doesn’t orbit anymore
Do you still believe in the immense beauty of life ?

Yes, even if the door just hit me right in the face
It is fragile  this heap of skin
but even more tender is what is inside
let the prairie grow around me
with its yarrow and smooth blue asters
scattered amongst it a few rough blazing stars with wild bergamot

let them envelop me
and do not leave a hedge between them and me
What is for me will flow like a river to the sea
naturally
there is no need to worry
or to forget what day it is

I am whole and everything else is a gift
given at its own time
I will wait for you here
said spring to winter
until you are ready
May there be beauty and joy in your life that is my never ending wish for you

May the breeze carry it to you silently
without the weight of words to slow it down
I understand now why your only album was named “Grace”.
life always deepens when we sit still and listen
and then the things we could not understand become clear
Friendship is a light illuminating the room
a window letting in the sun and warming what would otherwise be a cold winter
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