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

1.
It felt like crossing      
all things cross, right?

2.
It has been many years since we have walked through that tunnel
and into this land
where the hands of spirits became the wings of ancestors over us
and the quiet inner gust became an orator of truth  

Truthteller could you tell me again my name
They have given me so many on the northern journey,
disguised me to be one of the multiple
flickering pixels on a television screen

eyes darker than their own
but who has darker eyes

3.
She is the barefoot daughter of the Pachamama
womxn of many tongues
womxn whose tongue was not cut off
so you hear her sing when the sun comes up
and sway with the blades of grass
onward in the direction of the voices and the wind
and all the things that cry and laugh out loud  

4.
They made you cross, too
and at the same time
But they made you forget
about the birds,
the wind,
your name- our name
and the alphabet
5.
silence is the alphabet used to speak truth  

6.
They made you forget your name.
Ask them your name as you look up at the sky
cloudy or clear
as  children lay silently next to demarcation lines
housed in steel bars
gloomy and lost
ask and listen
to be humbled by your name  

7.
The spirits call again
can you hear them now?

back through the tunnel of innocence,
they whisper your name.

Can I wrap words,
clutter them around your hand
and make them press
warm and soft?

Could they be of value for you
like the gems people mine for
or the things they pick to be family heirlooms?

How deep is their deepness and
how far is their reach?

Can they feel Infinite like my existence  and finite like my life ?

Can they build a bed to lay on ?
Fabric, metal springs, foam, cushion, soft, plush, lifted, comfy, useful,
Can it be a good place to rest when it’s been a long
day?

1.

The wind blows and I am nervous over a hill,
where the grass is low
but lower is the water flowing

Keep in mind,quiet costs
the dry branches motion in the gust of time
slowly churning thoughts
over the eve of our crowing destiny
2.
From that hilltop
I see them

The smell of Franciscan Manzanitas and bees
surrounds them

I thought they’d lost their way,
down the path where the ferns grow high
and the forest deepen enough to make most forget

But I saw them egress the woodland’s mouth
an abetment of hands cusping future

they giggled and where light
on their feet
enthroned to this field
they walked over the sharp blades of grass
3.
there is no such thing now
as optional, ornamental pruning
trimming is to occur
and its necessity makes itself known
coils its body like a serpent
4.
our consciousness burrowed for too long
in the ground

5.
When I turn my head I see you, too
Do you see them ?

the crowned that have come
blinking their love for all things

it seems like we must begin again or the fates will cut their strings

I laugh the way the earth giggles when it’s sure that
storms come in and out of the atmospheric frame at their due time

I laugh in joy that at least I still got enough soul to wake me up

That I got tenacity, and freshness of  lilies
to keep me

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

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

1.
Her name is  like a fine diamond,
clear,
every which way the sun hits her
she shines
letting everyone know why with so much love
her mother laid her against her chest,
since small
and called her Crystal
2.
"******" screamed the nasty Idaho boys
during the town celebration.

3.
Aberdeen Days,
a fixture that seemed needed
to adorn a town's narrative
of property claim,
scattered people in a small town park
bunched them up in cliches
and incubated 'people among their own people'

4.
"..." silence were the words she used.  Cage's 4'33
playing


5.
The Architectural Barriers Act of 1968
Mills v. Board of Education 1972
The Higher Education Act of 1972
The Americans with Disabilities Act 1990
flutter in U. S history.


6.
Four butterflies over my aunt Berta
and my cousin Crystal's head  
ever radiant under the beams of the sun
words unable to dimish beauty  
as they walked across the lawn to join
Byron, nothing impeding her too
from walking in that beauty
like the other girls in the park square

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.

I stand in the shower with lavender fields in my chest

how do I scrape off the muck, scoop out the loathing
and take off the gloves to pick up the patches of fear
that periodically gather at the base of my shower drain  

how do I heal each limb so that with majesty
I awaken knowing
full and bright that I am a child with wings
and elevation is the right song that pours out when I dream
an inheritance marbled into my being’s skin
                              …
how does a child beget forgetting
how does an adult continue such forgetting

what is the suchness of wholeness
whose scent of remembrance seems mythically far
but its verity present within our plot

                              …
our hands reaching for the bunches of lavender
that can be gathered from a bountiful field
a calm whiff of what we truly are
that can send us back into an infinite space of fruitful life
cusping possibility
                            ...
portable pastures inside our homestead
running water
and a chance to be cleansed
what suchness of being over my body  
how ecstatic
how simple to stand under the showerhead 
on the toes of today
with a meadow in my chest

“Hey Lucas, they say it seems like you and I are crazy” he said this to an empty room

“Oh boy, what a great illusion that there is separation”
answered
what is suppose to be the nothingness

<<Hoye Lucas dicen que parece que tú y yo estamos locos>> le dijo al un cuarto solo

<<Vaya que gran illusion qué hay la separación>> le contestó
Lo que se supone que no es la nada

Were there a better way to soften your pillow,
I would
like a massive online shopper at the drag of a mouse and at the click of a button I would choose to check that box

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.

My heart’s breath smells of  life and of sun
in the days when heat is inhaled
The zephyr inside refreshes my existence

Outside the moon, moon
is in glare

Today Lorca dies again
and the mantle covers more than one face
in more than one country
under this same moon
We live

Today in front of the monitor, the desire to have Kaufman's ships set sail
exists deeply in the sea of ​​our collective consciousness

In your heart exists a breath and a life with a sun.
The zephyr moves ships.  
It doesn't matter if the moon, moon rises

Mi corazón tiene aliento a vida y sol
en los días cuando se repira calor
El céfiro por dentro refresca mi existir

Por fuera la luna, luna
está en resplandor

Hoy vuelve a morir Lorca
y el manto cubre a mas que una cara
en más de un país bajo esta misma luna
Vivimos

Hoy frente al monitor el deseo de dejar los barcos de Kaufman zarpar
existe profundamente en el mar de nuestra colectiva conciencia

En tu corazón existe aliento y una vida con una sol.  
El céfiro mueve barcos.
No importa si salle la luna, luna

I had it under control. I had just spent 3 hours reading, indulging my mind and then it came like a giant wave. Knocked me off my feet
all cliched, down to a bench
My watery guts running down
my twin cheeks

“****” I screamed.
But I knew exactly how I “gut” here.
However, this didn’t make feel any better.
how many ***** can you scream until it gets remotely better.

One was enough for me today.
One calming “F” bomb.

Brown is the color you get when you mix all the others together
So they never know where I am from

I am the resident brown person.
The closest skin that tans
that’s who they think I must be

Your children play with modeling clay, play doh, and with different colored squishy slime.

When you put them to bed, take as many colors as you can from their play box and knead them together and you’ll understand why my skin is brown.

And maybe you won’t have to ask where I am from two, three or four times only to still refuse what is obvious
So obvious they forgot to put it in history books

When you enslave, colonize, migrate
You mix
The coalescence and coagulation of blood into human skin
This  should be of no surprise
you mix
Brown children on the back of white mothers, brown children on the backs of black fathers
Brown children tied to the curve of brown womyn’s backs

So do you understand why America is a brown womxn, too?

Sifones  que mantiene el gran charco de las emociones, están sobre el estante.

De lejos veo solo mi pared repleta de repisas.

Contemplo si uno de estos frascos quisiese yo hoy bajar

Hace mucho tiempo que en este cuarto de mi casa no me encontraba la sensación de ser un lucido espectro, pero quizás si lo era porque daba la coincidencia que sólo recordaba ver mis manos en las veces que me acercaba  a tocar un tarro.

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.

It’s time to clock out
ride the sweet waves,
surf the quiet ocean of your awareness
and feel the flow of life taking you where you need to go.

Stop thinking.
You cannot tell the ocean where to go.

My mother would always argue with me. “Why can’t you look nice” “here wear this”

I would smile and wear her dresses with black combat boots. My dad would always laugh.

Bickering. We bickered always over that. She would utter “you are a locked combination box
whose combination I cannot find”
then she’d proceed to laugh and let me out the door with my black lace up shoes.

I wish i could find the perfect song,
a mix of warm hand with a soft
voice to say "thank you"

I needed the melodies, to lighten my load

In the coursing hours of the night
when all thoughts sieze their cloaking chatter
I find the wholeness of myself
lilting the words "thank you"

with a cadence so simple
it feels innate
like the rising of the sun over our cityscape

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

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.

The prosperous will grow from your left
palm
ravaging the earth skin of your hand
and becoming a volcano that bursts into a beautiful biennial

Your nails will know themselves as leaves and the misery will no longer undo you

You will feel the profoundness of your years
and calmly you will water yourself
and with the fecundity of your acquired patience
you will give rosettes

and I in that second year
will be back
to see you in bloom

Lo próspero crecerá de tu palma
izquierda
arrasando con la tierra piel de tu mano  
convirtiéndose en volcán
que revienta en un bello bienal

Tus uñas sé conocerán como hojas y la desdicha no más te deshacer a
sentirás la profundidad de tus años

Calmada mente te regarás
y con una fecundidad
de tú adquirida paciencia
darás rosetas

Y yo en ese segundo año
regresaré
para si quiera verte en flor

There sleeps in the seeping ounce
of the tree burned to carbon
that made charcoal
a chance for me to take any
and all scraps of paper
I can find in my room
and put them to good use

There sleeps in the back of my mind
fragments of light
and sensations of summer
crystallizing into thought

"I want to hike four trails, around an island." I
say
but the speedy winding and the great illusion of time ticks me down
"I can only hike three"

The fourth I'll sit at its base, with my scrappy notebooks and sketch.
the burned vine will create trees    
      what immaculate a thought
to "good use"
the trunk that we took to shred and make this sheet,
to "good use", too
it'll be the paper under the black soot
when I draw

here sleeps my mind in the dark coal
ever luminous below the incomplete combustion of
hydrocarbons and the explosive nature
of untamed
emotions

"But I want to hike four trails.
Maybe, I'll have to come back"

I am the light and I am the dark
I am the keeper and shepard of all things,
For I am you, as you are me
And in this world of forgetting
It is profound to remember.

Cheer up baby blue bird.
It ain’t so bad,
Half the time life digs
Circles,
Why you think you keep winding up home

Baby blue bird, wings ain’t that bad if you know you got em’

My baby blue bird, if you ain’t the kind to fly,
And you think
they **** clipped those wings
Walk and chirp baby
walk and chirp

You’ll wind up were you gotta be
That’s prophecy

Hoy se habré el portal
y te siento cerca
Las hojas se cristalizan
Bajó la luz

La rara concepcion del tiempo se

deshace y se desliza como pequeños listones naranja
sobre los párpados
De esta materialidad

Tomando en mano cada átomo
Y uniendose a el


Te encuentro en tu casa
Dentro de tu jardin
Regando tus plantas con tu manguera larga
flor de piedra

Believe that there is something bigger than you
And if you cannot fathom that thought
sight
Think of a redwood tree,try to hold it
And realize you cannot


Let its massive
Unholdableness
Seed its likeness in you

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.

The past has swiftly receded into its bed of intangible form and the future rests eyes closed,still to be awakened

Let them like children rest
without being disturbed

Today belongs to your limbs, to your breath pouring life and presence into your being.
Today is here, lids open,
eyes which become your own
Life sinking back into everything around you
Appreciate, knowing that even the small things are of value, are of worth.

and they escaped the weight of darkness peering over their shoulders
where do these people go,
what belongings do they pack
is there a limit on the heaviness of ones' soul

Can they bring love as parting gift? Hide it in their handkerchiefs, and then go

Maybe, this thing does not matter.
It feels like a current,
But maybe it’s just another stream
with the promise of leading to the sea
when it’s truly
just heading for a lake.

Maybe, I can watch the ducks paddle over the water
and the twigs float on by.
It could be that this is how you learn,
that your gut doesn’t have eyes.

But it could also be how you learn
that there are some things
no eyes can see.

Whether it be
for the worsening or for the bettering
you are floating down this river
an island in the water
it’s viscosity carrying
you, with your hands
at the side of your hips


where you’ll end up
grace cannot be too far
when you follow the flow
who knows where you’ll end up
maybe next to those ducks
or in the vast open sea

codex painter
have your hands rusted
is this world not  as vivid
as the one centuries ago
the one
that bore the same tint,
rich in intent to serve,
to devotedly work
head inclined
over the flaming light
and under the celestial stars

pictograms
are what I now reach for
from the vessels tucked behind my ears
from the smell of copper
and the tastes of adobe pots,
simmering with memories,
to the corneas anchoring my vision

because I must have a vision
the "it" becomes what we intend
and I intend "it"

give me your codices
unfold the fibers of the agave plant
and let me paint again
this world
larger
this lifetime kinder
for I have always been a scribe and
a painter
and my heart rejoices in service
to an existence expanding
to meet itself in the eyes of all
who I dare draw

mom, you raised a girl who is not afraid to die, a girl that still thinks she can climb every mountain, just because you let her climb the fridge, the cabinets and the roof of her house.

you raised a ******* the road

in van traveling up the west coast with a man who longed to be free

to not wear shoes and not be bothered by the wind
brushing the rest of populace's feet

Mom you let your child run free with the dogs. Let her think she, too had four legs and could love someone as unconditionally as they do.

People keep saying
“You should fight for your love “
But it still feels so unnatural to me
Such a disconnected thing to utter
so archaic this notion of fighting
as if I held the key
to universal order

Why would I aspire to such arrogant a feat

You must understand that when I think of love
I am engulfed with joy and warmth
that I cannot fathom war
so stop trying to send me into battle
I do not want to join the Calvary

Instead, I am placing my heavy shield,
weapons
and armament down
among the flora springing into life

‘Tis is a celebration in disguise watching him
walk away faithfully into the thicket,
eyes closed but in the direction of his true inward self

Now, why would I fight that

all the while I will love you because I’ve never been good at stringing the little locket heart into my chest. It’s always just dangled in my hand clumsily. People always tell me “kid you gotta hide that. Don’t you know where you are.”and i want to laugh. And say “ I’m in the jungle baby”, proceed to sing the rest of that song, and not let them get me down. Cause **** the *******.

It is what it is, the sadness, but with it
also the love
so,
why suffer.

little locket in hand and the nearness of the you, jazz standards floating through my head,
are enough.

It is what it is.
I’m in Love with you. Thousands of Motown songs and R&B 2019 top charting singles running, forming hills in my mind
mounting
so ever slowly, but continuously that everytime I walk past one of those hills, I fail to recognize it.
They’re becoming mountains

They are what they are,
as this is what it is.

Blossom with love and courage into the spring,
that is unalike the one before it, but none the less
full of growth and the sweet scent
of possibilities

Blossom in the light of positivity
for you have carried too much sadness
and cradled too much fear. Aren’t you tired?

Bloom
like all things on earth bloom
Flower into your next life, naturally
unfold

Fluorescence is your call
tenderly guiding you wild flora
into the fauna where you belong
You too are that, which came from earth
and grows from light

Winter beckons a spring,
and it’s your turn wild flora.

Hoy me e cansado
de alejarme
de no buscarte
de pensar que el no tomar tu mano
significaría no tener que cargarte


Pero mírame aquí, agotada
reconociendo
descubriendo
que te he cargado desde el cuarto de las golondrinas

es por eso que me encuentro exhausta
viendo pájaros volar fuera de mi ventana

you judged me
out of my own beauty
the same way you judged yourself
out of that dress

Voy a soltar frutos
raíces amasadas en mi cráneo
como azúcar querrás frotar tu dedo
y lamer su polvo dulce,
blanco granulado

en mi maceta crecen triángulos de sombras
llenas de cuadrada soledad
en su tierra querrás meter
y embarrar tu dedo
después sin pensarlo te lo acercarás
y te lo meterás a la boca
y ahí en tu lengua
también mis raíces crecerán
Dibujando mé
hasta que en ti quede yo
y en mi termines tu
Soltando raíces

I ran like a wolf. Always trying to keep up. “Wait!” my aunts would scream, but I was off before they could stop me. The tiny dark haired girl, among a pack of five young boys. They would always utter “can you? ”. I’d ball up my tiny fists and say “yes”. Scraped knees, ****** fingernails, sprained ankles, and those bruised greens and yellows suspended on my back like floating clouds, although painful to the touch, none were enough to stop me. I was always competing. Always trying to make them eat their words  “You can’t do it; you are a girl”.


Now that we’re older, I’m inclined to ask them how those words tasted.

Seré una marinera Mari,
Una mujer que rema
sin timón
penarán me
errabunda

Eternamente fuera de quicio,
dirán que nunca lo tuve

pero cómo la corriente no cesa
tampoco mi remar

Please tell me someone loves you well, so that I can take my small offering and burn it at the foot of a mountain,
instead of hiking it’s trail to deliver it into your palms.

I want to know you are so loved,
that it would be a poor gift
to give you my affection,
in comparison to what you’ve got.  

Let me head away from the shadow of the mount
having burnt it, with an urn in hand,
knowing it's her warmth that walks you
through the foliage
and the wilderness of your heart

a bond so deep that it strengthens you
with a better tenderness than that
which would rest
on the possibility of mine


Tell me you are well loved.

I wish I could make you laugh. Tease you, push you, fall deeply in love with you, and dare to bravely sit with you, when you aren’t so nice,
during your worst of days, I wonder if they could be okay with me.

I want to be so good for you, that I hesitate,stutter, freeze within my unskilled youth,
But I want to be good for you,
good to you, and so I have to ask myself “could I be the worst thing for you?”