<<tweet tweet tweet>> their fingers chirp like birds
graceless in their singing
and unconscious of the harm they have awakened with their narrow syrinx of thought

Reckless with their egos
and responsible for birthing a nature full of disregard towards all that lives and lies below the trees of green; an ecosystem born into an inseparable union
–a synthesis of flags, of mashes and of micro biomes teeming with life

The color of red will stand out among all the germinating leaves, as we wake up to escalations of war and the trampling of safety
those birds will continue to <<tweet tweet tweet>>

For they forget that to sit at the crown of a tree does not mean they wear a crown

Those who wear the boots down low
are those who will hike through the forest and traverse through the night below the boughs where these birds perch

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.

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

It is about to erupt, my chest over my life
blanketing everything anew

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

What does love do now
it opens its palms

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

I always waited for them to be sure of me
the way a weatherman is sure about the forecast, before I decided to settle in a certain country or city
and perhaps they waited for me to decide to stay before they were sure of me
but what is never asked or addressed never can be transformed

We chew over a small wooden table
Chew bell peppers and drink old fermented tea
wonder how many more breathe until the stomach stiffens in regret and says
no more to all the veggies we must eat before they spoil in our fridge

We chew the small thoughts and the big bad memories tucked in the thinnest most transparent of thoughts
so translucent it took us most of our  lives to recognize them as just thoughts painting boxes, stacked to create an obstacle

We chew playing dalgona with our minds
trying to keep the only the portion of through a we want.

We chew and concentrate and then there are no thoughts, just the veggies I stir fried to sweet from the wild flower honey

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

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

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

In Bethlehem, south of Jerusalem, a bomb falls over Saint Porphyrius Church
and the promise of never again
is obscured under the rubble  

civilians told to move south towards
the border, take to the roads
mid escape a bomb falls
their bodies scatter over Salah-al-Din street

the son of man mangled over the floor

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.”

I am on that boat
don’t you know

I already sailed off
can’t you see

Come on’ bruh
you gotta know

ain’t **** you can do
to scare me off

if my boat sink
in the sea of love

at least I dared
and peace be mine

for all babies
are my babies

And on that boat of love
I will cradle them

you want tell me they can’t be mine
well then with your logic
this earth ain’t yours
so why you hacking it up

I on my boat of love
cradle all them babies

I am swaying them in my arms
peace on earth I sing to them
“ peace on earth”

The wailing cries of history swoop
into the hands of today like some audacious pigeon

students hold their hands out across the nation and hold a dove

if you would hold your hands out too and still your anger, still the past and hold your hands out you too could touch a dove

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

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

I have forgiven everyone
every hurtful thing
has no space within my heart

that is why my words towards them bare lightness
it mercy for myself and for them
nothing is worthy of carrying

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

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 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

The sun rose and with the birds and with you
scooped up in its light
you who toggle out of bed

the sun rose and the plentitude of steps
to the kitchen counter for water become
morning pilgrimages murmuring sweet thanks even when your mind  cannot articulate
its daily gratitude of satiating
your body’s needs

you write about everything because everything is life and so even this still peaceful morning deserves a poem, a morning drink of water.

The world just seemed so beautiful that I drove into it head first, without hesitation and without need of pulling back.
I jumped off the big board and it’s altitude did not matter because  I just ached to see and to know for myself this world. It has always seemed so marvelous to me this little body and this unknown earth under my feet, that even when I have felt one of my perceptions of it collapse over me –I have felt inclined to photograph it’s dilapidated roof, walls, windows and all the false starts that I dram of when I dove.

It’s just I love this plot of being, as if it were a field stretched over centimeters of flesh, which is my skin. And I love how we are all kin. And I do not care what someone thinks of me. I care how my feet feel against the grass, if I can forgive and love them just as myself. If can kiss again this world with the same vibrancy. I care that I never put this love of life down, that I take it, take it all, all of it as it is.

I waited for you to write, to call,
to share a song, to share a moment
it was odd
months, days, hours in reverse

Venga gran claridad
tumba lo que no sirve qué necesito
construir una sonrisa
sobre mi cara
si no vivo ahorra entonces cuando

When they look at old photographs of you
,you will tell of them of all the crazy stories and all the mistakes you made as you grew.
how your chest expanded and your heart pressed against your ribs inflating like a ballon on certain years, wishing to become airborne and to lift you along with it towards the sky

you will tell them of all the unfortunate situations that lead to all the food in your fridge rotting and all your sadness eating up your appreciate
and how you turned inwardly and perched like a bird over the ledge that you decided was not to jump off but a clear vantage point from which to see peace all around and from which to oversee the land
and make out what direction you were now going to head down

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

every bridge that collapses is an abutment
of hands and elbows tumbling  over

every hurried step urgently taken out of the office pasture,
is from a cow readied, conditioned and willing to get its **** pulled for the milking

every time I see them depart it saturates the pastoral painting
begun during my youth, the base for the subsequent layers never dries

the picturesque manifest destiny  propaganda of the early 1800's
with "California " spelled on it.  
sit next to the paper with a bounty for put on native heads
over a poster of the runaway slave


"the pursuit of happiness",  that is the name of my painting
but the underpaiting never dries

so much turpentine but it seems most people never arrive there, laboring at drugstore or at a big warehouse si

never getting to use the linseed oil  

how savory some of us must taste
I weep at this thought
what is there not to weep for
if life is still sold
you and I headed like cattle



how it is too easy

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.

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"

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

everything is reconciled
memories, body, weight of stone on back, superfluous adjunct thoughts, miscellaneous socks still unpaired
all is looked at and then accepted

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.

I could not write about the people I lost during a short writing class exerciae. My sentences circled
swirled inward on the page
the way my departed and my beloved
swirl within me the sacred spiral
my endless nature trying to map itself out on a thin piece of paper

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

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

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

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

The closing of your eyes is the clashing of clouds and their thunder for-tells the lightning of dreams

I could feel the difference
between a thin strand of hair
and a thin thread of spider web

If we wish to be tender then we must accept to be brave.

The world does not revolve around me
this earth
this multitude of people
must be nourished too
Other stories
other ways of living
so why do I deserve to have it my way


The simple answer is because everyone deserves a chance at true happiness

I have started saying "I don't know"
when they ask on what page it's on
Although I know, I have begun not answering
question and letting silence take to the air
but I know the response,  mentors
friends and life have so kindly given to me
the letter with the answers, I don't want to pretend
to be dull-witted--I do know
it's all blood and scrapes and great heaps of
love to know, not haughtiness --

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)

It was simply Smokey as if the pieces still slipping down her ****** had in those extra days marinated and were now ready to come out to the light of day to become jerky

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.

Where is the steel wire brush that scapes at the red rust like a doe silently drinking water, or still quieter flowers that sway in the pondering light of another city, with another language covered by the mortar of another, where people built cities too. Who is still up in Glasgow staring at the moon? The river Clyde is below me, and the seagulls dance as if they were drunk

We ruptured hastily from la tela collectiva the same way a drop of blood emerges from a small puncture wound –round, wholly, and bright-hued.
Yes, we bursted slowly bajo el sol que todo alumbra hacia la sanidad needing no reassurance to which direction to take to. (We know, nosotros sentimos el flujo y el ritmo de esta vida)