May there be a warm fire and a hearth you can sit at. May the preciousness of who you are linger always. I see so much beauty in you; may you always see it too.

My mouth might be shut, but let all of life discretely carry hints of my wishes to your door , and bring you daily joy.

The day has been so long my dear friend
I have yet to answer the Stars with my prayers

I get to spend more time alone figuring out
what makes me tick
rearranging thoughts, visions of life and
getting lost in streets that seem older than me
opportunities to ponder life and live it are my companions
I find them agreeable, even mysteriously charming

The day is beautiful and there is nothing you need hold onto
the pastures are open and what you meet when gaze at your shadow is till a part of you
and all the light that flurries your dreams like a leaf in your chest’s sky is also you

good things are here and good things will come and there will never be an end to good things among heaps and heaps of goodness you will find your name
close your eyes and feel the flutter of it in all in your chest. The day is beautiful—

There is no rush to hold another hand
or to come home to anyone
there is no ticking clock
there is no date another to get over another
there is only the early morning tea, the sunlight from the window and the opportunity to frame today as a “day of gratitude” and so you see there is only this zest of wanting to live and to heal

These are the girls that dream
one speck of dust turns into a planet
orbiting their soul

giving and receiving
sitting alongside each other
is loving

openness and free discussion
knowing you will be on bridge
at the same time vulnerable
to the elements and the weather
of a too unpredictable life

assures me, soothes me,
serene I am
when I face the day knowing
I am loved by you

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

It swirls
all this love
I ask it to please
just sit still
I cannot think
I cannot make up my mind
sit still love

I do not know
what to do with you
you feel endless
and I have yet to understand
why

don’t worry you will laugh
at the notes with tea rings
at the your mental doom scenarios
chuckle up a storm
because everything you wanted
will come, and you will sit
with it and think back
at all the your self strapped misery
that like a wrong sized belt could only serve
the purpose of weighing you down
rejoice, giggle like a big bellied baby
at the way your heart’s wishes are fulfilled
at the right time

The blue sky and scent of cosmos flowers are crispy
like the brown leaves that begin inaugurating autumn

I see lines of periodic motion caved
by the birds dancing overhead

When they look at us , those birds, do they notice our lines- our traversed geography made  obvious by our commutes

Does one of them know the shape of the line your steps make ?

My heart is warm and my love is not a sin
my love is blessing that makes the flowers grow
and lifts life from the ground
my love is a warm breeze
and I cannot go on thinking my love destroys
or that it has got a bad scent

My love is profound and above all it is a gift
tender and gentle
lovingly finding spring even in winter

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

Some days the sadness hits me like a train
but that is okay
when you dared to love deeply the sadness should hit you like train or a semi
and there is not way around it you must just feel your way through it and learn and grow kinder

I can bear the weight of my own light

in it rests my being

when I am there
there is no need to listen I move within it
and with it
and I know where I should go
when I listen to the path my life wants to take
and I honor its pull it leads me to next right place which is always now

A tinta de meu coração fica púrpura como el suéter de mi avó paterna
me aquece
me envolve
me traz calma

The stars still race upwards towards the night and the moon still follows you while you are driving in your car, whatever is here is as  profound as ever, tonight is best to find a silly reason to smile and laugh together

Light of mine
I hold on dearly to you

Metaphorical winters
are worse than any sub zero days

Warmth
glinting of the soul
I embrace you with both my hands
and I give this living all I have got

You sweat through the fury of a blazing love that gave too little and still wanted to call itself love

I love to see how life flourishes
everywhere it finds a way to thrive
I love looking at the same people with new eyes
I love getting older. I love forgiveness and I love that we are all
not the same

My childhood friend died yesterday. I tried to cry but I couldn’t feel a things. I listened to his albums; smooth lines about being raised in LA. I was there,too long ago by his side–being“smart” is what “saved us”.


Numbness, is all that came to me. I didn’t even bother asking my body for the tears. Today, I felt like was a half unfrozen popsicle so I went to sing. And finally I I unfroze… cried and cried and unfroze-dripping all over the karaoke room.

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

What does love do now
it opens its palms

Some days I feel you, right in the center of my chest. I do not know how else to describe it.

Who knows what tomorrow’s flowers will be like

Maybe my purpose was just to help heal
help someone along
that’s the basis of
being here with each other

my once in a lifetime
sets like a sun over me
as I learn to love
someone else slowly

the emptiness of a room spoke
to me. For over a year, it dragged
me into a closet, it buried
me in winter sweaters, ruthless
wired bras, and band shirts reminding
me of him

my once in a lifetime sorrow sinks
into the past as I reach
for someone else’s hand, grasping
tenderly I see my sun rising

it is now a once in a lifetime thing, too

The base of my spine was tilted causing everything that stacked above it to be miss aligned
any shoulder so stiff when that when pressed on they would not crack
“Are you pain?” He asked
He began to try and relax the muscles and crack my bones back into place

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

there is a calmness
a cooling fresh calmness
a just always unfolding
reassuring calmness
just laugh
get up
and linger in your purpose
and linger near the things
that meet you fully

everything is spoken into existence
life begets life they say
and so I wonder what part of life dram me into existence
called me forth from the womb of imagination
who saw me before i was someone
and called a person like I onto this earth

some part of me waits “ for what?” I ask
I think back to the night I saw you
you were good on luck
work was good and you were busy
too busy to chat,
too busy full of good luck to make room

I thought it was good so I smiled and sat silently waited for you there.

But when you came you sat across the table as far as you could possibly get from me
too busy in thought you didn’t even really say a word

Then I felt like an inconvenience like a pole people moved around
so I left

I came too far
and I gambled too much on you
jumped off the cliff thinking your love would be a net

I left that day feeling half dead.
I couldn’t feel my myself. Couldn’t cry for the next few days. I just wanted it to be a horrible nightmare. A bad joke.

So I ask that part me “ what are you waiting for” is it the punch line ?
And it tells me “ I am waiting for my love”
and I just cry...

Swirl my heart in light and love have me dissolve into them never to accept separation
have their presence shower those I love
give me strength in this lifetime as minuscule as it may be in the span of this universe to be of service
grant ‘s endless devotion so I can care for in this one humanely life for all those I hold dear
so I can offer them beauty even when there is pain in our hearts, keep me rooted
open me so all that is left is body used to it highest potential
who dares to love, fall, rise and feel the extent of what it means to human

You know when you know

I thought I knew

but what did I know

Wake from slumber

today nothing weighs

and what we have is, is what we need

and what makes our hearts sing

tells us where we ought to go and around who

we ought to be

when we listen

the song of change is all that can be heard,

not the perceived “strong” or the perceived “weak”

can wake from slumber complete

and be able to navigate

with ease this reality

only the ones who accept change

can make it through this

which we call life or so it seems

Chameleons of living

I look in the mirror and I try to change color...
I am unsuccessful but I laugh; slowly I know the world is changing and so  am I. I try to greet it all      with little to  no resistance.


Today nothing weight

as the intervals of presence become longer as the intervals of thinking which interrupt it
become shorter
I slip deeper into this living

When I cannot, i brim over with words like a glass of water.

If I picked up a cigarette today
what good would it do trying
to puff my way to tranquility

what good would it do to start crafting an image, start removing the little things
that set me apart for the rest
start hiding taking down the pictures frames which contain goofy photographs of me, real non-**** ****, that don’t turn on even a light switch
in lieu of beautifully shot photographs of
in nice lighting


What good would it do to start when I don’t want to, when I don’t feel like I need to be like them
What good would it do light one up
when I give a flying **** whether I smoke or not
when it’s just another stick and I could just as well pick up a twig and stick it in my mouth

What good would it do being someone I am not

There is still the loveliness of today that roams through the quiet moments and the mystical dream of what this world could be and what it already is
All things change and nothing is ever set that’s the real magic

They, do they realize I have had the same friends for 20 years now
And that inevitably we have stumbled through youth together
oscillating like sonic waves
closer, further,
sawtooth
we have been human
humanness so imperfect that we hurt one another with our carelessness
but they always stay there in discomfort with me
on park bench
in grocery parking lots
in side streets alley and took responsibility
their action
and allowed me the chance to speak the them and atone to mine

they might think it was impatience, immaturity, abandonment but
it was love this great big leap of love for myself that I took
this courageous willingness to state what friendship meant to me
and when it fell upon deaf ear

I could see him standing again in the alley “ saying we have nothing to be sorry” or something fuzzy that resembled nothing to say sorry about.

Did he not understand I had sold all my belonging, moved across the world to stand there, did he not see my naivety, my willingness and my faith in him, my wild belief that I could break any norm,

Did I not see this heavy wistfulness, my lack of love that I would bet my life on crumbs, on song that promised love, did I not see that two others a woman and girl might deserved to wake up to who they loved, did I not see all the ****** up swirling dysfunction in my head,


The last time I came to see him,
I smiled because he is so good at what he does. He radiates.

–And I thought of the troublesome times I have come to see my dearest friends through my short life
and how they and I
–we stood there in discomfort but finally patched it up,
took the muck and held it. Tried
got angry, cried, asked for forgiveness, or stood silently until we could agree to meet again, until slowly we could atone
The gift of friendship that we always offered after mistake and mistake–


But he left ...
and I kept dancing at least there was music playing

At least my intention was to liberate
, to come and to see someone
look at them as something more that a fiction of imagination, see them with flesh and blood and not keep them clouded villainous or a story too skewed in my mind  

and if my intention got stuck under sheets of thoughts and misunderstanding over lack of phrasing, over more of youthful stumbling it is because it comes with the territory of being this young, this tender, this foolish, this whole bag of everything that is me
and i am not ashamed of every mistake I have made
slowly I am learning
appreciating friendships
the renewed bonds
The 5 years, the ten years, the 15 years, the 20 year long connections I have worked with all my might to feed with devotion
passed all my insecurities, past all my self doubt, past my own pride, past my self to see them standing then just as they are

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

The thought of you enters
late
when I should close my eyes
so I sent you blessings
and I try to get some rest
before the thinking gets too much
I send you my best wishes
hoping they tug at lifes’ arm cuffs and serendipitously fill you with warmth
wherever you are now

And it is
that this is who I am
I am not chasing
any kind of glory, that I don’t care about being the best at
something worldly I care about being the “ best me”
nourishing my natural gifts in order to share them

I am not competing. I am not running on empty or on misguided comparisons( I save my energy for what matters)

I
already everything I will ever be in motion towards my inner and outward destination
sit calmly because it trust again not a man or a womyn but myself

What someone can take is only a fraction of the real strength, courage and authenticity that flows through me
I am really human, fragile and sensitive to the touch
small and unassuming like all life on this earth grateful for every rotation in this galaxy.

I know what I really am and I call upon it and it calls upon me and we smile together
one in the same
this is what I am

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

It is fragile  this heap of skin
but even more tender is what is inside

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

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”.

Friendship is a light illuminating the room
a window letting in the sun and warming what would otherwise be a cold winter

The quiet helps

It rearranges the pieces and it maps out the

rest

It inundates the outside voices and timelines for what human living ought be like and it frees me

and in my palms it lays an offering

and calmly whispers “here”

Sometimes I just want to dissolve into now and I want every scary thought or idea that comes as advice as warning to melt away. There is no one way. There is not right way. There is just what is… ever flowing. All possible. Pain and pleasant things nothing hinging on correct or wrong.

I will sit and catch the stones they throw at you.