All I have left behind is dissolving into the past
crumbling most of it
but it was necessary
for it prepared me for the now

to embrace you
to embrace whatever form you take
whatever song your life sings
whatever mood swings into gear within you

No matter the norms, the age gap, the multiple reasons someone might wave their finger at me or frown at my direction while thinking I’m out of mind

If you are a go, then baby I am a go
...ready as could be

I do not want fear or sorrow to be the companion of your heart during these long hours  
dear, if you could see yourself through these two brown eyes of mine
you'd be taken aback at how beautiful are
and you would understand
You are worthy and always surrounded by love
I want you to know this warmth
to feel never alone because this love is traveling, this calm is being cultivated and sent in your direction

When I dream of  you I wake up content but when I turn my head and look behind my shoulder the room is empty.

Do you love me ?
Am I a crazy, odd, silhouette of a girl

You are not here to respond. Is that the answer?
(who can be sure; time swirls in my belly and I bend like a branch in the wind)

Sometimes it is hard to turn towards wholeness when a society, someone, a whisper or a story has been told
and it makes you feel as though you are lacking
but every life comes into this world with its own completeness

somehow you could empathize with every other woman
left and right but not me,  not my eyes or the way i walked

or even tried to be warm in this wintry desolate situation
left and right but not here, i left and perhaps it was an angel

that carried me purposefully away

i knew the wind blew too strong
in your direction, that it took and kept
taking from you, i did not want to pry

i knew the worst boiled different
from the last and this one bent
your vision, and blew out your lamp

in you i knew, there was a soft hand
i tried to remember this after each reproach
that there was that friend, that man

i loved somewhere in the midst of that night
i knew i couldn't do it right, but i tried

I thought “ okay, nothing’s going to stop me” in swoops pandemic

I thought “ I’ll wait out the pandemic”
but at last potential tumor for the win

2020 you cheeky *******; if I wore mascara it would be running heavy and black from my eyes

I choose to believe that everything is working in my favor
and that all I need to do
is to listen and to flow
gently in the direction my being
takes me
I choose to believe nothing is wasted
and that all is nourishment
all is part of the tapestry
therefore I should thank it
kiss my past away
and linger here in my sweet present
where I can really continue to create
the conditions I seek, the life I long for
make beauty and appreciate it
make lasting bonds that will be worked on constantly until the day I die
I choose to believe I am responsible for my life and everything I experience

I recall winter willows
over playgrounds wisping their smiles
and stretching theirs limbed branches towards me

Whatever should I do,

workin up the courage to knit a sentence or two to make something warm that stretches like their thin arms do
long past me to you

whatever for
winter has passed and summer rages around us


But the round yarn ball is still red, the end of its string has been tied to you

I recognize the longs leaves of the willow and I recognized you
I am sure they were there along before

Just as the seed was there before the thinness of the willow touched so we’re you planted dormant

I placate my mind.
I locate my mind.
I disengage my mind
My mind...
...doesn’t know it’s compartments
are too dusty


I sense my toes.
I feel my toes.
I am in my body.
My body...
...doesn’t need to think;  it breathes


..……
……
……

…
…

Point your eyes at the flowers,
not at the harshness of the rocks
sieve your words and throw away
the ones that clump up with judgements

The one who looks at the granite sharp edges is just as precious as the one that looks at the bellflowers

The end of sorrow came on the second day as I understood that as I lived I died

I wish you all the happiness of a spring yielding to summer braver, old friend. Please understand I mean no harm.

I think of you and how you carry
too much, even your old house number
is your phone number. actually, I thought that was quite beautiful(what you did:keeping those numbers) one of those human made engravings of poetry
onto the block of life
you are too thoughtful, and full of possibility
do you see yourself as I see you ? Do you know ?

One crane standing
in the shallow river
is enough to make me smile

One passing lifetime
in the depths of my being

When I push it aside
it pushes me back harder

So I let it sit next to me
all that love with all that sorrow

Maybe the two can call it a truce
inside my body

they might be able to hold hands and start to cradle each other

It is fleeting:
the sky and the leaves
and I.

this hope
it lights up the sky
and there is no fighting
its right to rise
among all the debris of the past

We must never forget our light
that which burns bright
Always present
and unrivaled
by the outside

It is never ending:
the warble of mystery
and the rebirthing of life
and us with our many eyes.

Dear
I think of ways I can be close to you
without betraying myself respect
but my brain is still loading
like that of an old 90’s Macintosh
the kind I grew up with

A magnet
all things meant for me
are coming

A tower
all that is searching for me
is docking on my shores

A divine mystery
all which my being longs for
arriving

I thought                                         you'd left us, long ago
desolate on a swing
                       rocking stale, dry grass and still air
                      
                      crossing
never quite                  the hurdle

                                                               ­                                                    lost

unaware
sweating youth in this humidity

I thought we'd never make it past the
rusty red and brown of weathered fences

                            like
              felt                        moun
   They                                  
                                                     tains

                                                               ­   Made of dirt
                                                                ­                       (guilt)
and an endless turmoiling scent, still fresh



I thought you'd forlorned us                  
h     e     a     v    y       r  a  i  n   and warm bodies
standing next to oxidized hoops
                                                          one adjacent to the other
The haze of the heat hard, but not impossible
to withstand                swaying like the gust of wind, swaying  
                                            the blazing sun and my open palms swaying




Why was it here                                         that it felt like you left us
                                                              ­                                              stumped,  
unaware,­
consuming  with no  
                                              idea of the Greater



2.


                                                W­ H A T was it about inner cities
And skin that would tan
Or resist the sun
   that made you  mutter murky words  


judgement
                   that made me hike a

                                  K
                       A
            E
P
that for so long made feel like a (lost) traveler
unable to come find my way   D O W N.

Still on a mountain top
Never quite crossing the hurdle.
That’s how you wanted me
A
     B
          A
                N
                     D  O N E D.

3.

But my tongue made sounds
copper pots and plastic measuring cups
became the pious  accompaniment
of a song sung inwardly
until it manifested
Words on lips
                            Lips willing to kiss the purple clouds made out of strange fruit and a high border walls over my hand and back

4. A Swimsuit and a pool that could cool
me
small children see the cicatrixes
      But I walk towards the water; I have long abandoned shame.

Love is a beautiful gift, but if it doesn’t come with respect you can have it back.

I see the outline of the milk gallon carried - domestic errands-
in her left hand that holds a black plastic bag. Her body is over tilting
like the stem of a flower to the right side to compensate for the weight carried, for the age and the toll of years on her body where canyons are scattered and her short black hair has thinned as does everyone’s time on earth

I feel the weight too, as the ripples of a pebble
tossed in a pond within my heart,
and I wish to carry her bag but I am turned down

The collar of her shirt red rose petals tilting outwards still fragrant and beautiful to watch slowly descend the haebangchon hills

What is a beautiful heart: a heart that does not accept to shrink.

I saw a little bee caught in a can

It must of gotten stuck after feeding off of the remanence of a soft drink

“little bee, oh little bee we all get stuck sometimes”

I ran into the kitchen grabbed a knife and used it to poke a hole through the aluminum and then used a pair of scissors to cut open the can

“Little bee, we all deserve to be free”

Once I opened the soda can it did not fly out;  instead the little bee stayed, and I let it be.

I came back an hour later curious as could be and the little be had buzzed away at its own time with its own wings and at its desired speed.

a surface siren of the air
with wings instead of fins
the black phoebe perched
on the wooden fence sings

calls me to the surface
of an aquamarine pool,

“Ah, yes … right.
this water shouldn’t be here. But you should”

This Phoebe is my neighbor
warm and welcoming, who stays
and stares before departing

the crows in  the mountains I used to climb
in Goyang recognize people

if a stranger was on the path on their way to the temple they’d crow three times

When I almost stepped on a snake they crowed repeatedly more than five times
as to warn me

Black Phoebe will you recognize me tomorrow, are we friends ?

keep this boat of kindness
anchored to dock of this tiny
speck of a body born into time  

may all violent waves and turbulence
never break the mooring line

You are carrying the frame an old  brick house of pressure determined
to go in your intend direction
your quest to get ahead
in life blinding
you are too busy to stop and really see
all the growing things
still you ride on with your oversized load over the highway

.                                                            Up
I­ dripped into the grass.       Up,
and absorbed my way Up,
to the tip of a leaf
and then I slide back    d
                                           o
                                              w
               ­                                   n

                                                giggling      ­                   
                                             like a child,
                                   gliding and somersaulting
                            through the air and making it back
                     to the soil. Where again, I would be absorbed
                                   (gleeful and eager to begin)

I start counting the little blades of grass, one by one the day seems more abundant with life and more open to growth than what I could have imagined.

Lately, my chest has been bursting at a different time every evening.
Although it runs on somewhat a schedule, I keep forgetting.

Sometimes, It catches me in the kitchen with my PJ sandwich and pushes it out of my hands.

Other times, it catches me right before I take a nap; I get up to clean the mess, and then I have trouble closing my eyes again.

On occasion, it sneaks up on me when I've just taken a shower, and I have to hop back in and lather.

However, today it caught me outside next to the Alcatraz flowers, and as it ruptured through my *******, that bundle of purple flora seemed to fit perfectly among the greenery.

I just love someone
I just love someone
I just love someone
And  I accept it

And I accept that they cannot accept me

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

dear life, dear long stretched yarn, I am no longer at your sweet beginning

If you were to have a four hand width from beginning to end, I would be be placing the the second hand over your yarn

I always assumed you were a skein
but your paths are simpler but far more intricate than coiled yarn

dear life, use me
one more humble string to weave beauty

a pair of padded pants to save yourself from winter
you look at the next title more padding for the cold that makes you shiver inside

I mediate on illness;
My friend said “you’re already so strong. When you get through this you’ll be like a diamond” I held the phone and cried.

when someone dies with a forest full of light in their mouth
there is no asking “can we replant those tall oaks”  
there is no longer any waning of the moon
not waiting for the fullness to add to the fluorescence of a mouth
when someone dies with so much light
you thank the earth they every sprouted from its minerals bathed in flesh with shiny eyes that reflected like the oceans water

When someone dies with a forest full of light in their mouth
you can weep for beauty complex to do so

you be so lucky to die with a forest full of light in your light

sometimes the earth flies away from me
drips through my fingers
slipping like thick honey into cups I have left out for too long
too many handled mugs on the counter that I confuse them for
confuse past with what is now

I as I wake try to shake this dream of something that never came to be because I
would love to pour my morning tea into along with the wildflower honey into a fresh cup

why are you doing this
       the longest day of summer of has come
and you inch towards the darkness

arresting migrants off the street
       law you call it, crime you name it
to flee for refuge somewhere else

why are you doing this
       there is a refugee, a cave lion, a tiger,
a jaguar who traveled far & wide

they are not weak; they are not alone
       you cover your face and take them
but one day when the light is the shortest cat

out in the alley watching
          this unlit terror fade the tribunals
will begin and they will knock

at your door looking for Schutzstaffel
          & the camp garrison
and ask you why were you doing that?

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.

Just appreciate your youth
go wear silly & funky stuff, cut
your hair ,change your hand writing
go for a new pair of shoes
Dang, pick a favorite new color every week
until you cycle through the rainbow
and then do it again
change what you think young is
Pull of the masking tape that says 20, clean off the sharpie lines that read 40, laugh at the fact that next it you wrote 60, baby head for the jugular and once and for all liberate yourself, no age is the right age
for feeling youthful and fully alive
no age comes with requirements

1.
Fizz and sparkles...
...undulated hair and a long salmon scarf
I stand over a running sink searching for you.

If there were fish swimming around my neck, defying gravity could I then reach for you?

Like i have reached countless times,
sometimes i have gotten close enough
to have seen the clearness of your eyes meet me in defiance...
...what do I say to a girl born into this world that smells of ocean?

2.
I met you years ago, when your  hands were small. And there was a sea rotating over your head. The whales seemed to soar above us –and you’d extend your left hand and guide me in.

3.
Your world... so gentle. You could not bare to leave it. When people saw water circle around your fingers, you did not care to explain to them such a phenomenon

that is why I love you
that is why I do not drink the soup of this     world

  that is why I keep sieving their words
  and this faucet water through my hands.


   that is why I wonder if in death I could come back to you but I think I get close enough in life


   4.you girl, that smells of ocean cannot be tamed do not let them drain the salt chuck above your head. As I became you, in me you become the living breathing world...
...inlets flow undeterred

I know it was rough waiting
I know it must of just not seemed worth it
when the world can be so simple
easy if you just let go

I was not born here
It was not as simple as “come as I please” here there are different ways of doing business
legal matters are all in a language I am barely functional in

they were not excuses
just the reality of me
not the fantasy or the dream
but another very real aspect
of accepting me for who I am in my totality
and that description includes “a girl who is just not from here”

a lime bursting
cascaron agrio I bite
where is the mescal
and motown at 2:00 am

I, too am a happy temporary
stem with hands and legs
close to the ground with petals reaching
towards the sun