Love Is

Love is patient.
Love is kind.
It does not envy.
It does not boast

Love can be labeled
Love cannot be quantified
Love is platonic
   romantic
   sexual
   familial
   physical
   emotional
   spiritual
   communal

Love is care

Love does not pertain to time
   nor cares about distance
   nor dimensions

Love is not clear
Love is a fluid
   ever changing but there
Love is a gas
   filling up as much space as it can
Love is a plasma
   unfathomable
Love is a solid
   A scaffolding of support

Love hurts
Love is scary
Grief is love
“What if grief if not love persevering?”

Love is connection
   Even if only for a moment
Love is connection
   even after it’s severed
Love is connection
   walking each other home
   wanting to spend as many moments with friends before sleep overtakes you

Love is choice
Love is respecting boundaries.
Love is making boundaries
   trying to keep people in your life.
   accepting that love can be conditional
Love is respect
Love is communication of what respect means
Love is communication
   Even when you are afraid
Love is honesty
   even when it hurts
   Speaking directly with tact and care
Love is knowledge
Love is learning
Love is listening
Love is letting others make their own choices
   even if the choice is to leave you behind
Love is letting go
   not holding hostage.
Love is trying
Love is trying to do better.
(Love is checking yourself before you wreck yourself.)
Love is emotional management
Love is trying not to go off like a bomb

Love is not hiding yourself
Love is the mortifying or deal of being known
Love is wanting to be known
Love is wanting to know
Love is acceptance
Love is feeling safe
Love is not walking on eggshells.
Love is making sure they feel safe.
Love is providing safe harbor.
Love is keeping one another
Love is not worrying about how long they will be in your life

Love is the point
   Connection is the point
Nothing matters
So what matters to you?

Love is for others.
Love is for yourself.
Love is finding the balance
   So you are not drowning
   In others or yourself
   Taking time for yourself
   So you can be with others
Love is accepting that sometimes balance is not possible
   And recognizing how long you can handle that
   Without losing yourself

Love is resistance
   of capitalism who calls on you to only love profit
Love is resistance by building community
Love is keeping others safe too
   Even if you don’t know them well
Love is believing others will take care of you to their capacity
Love is taking care of yourself
   Resetting yourself
   so you don’t burn out
Love is resisting a system that is trying to burn your out
Love is forgiving yourself when you do burn out
Love is defending others
Love is believing yourself

Love is hurting others temporarily so they are happier in the long run of life
“Life is too short and love is too long”
Love is long
Love is bigger than your body

Love is more than you can imagine
Love is your ancestors who prayed for you
   who thought of you without knowing your name
   nor you theirs
Love is your descendants you pray for
   you strive to do better for
   who you think of without knowing their names nor them yours

Love is infinite
   attention is not

Love hurts
Love heals
Love sucks
Love is desperate
   Infatuation is desperation and dislikes boundaries

Love is kindness turning others beautiful

Love is kindness
Love is not letting lust take control over care
Love is permission
Love is enthusiastic consent

Love is wanting to eat them
Love is wanting to feed them
Love is wanting to provide a roof over their head
Love is wanting your cells to integrate to share pieces of each other
Love is wanting your atoms to touch
   to get past the illusion of touch

Love is napping together
Love is cuddling
   platonically or otherwise.
Love is laughing together
Love is crying together
Love is going on little adventures
   even if it’s only to the grocery store.
Love is wanting to be together
   even if it’s only talking in a parking lot until 2 AM
Love is making friends at 4 AM.
Love is inside jokes
   And excited to make new ones with new friends

Love is choice
Love is friendship
   is inclusive
   is including them even if you don’t think they’ll come
Love is not blood-based
Love is chosen family
   even if it excludes blood relatives
Love is caring about others more than the values that call on you to hate them
Love is considering you might be wrong.

Love is being open
Love is not religious
Love can be spiritual
Love is connection

Love is chemical
Love is not caring that it’s chemical
Love is not only chemical.

Love is bonding
Love is healing

Love is sharing
Love is knowing when to say no
Love is not bleeding yourself dry
   nor asking the same of others
Love is not resentment.
Love isn’t holding grudges
   As satisfying as they might feel
Love is forgiveness
   Especially so you do not hold the hurt anymore
   trying not to give them power to hold that corner of your heart
Love is what you can forgive
Love is what you can give

Love might be writing a poem about love and not knowing how to order it
   recognizing the irony of trying to explain love in a two-dimensional medium
   knowing it is a work that will always be incomplete
   But still wanting to do justice to a friend asking “What is love?”

Graveyard Poetry

Written at the William Blake exhibit at the Getty Museum on December 2, 2023.

Graveyard Poetry

In the middle of a museum

surrounded by the works of long dead creatives

leaving behind etchings we cannot touch

And brushstrokes we cannot get too close to

Having colored their own line work

Affecting far into a future they could not even imagine

Graveyard Poetry

to sit with death

and laugh

and cry

at the absurdity

of anything else besides the surface of this earth

What does it matter to me

to learn about the center of the planet

If the people are not being fed

cut off from the fruits of their labor

what does graveyard poetry give me

except a space to lament my hardships

before I too am relegated to feed the trees that will never know my name

of the fungi that do not care what I did in life but only know that I did it

indiscriminately eating through my flesh

until it is unrecognizable to my lack of eyes

Seven generations down do not know who I am

except maybe an inkling of my love for them

compounded together with the love of fellow ancestors that I did not even know

and converge in them

Hallowed Be Thy Body

One day

They reached into my throat

   with an old lab coat on

all the way down to my toes

They scooped me out

(not much there anyway)

until I was hollow

glass bones

paper fingernails

blood like syrup

They said I looked Fine

My tongue was too thick

and fragile to respond

with an adequate

“But I’m not”

They looked at me

and believed themselves

They didn’t realize they had

dislodged the door to my screams

keeping them in nice and tight

folded unto themselves

in my labia

The screams so loud

and deep and shrill

They went deaf

They went deaf so quickly

They were still smiling at me

unaware they could no

longer hear me and

my protests

“But I’m not Fine

I’ve been scooped out since

before you put your hand

down my throat

But I could not open

the doors to my screams alone

   so thank you

I can only hope someone

hears the echos

following them to the source

just to say to me

‘I know you’re not Fine

I know you’re drowing

in the tears you won’t shed

in all the times you’ve wanted

   your heart to give up

in all the blood vessels that swear

   that you’re worth it

in the logic that

   you’re worth living your own life

in the feeling that you’re

   not

And the water and oil

of these trying to follow

the same paths to you ventricles'”

They’re still smiling

   still deaf

I am still numb

Ringing as a lone bell

calling lost souls to a merciful

hell

Death Has A Tough Coat But It’s Softer On The Inside

Transcription of picture

Death is a woman

Is a man

Is neither

A javelina skull

A tough coat woven

Of the empty space

Between stars

Is the unfound ether

Bone softer than expected

hands carry you

ground into dust

Medusa

I hate identifying with Medusa

I love identifying with Medusa

I hate what connects us

I love the power it gives us

I hate that I could discover power this way

I love that I have it

.

I’m stitching her face now,

and even before I make her eyes 

we stare at each other, 

a reflection of anguish and anger and spitting and screaming and love for one another

To be a doll

Sometimes I wish I was Barbie

With a light dimple between my legs

So I would never have to feel the center of my anger building

With a fire where my dimple should be

As my face shines brightly with a melting plastic smile

I would never be able to imagine

A violation

Never be able to sympathize with others so profoundly

As they describe their own

Instead we could sit on a shelf together

Boxes neatly in a row

With finger fused

Wondering what else life can hold

Besides a room’s view

Death Lay Beside Me

It was Death who lay beside me

while I contemplated

holding Her hand and saying

Let’s go

She turned to me gently

squeezing my fingers

until I could feel that my bones

would never touch

with my skin

and muscles

and tendons

and hair

growing in between

and not caring how I felt about it

Where She told me

Not yet

Library Search

Library search

5/9/16

7:40pm

procrastinating studying Physics

.

I want the books to be old

And new

I want a range so that I am not gasping for the air

Trapped in between the pages

That don’t see daylight

Because they do not want us to know

Of our power

Of our own gente’s words

So I am eternally searching for Latinx last names

Mostly Latinas

Who understand my brown skin struggles

And still just want to write

About themselves

About beauty

About ugliness

About whatever they want because they will not deny that they are good writers

But being brown penetrates the epidermis of the pages

As we transfer our color into our words

Because we cannot ignore ourselves

The white world ignores us as they find our color distasteful

So we scream

And write in Spanish

English

Spanglish

Translated 

Fill our own libraries until the bookshelves are heavy and sag

Like Coatlicue’s breasts

Because she and the bookshelves are ready to feed us knowledge of ourselves

To make sure we are alive with our own fierceness

That we recognize our own blood in the pages

So we can say “ese es mi gente!” with pride

Y nos sentamos at the bookshelf

Our backs bending over the book

That will make us stand tall again