I am plucking thorns from stolen roses with bloody fingers. 
I bring them to her every day. 
She stands at hostess podium in the restaurant , red hair piled on her head, or covering her face, depending on the bruises. 
She has the saddest blue eyes I have ever known. 
I have been stealing roses from gardens in a radius of her work. 
I think people are getting suspicious.
The roses have to be stolen, 
and I have to bleed on them, 
otherwise the charm won’t work. 
I have different blood, it’s an unusual color. 
I always hear the lab tech gasp when the vial attached to my vein glows purple. 
Even dark and dry, it still shimmers in the light. 
The roses I bring have speckled purple and green stems. 
She never asks why my hands are bleeding, she just smiles and arranged the roses on her podium. 
My girlfriend hates that I am doing this. Bringing stolen roses to the girl with the sad blue eyes.
The first time I kissed my girlfriend she told me she had taken a vow of chastity, 
she was a nun.
So I kissed her again, and again. 
We slept together every night for a month , dreaming the same dreams, 
generating a heat that warped the floorboards. 
Then we had sex.
Her order is going to catch on, we will be caught, 
And She will choose her church, and close the door in my face. 
So I don’t care how she feels about the roses.
She tells me what I’m doing is wrong. 
And I’m thinking 
Shit, I’ve been fucking gods girlfriend, how much more wrong is breaking up an abusive relationship? 
And she tells me the problem is I’m doing it for the wrong reason, and besides, she likes it. The girl with the sad blue eyes likes being hurt.
That’s something I already know.
I hand her another bloodstained flower, and Her eyes flick across the restaurant.
He is in the room, watching. 
Her cheek is bruised and tears hang like diamonds in her eyes.
He thinks I’m pathetic with my ragged bloody roses. 
He thinks I’m a creepy stalker bothering his girlfriend
He thinks I’m a joke.
I’ve known her for several years. 
We have the same circle of friends. 
I have never asked her out. 
I just bring her stolen roses, and we talk.
I reach out and pluck a diamond from the corner of her eye. 
It’s the first time I’ve ever touched her.
The diamond balanced on the tip of my finger mixes with my blood, 
shining like a ruby in the afternoon light.
When I lick the ruby from my finger, her pupils dilate, 
her face flushes. 
And I know the spell is cast.
The sound of her setting the petals on her podium crashes in his world like Mozarts Requiem Mass.
He doesn’t know she will arrive on my doorstep tonight, soaked and out of breath from running in the rain. 
He doesn’t know the kiss will go through her and find roots deep in the planet.
He doesn’t know that with one kiss I will vanish in the air forever, 
and she will wake to a pillow covered in diamonds.
Even if he fell to his knees and collected all the diamonds from her face. 
They will never glow like Rubys in the afternoon sun.
He is finished forever.
Because my kiss is a thousand times more cruel than his fist could ever be.

​I’ve lost my edge
words form round and vague 
my sharp is a dull knife 
I keep the gods at my feet 
swiping at them whenever they move too far
bringing them closer with the power of my hair
the call of the other side has never been more far away when my coffee arrives it’s been saturated with magic
I’ve lost my rough
words land on the roof 
or under barstools and sticky tables 
my fingers forgot how to fight
instead they tap 
slow and soft 
the light in the room rotates muted and pale
the wind floats through like smoke
sheer curtains hold the glass hummingbird in place
smothering her wings 
I don’t know how to describe this smell
a mixture of leaves from trees and red mud 
there’s a shocking white trash liner 
flapping a doves wing at me 
from the edge of the copper can 
his typing makes noise 
I’m quiet like a prayer or a calm but approaching storm
the puppy tries to steal my potato 
then sits between our writer’s hips 
he has been the one since beer came by the pitchers 
and prime rib served at Sunday dinners
rains hits the gravel driveway 
reminding me of rivers past 
sitting on rocks meditating about the day 
the sky looks like a cloud 
wrapping around my windows
holding us in place
I could turn and look at him if I wanted to 
but the palms wave my attention away 
we charged the deck on the night of the portal 
and now she tells me I’m a serpent 
I feel the twisting in my sternum like a drill
my smile has shaped into a new form 
I’m not ready to swallow yet 
so laundry sits waiting for me fold 
doors remain open waiting for me to close 
and the shelves remain out of place 
waiting for me to arrange 
my wish was for peace
not quiet peace
but active charged peace 
hot wire peace 
peace that remains alive 
the kind of peace that keeps me in bed 
but my hands are moving towards my lover
my eyes see through a web of history 
but my feet are pointed towards the future 
and my tummy cradles the edge 
holding her in hibernation 
but for now my skin can breath in the silence

​I am in stratospheric wanderlust. 
I don’t know what that means, the words are falling from the sky, not me.
Simple times simple things. 
Ancient statues unearthed in the wreckage of perfect wooden ships at the bottom of the black sea. 
I was never there, not that I remember anyway.
I don’t know which way were they going, or who wanted those statues.
But to pile all of that marble into a small wooden ship and head out across deep water,
reeks of oracles and gods.
I have been looking across the dark surface of the ocean at night.
There are so many stories out there on the water.
The moon utters words in splinters of silver against the volcanic edge of this island.
I suppose if I were to listen, I would hear it telling me to carve a massive chunk of rock
and try to paddle it over to Hilo.
I think I’ll leave THAT project for someone else.
Not that I’m afraid of the water. I just don’t like lifting shit.
In fact, eaten by sharks is high on my list of preferable ways to die.
The combination of violence and drowning would be fast and messy and . . . well,
I imagine struggling with a violent death would be the most vivid life experience.
I mean, if one indeed wants to Be Here Now.
My job at the Be Here Now Cafe was breakfast.
Smoking a ton of weed and cooking eggs with intense deliberation for hippies
​who got tired of waiting and wandered away. 
I was the last to leave. 
I made a sandwich and hit the road. 
I didn’t bother to lock the door behind me, I was eating the last piece of bread.
That place was a bad investment for somebody.
I called my Mom and asked her to send me my stereo so I could sell it for rent money.
She decided to keep it for herself and sent me two hundred bucks. 
Her rational was after depreciation and what it would have cost to ship it, that’s all it was worth.
Well, whatever, but the thing is, 
she would tell the story over and over about the time I was desperate and starving
and hustled her for cash.
It’s curious what happens to perception. 
Mental impressions re-interpreted over time. 
When the story changes, it effects the present, it alters the future.
It becomes a new truth. 
I think people change the story to fix the past. 
But I don’t think they know that’s what they’re doing. 
My subconscious is repairing my past in preparation for a new future. 
I see it happening all around me, and it effects me profound ways. 
When someone changes a story we share, 
I see the past begin to unravel, the future becomes murky, 
and friends transition into a reality we no longer share.
And stranger still, I sat at a table with an old friend while he told a tale of his wild youth. 
And I realized
the story he was telling was mine. 
It happened to me. 
He had been telling my story for so long, 
he stopped being the narrator, and had become the protagonist.
But what if it wasn’t my story either, maybe it belonged to someone I can’t remember.
When I was a boy, on a boat, in the middle of the sea, an old man said to me,
“Memory is a funny thing. I remember this morning, but last nights a little fuzzy.
And everything before that….
I’m not sure if it happened to me or if I saw it on TV.”
Thinking back on it, he might have said something else. 
But I’m gonna go with this version for now.

It’s decaying, much like my hope, much like this country, much like the bodies
after the bullets hit. I try to stay away from politics, I like living in my Maui
bubble, but this time was too close to home. By home, I mean my people. Then
again, what’s new. This country has been shitting on my people for years. I have
many times defined myself by my brown girl status. If someone didn’t know i
was brown, I made sure they did. If someone knew and didn’t like it, they could
go fuck themselves. If someone knew and praised me a little too much for it, I
made sure they knew I wasn’t some token Latina friend. I’m a genuine, real deal,
Puerto Rican that grew up in vanilla-ville, and was ostracized for it. I never
wanted vanilla-ville to get shot up.
The people that ostracized created that mess. White guys shoot up brown folks,
then cause fear in all the white folks that go on to fear the brown folks cause if
the brown folks weren’t there in the first place the white guy would have never
shot them up.
I grew up with several angry black men. My friend set used to joke about who
was playing the role of angry black man today. At least that anger was
warranted. We poked fun to keep the energy light. Because otherwise we would
all be angry. And yet, it’s the enraged white guys that are on their manifestos.
Even the crazy Latino man that was deluded in some sort of Stockholm
syndrome twist that made him plant bombs on the very politicians that were
trying to help. It’s all bullshit. And I am angry. And hopeless. And numb. I am
numb. I am numb. . .
I am numb to the numbers. Numb to the pain. Numb to the voices that want to
blame trannies and gay folks, a lack of prayer rather than a lack of morals, video
games instead of propaganda videos displayed for the incel masses that incite
fear and hatred... and somehow, I cannot hate these people. I have every right,
an yet i do not. I feel sorry for them. It’s the last thing they want, and I’m numb
to that too, but that‘s how I feel. Pity for the pathetic, angry, fearful, repugnant,
hateful little boys that were never taught how to deal with their feelings, because
boys don’t cry. Now I cry, I cry for those that lost family in a senseless act. I cry
for my friend whose nurse was shot, I cry for another city that is no longer
deemed safe, I cry for all the fear that these sad boys have created out of their
own fear. Boys don’t cry, so I cry for them. In their unempathic rage that hurt so
many, in their screams that come out as a rain of bullets, in their emotions that
they don’t know how to express, I cry for them. I cry for the sinners and I cry for
the saints. I cry because i am weary, and i cry for the weak. I cry until the tears
dry up and wash down the river, and then I cry again.

Rain these tears in.
Leave no trace in the desert storm.
Make the slithering snakes weaving a tapestry in my body stop.
Pull the edges of the cart back away from the silence in my soul.
Bony fingers poking out of my heart tearing flash as they draw the darkness out of my being. 
Snow covered doves submerge themselves in lucid moments.
The horse drawn cart comes in my front door and ladens my home with foster monks.
It’s all upside down this world of mine.
The flat side of the earth feels more real now chased by leprechauns.
I dodge the unkind words my mind feeds to me.
Fingers tap, tap, tap.
Waiting for me to reach forward as if I am free falling out the window of pain.
I wonder if there’s a bottom in this pit. I wonder if I’ll ever see miracles in this life.
I wonder if I'll live long enough to try again tomorrow. It’s dry here in this tropical jungle.
I want to feel the grains of the sands of time stroking my heart with love.
I want to feel the pollen of hope in my life.
I want to feel anything other than the stampede of camels running through me.
The clear glass is ruined by the finger prints and the pretend kisses.
It tells the view of snatched egg shells making their way into my home.
I am left and process times by rodents and cockroaches.
I see no other joy than the muscles on the ants tramping into my bedsheets.
Believe me I have tried to make sense of all this
​but nothing repeats it self long enough for me to figure out.
I get lost in the next lightning bolt as it surges through my body.
I get lost in the music that is piercing my mind and soul.
I get lost in the world that is so fucked up, that rabbits actually do come out of hats.t

I like turtles but not to the degree that my mother did.
One of my earliest memories is the summer I spent between first and second grade with her in our San Diego home I named, “Big Pink.” 
She was over an hour late from picking me up at the airport which gave me ample time to make best friends with the goosebumps covering my skin and the the visible exhale of my breath. 
Sometimes I go to airports to remember her, feel her energy, smell her skin.
But I digress.
She was over-joyed, squealing unnecessary information about “my new father” on the neon lit car ride back to Big Pink.
I was baseline joyed that the heater still worked in her vehicle I had named, “Miss Piggy Has A Dirty Nose”, and was later changed to “Tess.” 
But I digress.
My mother had acquired a plethora of old, used up prosthetics while she attended medical school. 
A life sized version of a ken dolls leg, filled with umbrellas greeted us as we entered Big Pink. 
A plastic arm she had mounted in the foyer sprung to life with various foliage and herbs she potted inside the elbow. 
That is the exact moment I can recall learning the word “phalange.”
But I digress.
Once upstairs, in the main living quarters, I was introduced to the sweaty excuse of a man who kept my mother company while I was being raised by my grandparents on Maui. 
The birds nest of chest hair escaping from his faded, overwashed, excuse of an aloha shirt and the fact that he made sequined patches at the swap meet is the only thing I remember about him to this day. 
But I digress.
I played Fur Elise on the grand piano as they canoodled on the couch, exhibiting behavior a five year old should not be of witness.
That’s when I saw it.
My first real life turtle!
An ashtray glued to the top of its shell while it snapped at my toes, my five year old Flinstone toes that strived to reach the pedals of the piano.
Big Pink was a circus.
A surreal platform that displayed my mother’s creativity and mental disorders.
A smokey, dim-lit, record player spinning, gardens of broken down fake limbs, soggy tattered undergarments peeking through the couch cushions, empty bottles of Zima and bottom-shelf vodka scattering the tables.
Well, the tables that didn’t occupy abalone-shells, tarot cards, uncapped tubes of acrylic paint, horizontal bottles of flavored lubricants.
But I digress.
My mother liked turtles.
I like having my mother’s knick-knack turtles in my new home. 
I haven’t glued an ashtray on the back of a living, breathing turtle. 
Although, I do burn nag champa, palo santo.
I store illicit drugs inside of their ceramic shells and hide keys underneath their sculpted belly’s. 
I even started talking to them a couple weeks ago.... they haven’t spoken back, although I wish they would.
I wish I could ask them questions about my mom and get an answer. 
I wish I knew somebody, anybody that would talk to me, engage me with knowledge, insight, warning signs, hilarious stories.
Anything about her.
But just as my mother would say, “Wish in one hand, shit in the other and see which one fills up first.” 
I have had episodes in the past where I thought I made it all up, her existence. 
Her frequent vacations at the local psych wards.
But I digress.
It no longer matters. Maybe it never mattered that I was struggling through AP classes at my elitist private school and held at the lowest a 3.7 GPA while my basket case of a mother was in and out of mental
hospitals. 
I didn’t tell anyone that I did my homework next to her infirmary cot while she was doped up on Geodon and Lithium. I haven’t told anyone I watched her roommate hang herself with soiled bedsheets when I was thirteen years old, yet I still remained focus on my studies.
I don’t tell anyone that she attempted suicide twice before she got it right. 
I don’t want to tell anyone that it was me who resuscitated her both times. 
My mother was adopted and the agency she was bought from burnt down - this was in the 60’s - before the “cloud” or when files were backed up on computers. 
But I digress.
I am an only child.
I am only. 
I am nothing. 
I have died so many times I wonder if this existence is my version of Hell.
Do you believe I once had a mother? 
Do you believe she loved me? 
What are your thoughts on turtles? 
I like turtles just not as much as my mother did.

​Take my hand. Let the colors blend. Let my yellow touch green. Let the wrinkles stretch thin. Bleed green. Thin. Hands. Where they held anger, now there are clouds. Where they fell, now they pray. Where they have held up, now they wipe away. Colors. Yellow. Stretch. 
Take my hand. Turning into birds we fly this way. Spinning in tight dances. Taking turns at the wheel. Pulling into places. Opening palms. Reading stories. Tapping into blank spaces. Wheel, dances, way. Birds, tight, turns. 
I don’t want to take his hand. My skin is on too tight. I’m allergic to sweat. My elbow doesn’t want to bend. Bend, sweat, tight. There’s sand in my eyes. Clouds peak out between the drops of blue. Leaves fly away from the trees. Sand. Peak. Drops. 
I don’t want to take his hand. The drink has worn off. The tired starts in a chair. Music sets my teeth on fire. Fire. Chair. Off. The wind is another reason for hot air balloons.  For kites. For sails. Sails, reason, wind. Take his hand. 
Take my hand. I don’t want to take his hand. Hand my take. Hand his take. To want. Don’t I? Blend colors? Green touch? Thin. Stretch. Clouds are dances tight. Wheel the places into stories reading. Tight to. Sweat to. Bend to. My eyes blue of trees. Don’t I take his hand? 
I want him to take my hand. Twisting my wrist into his wet.    My hand takes him. Pulling his smile past his teeth. Teeth. Him. Wet. I don’t want to take. As my fingers curl. Nails in palms. Ripping thin. My take. Life’s too long. Flowers whither. Getting thin. Take my hand in him. Twisting. Pulling. Teeth. Stretch. Turns. Drops hand. Hand. Hand. 

​



I got tears filling my ears and I don’t know if it’s happiness or despair 
or just the wind in my eyes ‘cause I’m not wearing a helmet on the interstate.
All it took was a gallon of chocolate syrup and a momentary laps of reason.
Desert Center scares the shit out of me.
Broken down people and trailers abandoned along the road near a gas and sip in the middle of nowhere, 
halfway to nowhere. 
Life is just a carton of cigarettes, some cheap beer, and nowhere. 
Where fuckups get dumped when society doesn’t even care enough to send them to jail. 
Nobody ever comes back from this place. 
It’s a fucking death sentence.
There used to be a sign that said  You Are Now Here.
Someone had a bitter sense of humor.
When I was little, I would look out from the backseat of the chevy and think, 
“Don’t stop here. Oh god please don’t let them stop here for gas.”
He’s inside the station buying beer for a teenage ghost who wandered in from the desert.
There are  chocolate syrup fingerprints where he held the glass door open for her, 
and all I can think about is alcohol and minors and the fact that I might be standing on the State line.
Sometimes I look at the road and I can’t tell which way is home.
Nowhere 
Now Here
Fuck.
The warrant was served, the syrup was poured, 
and shit was suddenly in motion.
It’s late and I think I screamed the whole way here. 
I don’t know if it’s fate or irony to steal a motorcycle and run out of gas in Desert Center.
They trampled children to avoid getting chocolate syrup on their clothes.
He burned every bridge on the road to nowhere
That’s why I left him there.
I don’t think he noticed or cared when I rode away.
I could have gone with him. I could have continued fucking up until someone stomped my teeth into the wooden floor of a bar in the desert somewhere, nowhere.
But, I looked into the night 
and saw the old sign that said 
YOU ARE NOW HERE.
And I watched my romantic notion of rock bottom come and gone. 
A friend once told me there are no absolutes, I would never get there.
But he was wrong.            
I didn’t bother apologizing on the way back. I just took a different road.
I don’t know what happened to him. I like to think he walked north until he came to Las Vegas. It’s what I would have done.
I brought the bike back before it was reported stolen. 
But the chocolate syrup left stains that will never wash out.