To the older White Male in a Position of Authority

You stand tall

While I cower in your shadow. 

You are a symbol of white superiority

While I am burdened by my trauma

You wake and see the light of each new day 

Shining on your presence

Never having to worry 

Never having to question 

Your own existence

Never having to question your worth

You–descendent of colonizers

You–who never knew 

What it was like to carry 

The pain of your ancestors 

You–who never knew 

The feeling of internalized oppression

Clawing its way to the surface

You have never had to fight back tears

In spaces that have never belonged to you

You have never known the fear

That resides deep within this body

Within the queer body,

the dis-abled body, 

the brown body, 

The black body,

the femme body

The scarred and tattered body

Your white, male, cis-gendered, able-body 

will fade away 

While we will reclaim our space

Untitled…

Beads of sweat, welling up… having inched their way to the surface through grimy pores… streaming, swelling…. Breathing… deep… inundated with reminders of the very near… dangling future…

Am I an abstraction of the mind?

Am I streaming, screaming, gurgling my way down… and into the subconscious?

Am I a mere manifestation of the loathsome nightmarish quarrels constantly occurring within?

Where do these visions come from? Visions coated with black and blue… quilted, embroidered with faces…and feelings… feeling alone inside myself.. scratching… can’t seep through… can’t find its way toward these new positive heightened selves… we can make it… this will mean something… one day… someday… hopeful sirens singing this song of beauty and darkness… what a beautiful darkness.. and then… I see light… its bursts spreading over me, enveloping me and spreading me through the weakness and perceived flaws… “Aren’t we all flawed?” I ask myself. Oh… to be perfect… to be the perfect version of myself… 

“Perfection” What does that even mean?

What have we, as a society, created through cries of self deprecation… and far reaching aspiration? Perfection is a fucked up concept..

To strive for this is not worth it… but it is worth the effort to strive for what makes me, what makes us, who we are.

My happiness… my joys… my finest hour…

When will that be?

When will this anxiety within me come to a halt?

In this moment, it feels like never. 

But perhaps that’s not the point… perhaps it’s what makes me … me.

I can wear this inner struggle on my sleeve and be real.. be flawed.. be vulnerable..

and know that that’s okay.

Soy del Valle Central

Soy del Valle Central! 

I live in a place and space of beauty, of darkness and light dancing quietly conjunto over the horizon

A place of aventura and escape– of knowledge and meaning that can be found en la tierra.

I pour my margarita fresh from the blender con Jose Cuervo. 

Un dia while cruising the 99, I chose to escape, to run into the almond orchards and never return. 

I chose to run

I chose to venture out to a place of uncertainty

I became a writer–listless, uneasy, stumbling upon an endless drought.

In Califas– the land of possibilities

The land of pain

The land of anger and frustration

The land where palabras mean nothing and everything all at once. 

I left everything behind to explore this unusual, unsavory side of myself that had always been itching to come out, to claw its way to the surface of unyielding pain and suffering. 

Joy and endless love lay waiting for me en otro lado

Rain finally comes and carries me to la playa