Happy Birthday! (to me!!)
July 9th, 2008
By the end of this year, my travels will be in good number:
Thailand - Bangkok, Koh Larn, Pattaya, Chiang Mai
India - Jaisalamer, Agra, New Delhi, Jaipur
Japan - Fukuoka, Nagasaki, Osaka, Hiroshima
Korea - all eastern region
My 1st grade class learned the Macarena and sung me happy birthday. All that’s left is a poem. Here is my version of Nikki Giovani’s “Ego Tripping.” Hey, Neruda and Nikki can do it, why can’t I?
Big Pimp’n…(there’s just no stopping me)
I sat back on the mountain peak of my 31st,
A child at heart, the party of 100+ attendees
trotted all over the world:
From Frankfurt to India, Cali to DC, Buenos Aires to Pohang,
I am strong.
I gave myself a Thailand Elephant on the hills of the Hmong,
A camel to explore the Jaisalamer desert fort,
An interview with a Geisha one early morning treat,
Walking along side paupers and royalty with a Seoulian jade attitude,
…my lovers laid down the Floridian keys by my feet.
I am bad.
Before that, for my 15th birthday,
My mother gave me the moon in a necklace of pearls
and my father gave me the earth in a string gold
My uncle laid at my feet volumes of poetry and words
and my ant a five layered cake decorated with flowers
worth my weight in sweet delights
My friends played Sonoran trumpets that woke the morning sun for me,
I am a queen.
When my heart was broken
I cried a river that swelled pages of my journal
like the Mekong in Monsoon tides,
lachrymal sentiment fecundating California fires
all was dark and ashy,
all was a cry in the dark of a blues melody,
where the river took me was far and high.
So now I look ahead,
The Pyramids of Chichinitzen to explore,
where the moon cradled sun and Aztecs discovered dentistry,
while locals frolic and watch from Playa del Carmen, I’ll be there.
In front of Asian councils hours of evaluations
to be the first Colombian to achieve…I’ll succeed.
Hopping from island to island of tropical beauty
in Malaysian volcanic treasures of serendipity,
I’ll find…because there’s just no stopping me.
Happy Birthday to me!!
—
“Serendipity…such an accident of sagacity..” –Horace Walpole
Rain on My Feet
July 2nd, 2008
Land has a way of stamping itself into memory,
working its way into psyche,
transforming itself into an emotion
manifesting as normal abnormalities in an organ,
sometimes an extra palpitation, a scar,
a drop of sweat that appears,
depending on time, place and mood.
Sometimes it’s my heart,
looking below at a blanket of sparkling lights
uneven terrain of my birth crib,
wooden houses testing faith
or mimicking the unequal societal balance,
that limits the middle class,
that’s Cali.
Sometimes it’s my skin,
stretching for countless flat miles
on hot, humid, melting asphalt road
that jumps free at night,
it doesn’t hold make up,
it doesn’t hold water on flooding roads
it just keeps the pot holes on the road
and the scratches of where I once been,
that’s Houston.
Sometimes it’s my eyes,
engrossed in detail and architecture
rebuilding images in detail
jumping from painting upon painting
upon rooms full of rows and columns
buttress that bend like majestic trees
inside churches that make me weep,
that’s Italy.
Sometimes it’s my vocal chords,
quiet when I eat, quiet when I watch
quiet in the evening sun setting on Hun roads
quiet inside temples of golden Buddha
loud when it sings to the elephants
and talks to the people
bargaining for gold that no one else notices
that’s Thailand.
Today it’s my feet,
the one that follows the sounds of the gushing stream
on uneven road in spring monsoons,
runs to the top of the temple
that blesses the rice fields below and roots beside
moves past the bonsai nursery,
sitting in the middle of a cricket symphony rice crop,
the clay tennis court beside cabbage fields and houses
and the elders that built it on the land they farm
keeping a quiet tradition and identity for the community,
running past the curtain of trees that limit the wind
to the garden of a thousand flowers where
a landfill use to be…
that‘s Korea.
I used to think that I should have asked for a different city,
Somewhere that pays more, closer to city, has more room,
I used to think that I was here to forget
and change all the regrets there were about me.
I use to think it was difficult to be quiet and alone.
Reality: Learning means you can’t forget,
on the border of the city and the country,
smiling at cloudy and moody mountain peaks,
on a border land that challenges space and time,
looking ahead, working inside with sounds and words
I’m exactly where I was meant to be.