Full Moon Vibes

One moon

New moon

Shadow gone

Layers shed

Cells relaxed

Resistance eclipsed

Full relaxed presence

One Poem

I've spent my life in cities

but my soul is in the soil,

under the concrete,

ready to open up and breathe.

My roots graze the surface

of the concrete

like a strangler fig,

never finding stillness

until it finds open soil,

there it can grow.

The one star in the polluted sky at night, 

Jupiter and I draw one another in to the past

when we danced

before Earth was Earth,

reunited with

family

once again

in the deep dark desert sky.

My skin became concrete

from so many years

in the city.

My soul sneaks out the window

of my nose

in the forest

to party with

the terpenes 

once seen as but timber.

We meet in the forest and remember

the wild part of us

that will be never captured.

It lives on the wind.

It invades the city

with

raindrop paratroopers

coating our casas

at night

and impregnating our dreams 

with wilderness.

It blows in between

dust particles and diesel fumes

to tickle our wild side.

To survive their entrapment

and divorce from the horizon

eyes are capped with screens

to temporarily pause the wildness.

But it cannot be stopped.

It is in each breath

you take

and take it shall

you

to where your wilderness lies.

Beyond the lies 

you tell yourself.

One step.

One choice.

You are one breath

from connected

and

yet connected to

the whole cosmic soup

in every breath, drink, poop or

reflection of light.

The entire universe of light

is reflecting differently

because you are here.

Love it fully

and

shine that light back out

into your cosmos.

Cone Climbers Closing Statement

Remember You

Some of you came as  young bud feeling the spring sun for the first time.

Looking upon an infinite green carpet of needles.

Looking upon an unknown future of pollination, rainfall, fire 

and a potential long path of travel through

a dark place before you can race to the sun again,

in nature's cyclical tree climbing competition.

May you give yourselves the determination of a young bud and

meet the sun daily with preparations for your

critical, challenging and illuminating journey

to becoming a tree climber at the top of the canopy.

You are the bud of reforestation.

We have given you four days of light.

This is only the beginning.

The rest is your work.

Blessings on your journey tree lovers.

We need your best.

And so it is.

Ben

Seventh Street Heading into the Sunset

Exiting the freeway

Watch that speed

Black & Whites in lay

Public coffers in need

Gated Communities left

Public facilities right

Economic immunity fight

Education and vets

Not worth amputation nor a lifetime of debts

Cruise past the golfers and well entrenched clout

Keep those slopes green even in a drought

At the end of the fairway 

Our families are out

Throw your care away

You can even shout

Honks and horns

Needles and thorn

Even public officials

Burn our heads with scorn

Food is fast

Health is last

Don't look just drive past

If you took time to observe

For sure you would be aghast

Right before that freeway onramp curve

Full of diesel fumes and gas

And the last two things you see strike a nerve

Elementary students and cement-sleeping ass

Accountability and Grace

 I am a human being living in a particular time and place but I am the same as all who have ever existed in that I have a responsibility and debt to the planet for my existence.

I cannot understand those who perpetuate(d) the horrors of this planet and why some cannot see our sameness and dependence upon one another.

As the leaf breathes out I breathe in.

I pledge to continue to be the best person I know how and I ask that I be judged by my actions and how I use my privilege, but not dismissed because of how I came upon it. I am not responsible for the body I was borne into, but I am responsible for how I use it.

Remove the Crust

 As I sat and meditated in front of my cat who has an unknown heart issue I felt hte excavator remove a large trench of soil down my middle. It was as if two inches of thick salt-crusted-soil had been removed from my collar bone to my waist between where my backpack straps would hang. That part of me felt young like walking after a deep stretch and moving in a way that feels free, familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. 

How long has my soil been crusted over? 

What shall I plant?

Nixta Red

 It takes the energy of the sun and makes building blocks from it.

Without soil and water it can't function, but the weight comes from light.

It give me breath while blooming into form.

Flower becomes fruit only from the flow of the wind sizzling through flower and husk.

It forms carbon Lego blocks in rows, sometimes parallel, sometimes spiral.

Blue, red, yellow or white it stacks cubes of synthesized sunlight into a cylinder wrapped in a rough paper husk.

Too much water and it rots, too little and it shrivels.

It partners with ancient biology in the soil, exchanging sugars for distant and difficult nutrients.

Fusing light, water, wind and soil, it reaches to the sky as if meant to feed the Heavens.

We leave it to dry up there in the sky, finally pulling back the layers to reveal our prize.

We store it away somewhere dry for a needy tomorrow.

It contains ancient starlight and sunrays, winds of distant lands, the soil of my place and every cycle of water since the beginning of time.

I place it into a pot of boiling water with a spoon of my best copy of wood ash.

It lights up the room with the aroma of time and place. Imbuing the house with Earthy aromas and moist air filled with the tears I have shed into my garden. I feel this place and time enter my nostrils and disperse into my bloodstream. I recall the time I have spent and feel the time people have spent this year and for hundreds of years, to bring this kernel to my foreign place of domestication.

I feel time in the nixtamalized corn as I feel with no other food. Perhaps those little antennas pointing to the stars every night put a little star dust into the kernel and the elements I call me call to their long displaced brethren.

The Earth wants to express something through me and I often find myself searching for it like a problem-seeking missile wanting to blast from my path any potential detour-inducing objects. But as I smell and then ingest the corn I have grown, dried, nixtamalized and cooked I find myself as a simple conduit again. I find myself absorbing the wind, water, soil and sun only to return those elements back. I am but flesh wrapped around a passageway for recycling elements and nutrients for the next generation. Like a plant, I find my existence a regenerative part of an ancient cycle.

As the smell of corn and campo slowly dissipates over the next day I find myself drawn back to the spring planting and summer harvest, warmed by the thought of the coming seasons. I have been grounded by the corn while also exited for the future. It is a kernel of truth, the fruit of my labor and a seed of connection.

Here's to the love of corn.