lalanative

09/17/2025

Chapter 2025

I feel bad
unsettled
sickened through to bone
helpless in my own thoughts
as they have dimmed from azure insights
to crimson rubble
the occasional glimmer of returning to a peaceful life
can only be quarried from a newly blasted mine
sparkling with the shards of blissful ignorance
I know I can do better
But my heart is a weathervane
my toes a Geiger counter
I denounce my intuition
like an unexpected delivery of black daisies
But then it crushes my wrist
spinning me back to face it
hour to day
week to month
I can lose myself in a florid novel
a splatter of memes
and dings from things
whose origins are likely inhuman
but the bitter taste of doom still
clouds my morning coffee
I can't see the forest through the sleaze
my heart still beats
my feet still walk
my hope still spreads warm into buttered toast
but what will stop the careening cruelty
the unknowable suffering we thought
could never happen here
to us
there is no distraction big enough
to force a restful blink
as all eyes are open, unprotected
watching the burning sermon of the sun
sweet dreams
were not made of this.

08/02/2025

What could I say to you that you would find intriguing and can’t find anywhere else?

It would have to be solely about you. Your deepest fears. Deepest shames. Deepest regrets. A knowledge I don’t possess. And if I did, it would be merely a guess. An intuitive grasp, pulling a worn pink thread from the quiet satin folds of a quilt you might have napped upon a lifetime ago.

I have always had more questions than answers, but I still know where the old linens are kept, even the ones of odd sizes and unmatched patterns, meant for mattresses that have long ago left my possession or my desire to carefully house them in my recollections.

We are all only here to watch ourselves watch others and then we sleep. We all roll over and over through dreams and days that are threadbare or satin.

07/12/2025

Wisp

We were serpentine brethren
gathering ‘round youth’s warmest cottons
Our grins split like red popsicle drips
upon August’s gleaming shoulders
Sweet spirals of surrender offered
by the flash of bare wrist
fragile with blue pulse
and fragrant humanity
that only a tongue’s precise tip
could ascertain for certain.

07/05/2025

I’m finding it hard to breathe through this.

No inhaler calms my lungs from the involuntary hyperventilation the hellish images trigger. No mountain majesty view clears my eyes from the mid-sleep premonitions.

They say look for the helpers. I have always been one of those, but my help is tiny, laughed at by those who gleefully pour oily black cruelty into their bubbling coffee, then sit to savor it as they watch their dissimilar neighbor’s lives become engulfed with red smoke and blue flames from the comfort of their small stoop, a thick with water firehose thumps readily at their side, but is only lifted to rinse the caked blood from their hands and then quickly shut off at the spigot.

Not a drop of water will they waste on saving humanity.

06/01/2025

If I leave nothing but distaste, I hope it was briefly savory.

03/28/2025

Because every day it’s been getting harder to remember a simpler version of America, here’s an all-American photo of my maternal grandfather, Albert, with my uncle, also named Albert, hanging out on their street in Alhambra, CA. My uncle is still alive and well. My grandfather died when I was 18. He was the only adult man that ever listened to me. Here he is sitting on his 1947 Harley Davidson, a cigarette smoldering in his right hand. I know my grandmother rode on the back of that motorcycle regurarly on the way to meet their bowling league friends, whom also had Harley Davidsons. I guess my grandparents were early members of a motorcycle gang.

My grandfather was a hardworking, blue collar, father of 3. He would be absolutely disgusted by the current dissolving of his country and the personal dangers awaiting his grand and great-grandchildren. He was a kind and decent man and a great source of comfort to me in my youth. Everytime I said goodbye to him he would hug me hard and say “hasta mañana”, which was always funny to me since that was probably the only Spanish he knew and he was originally from Iowa.

I wish I could go back for one more hug from that tall blue-eyed man and tell him “hasta luego” because now, that makes more sense.

03/25/2025

I find it almost impossible to write anything when so many horrible things are happening.

I am repeatedly frozen by the unthinkable unfolding live and raging nearly every hour of every day. It is unfair that we have but one brief life to live and in the last third of mine, I have been sucker-punched and forced to swallow the bitterest pill of uncertainty as an American woman. I feel duped. Leveled. A second-class citizen. Because of the bad and blind decisions of some, we are being stripped of our assumed safety, livelihood and the right to roam freely as Americans. All the securities that were sewn into our previous existence are dissolving day by day.

There's nothing hopeful, or safe to look forward to right now. We are being terminated as the bosses of own lives and the guardians of our families. Our rights and norms are being stripped so quickly, we cannot even mourn the ones we lost previously. We cannot assure our children of anything anymore and it is surreal. It is crushing. It is somber. It is profoundly wrong.

Nobody seems to be doing anything to stop it and too many don't seem to care at all. I do not understand those people. How were their brains knitted so differently than mine? How do some of us see white and the others see black? How do we all coexist in a country where now it is potentially dangerous to travel, unsafe to voice our beliefs and opinions and countries around the globe are turning away from us in disgust and distrust? The constant worry about our friends, our families and bank accounts being removed from our grasp with no due process, or even a coherent reason, seems unthinkable, but we are here.

It seems they can take anything from us now, on a whim. Everyone and everything - up for grabs. We are now cruising life without legal protections, as they pillage randomly and with impunity - their laughter drowning out the screams of millions.

The unimaginable is taking center stage over and over again as they bellow for more attention, louder applause. Half the room is on their feet cheering for an encore and the other half is in the brace position awaiting a fatal crash.

I hope sometime soon the tides will swell, taking all the unfettered cruelty and lawlessness out to the dark and deep seas of our history. I dream about the day humanity gathers to make it stop. When the chaos, cruelty and loss are too much, even for the hardest humans to endure another moment of it.

My greatest hope is that millions of conservatives will finally be liberal with their voices and hearts and say loudly in words and actions; We are so sorry. We have made a terrible mistake. Hopefully it will not be too late.

03/04/2025

Two more pieces published. It’s fun to see your words in print. Available on Amazon.

02/05/2025

Protect 2025

We hunker down in solitude
between bites of cold coffee
and sips of rage
weakened, but not weak
we awaken each day hoping
it was a passing nightmare
fueled by the true crime binges
we basked in from the softness of our velvet couch
the truest crimes are now happening
in real life
in real time
they have become everyday,
all day moments
even a long walk cannot outrun
We is not
Me
And Us
seems so long ago
and it’s only February
we are millions of hearts
beating too fast, simultaneously
collective chills crawling our spines warmed away only by our inate ability to persevere through jagged unknowns
Chins up
Ears pricked
Mouths wide
our children are counting on us
to be their heroes
we must be able look them in
the eyes and say
I did everything I could
before they made me stop.

01/18/2025

BYE, BYE, MISS AMERICAN PIE.

My father died this Monday, January 13, 2025, one month shy of turning 92. The United States of America will die this Monday, January 20, 2025 at the age of 248.

I don't write this to garner attention, opinions or rebuttal. I write this to be a marker in time. Like I always have. Like I always will. This is to serve as a digital missive in a bottle, even if it resembles a Molotov cocktail.

I know that what I am writing here is the truth and I will not regret my words. I know I will not be embarrassed later for penning overreactive inaccuracies flung carelessly at the unsure and vulnerable like a jangling palm reader sitting at the end of a short pier.

I know that 90 million people chose not to vote in the most important election in our country's history. That fact is catastrophic and history will confirm my punctuation. I know that very soon all of them will be chronically wincing and internally punching their ignorant/stubborn/lazy selves for doing nothing when they could have been a responsible American. I know that 77 million people voted for a convicted felon/rapist/racist/dictator-in-utero. I know that 75 million voted for the continuation of American democracy, equality, decency and the right to terror-free sleep. I was one of the 75 million, but that is obvious.

As a woman and the parent of another woman, I had assumed we would be safe here for the rest of our natural lives. I was wrong. I don't like being wrong about something that should be right. I was excited to feel that women, minorities and the vulnerable would continue to be protected by the familiar embrace of existing laws and the continued assumption of human decency. I was wrong.

I know that what is about to happen will be sickening, evil and currently unfathomable to any of us. Nothing that happens after Monday is on me. I will never feel the regret of my vote. I did the right thing and so did 75 million other Americans.

I know what is going to happen and it will be inhumane, unimaginable and sleep-ripping; Every. Single. Day.

I know this like I know when it's about to rain, or I am going to get a cold sore on my lip long before it makes a furious appearance.

When the "f**k around and find out" is raging, I will be drawing a bath and writing a new entry.

Good luck to us all. We will need it.
My dad got out just in time.

12/08/2024

A short story I wrote has been published in Simulacra, Vol IV. It’s 300 pages of great works by many poets and writers.

Amazon link here:

https://a.co/d/7EyTwcr

11/21/2024

A non-fiction story I wrote was just published today.

I was looking at nothing while my nails dried. My attention had glazed over to a dull hum after an hour of listening to a language not my own. I could only look at a TV screen frozen with the image…