poetry: fujimori’s legacy

I wrote this poem in April of 2024.

me at age 9

thousands of indigenous children never made, never born
Fujimori’s presumptuous superiority and cruel policies
caused this inhumanity, this crime against the most marginalized
the poorest
robbing thousands of women of their right to procreate
a shameful part of Peru’s history
thousands of indigenous children mourned
who were never planted, never had a chance to bloom
perhaps their existence was a threat to those in power
full of corruption, now we’re never know

poetry: ruffles and pastels

I wrote this poem in April of 2024.

always such a ham

mami dressed me up in ruffles and pastels whenever she could
I’d swirled and twirled in my dress until I got dizzy
loved when everyone told me, “ay que bonita te miras”
and I awkwardly bowed, smiled, and hid
sashayed to every single one of my relatives
and did the same thing
it’s one of the few times I remembered being vain as a child
one of the few times I didn’t feel weird and like an outcast
external validation learned at the tender age of 8

It’s National Poetry month and here’s my version of it

truth

It’s April again and it’s not only spring that is in bloom but also the creativity that goes along with it. And of course, it’s national Poetry month and every year since 2022 I try to participate in NaPoWrimo which is an activity where I write a poem a day and post it on my blog. I use prompts from this website for inspiration: https://www.napowrimo.net/ and as always I’m excited to see what crazy poems I come up with. Last year my favorite poem was a spicy one I wrote about Yung Gravy that I ended up performing at open mic.

my forever muse

Also, this year, I decided to give y’all my own original prompts to inspire y’all. Feel free to send me your poem and I’ll post it on my blog or you can just keep it in between the pages of your journal. I had a goal last year that I would post my own prompts for National Poetry Month and here we are. So here are prompts that I wrote sometime in early 2022. Here’s my contact info where you can email me or dm me your poem.

Hope y’all get inspired. And for my bilingual Spanish speaking baddies, I got another set of Spanish Prompts here:https://lifeonthebpd.com/?p=12443

An immigrant love song (swan song)

Privilege and luxury 

A letter to my current muse

A letter to my future muse

What’s worth my time 

Intergenerational trauma

Fairytale

The drug that is love 

Writing is my lifeline 

To my next victim 

The work blues 

The accident 

My chosen family 

Not enough time

Maybe I owe you an apology 

The truth.com

Love looks like…

he killer of dreams

Exposure therapy 

Destined for madness

Dancing

Don’t fall in love with me

Forgiving my younger self 

My happiest moments 

Searching for calm 

I knew this was gonna hurt 

Distorted reality 

Death must feel better than this

I know how this story ends

Cover me with lies

What is the cure for a broken soul?

find your muse, look in the mirror

telling the story from 2007 on

3/9/2025

I’m always finding ways to challenge myself. Best of luck to me!

so it’s been a while since I wrote a blog post but as I’m planning on continuing to tell my story through poetry from 2007 and forward, I wanted to be honest with anyone who has been following my story. so as some of y’all have noticed, I’ve been telling my story by posting poems I wrote from 1996 and on. I have translated all of those poems. As some of y’all have also noticed, I’ve also started heavily revising those poems or writing new poems inspired by those poems and posting them but always providing a link to the original. It seemed like a messy thing to do at the time but I did this to challenge myself and to grow as a writer. Having said all that, between the years of 2007 and 2018, I hardly wrote any poems, so I don’t have a lot of poems to pull from to continue to tell this story the way I want to tell it. I did however write a lot of opening lines for poems or just random quotes between this time. I figure that I could still tell my story through poetry by using those opening lines or quotes as prompts for new poems. I’m not sure if this is foolish or crazy or both but for me it’s important to continue to tell my story through poetry and it feels like this is the way to go. And of course, I’m going to translate all of those poems into Spanish. If you’ve made it this far, thank you for being here. This is more or less a brain dump and a way for me to be honest about my process for how I’m going to proceed in telling my story. I also wanted to add that I’ll restart telling the story in May to give me a bit of time to write those poems and revise them. We’ll see what happens.

poetry: UGA

this poem is inspired by the 2007 poem “small”

can’t blend in with this privileged world
wrong age, wrong last name, wrong ethnicity
I stand destined for failure
on this institutions steps
as the pressure to succeeds hang around me
like a noose around my neck
and yet I still keep going
and show up every day
if only to teach my kids a lesson
in how to keep going when you want to quit

poetry: girl in the mirror

I wrote this poem in March of 2024.

empowered queen

for almost three years I’ve been waiting for the next guy to appear
as some kind of hero, as some kind of reward for all of my effort
I’ve put into myself and the life I’ve built
Subconsciously I did this
Even as I publicly roared about being empowered on my own
I still wanted someone to be my sanctuary to lay my love in
And I wrote, manifested, schemed, flirted
got obsessed with men were just meant to be friends
Thinking, gosh, if I hang on long enough, he’ll come around
this might work out
but today I discovered the only hero for me
is the woman in the mirror
who still manages to get out of bed
even on the bad days when she’s too tired to function
when she’s exhausted by all of it

poesía: clavos

here’s the english version of this poem:

https://lifeonthebpd.com/?p=12311

clavos sobre el ataúd del futuro que quería
ni un príncipe azul
ni una casita propia y bonita
en vez miró fijamente al cañón de la pobreza
tratando de buscar algo brillo de lo que alguna fui
entre mis mucho sueños olvidados

poetry: sour

I wrote this poem in March of 2024.

me in my irreverent crop top

any idea or notion of romance is lost to me
I’ve tried every which way to make myself appetizing
edible for men to take interest in me, love me
but the story always turns sour
and I’m tired of rejection followed by bouts
of tears and insanity
this spring I will not spend my energy
trying to manifest another fool I’ll get obsessed about
or get caught up in my head and daydreams
this spring I’m going to concentrate
only on my potential that’s yet to bloom
Focus of the world of creativity
that resides within waiting to get out

poetry: nails

this poem was inspired by the 2007 “dreams part 2”

https://lifeonthebpd.com/?p=12305

for real

nail on the coffin on the future I wanted
no prince charming
no house with the white picket fence
instead I stare down at the barrel of poverty
trying to find a glimmer of who I used to be
among my many forgotten dreams