Show me your calloused hands, tired feet, and long to keep walking./ They don’t exist as you comfortably sit in your recliner/ Watch the old women do your bidding/ Strong rains fall asunder/ Heavy artillery showers the town and hardly, you are fazed./ The frazzled peasants run crazed as thunder comes crashing the estate./ They gather above ground to the mountains, away from the flood that awaits them./The genteel Patrón lingers by his window as the lighting strikes like war cries alarming the village./ The captain forsees his sinking ship as the world outside his doorstep is drowned at the hand of nature./ She sees no difference to people./ Somehow he doesn’t feel subjected to the same pains./ Invincibility to a great and mighty hurricane/ Mother Yemaya! as she is summoned by her peasant children./ “Let your waters wash him towards the coast and beg for mercy.” The old women dance rhythmically to sounds of drumbeats and drip-drops from the indigo skies./ The peasants give their offerings and call upon their Patrón to submit to the beauty of the water majesty./ Oh Yemaya! Oh Yemaya! they yell by the coast, guided by the strength of their ancestors./ At his feet the Patrón in rancor for the color of his skin./ Have you not come at the same braces and chains as your brethren?/ Taken by the same ocean, drank from the same water? /He is overwhelmed by grief and accepted fate./ The sounds of a siren’s song embalm the moist, overcast and lead the Patrón towards the sea./ Peace be the waters still as the sunlight breaks through rumbling clouds/ Echoing cries/ Storm subsides/ They rejoice.

We tend to lose ourselves in useless things and people.// Attract certain kinds of animals that control us// We live to have and care not to give// We’re engrained an undeserved sense of entitlement. //We believe these invaluable attributes of life are meant for us, yet have not come.// When did we lose our motivation to care to move ourselves?// The world is plagued to desire the unsubstantial.// Unmoved by the emotional song of a beggar’s cries for mercy. // We turn our cheeks and blast our headphones to drown out humanity. // Melancholy sounds, as if we were any better than he.// We wonder why all these “well-deserved” short comings are bestowed unto our uncaring souls.// Unconscious conscience expired, due to no use.

A fear too difficult to evoke, to reveal to a preying world on the weak estranged.//The possible idea of romance is exhausting and with-holding.// A certain kind of right, an allowance entitled to every man.// Yet, so unfeasible to believe it’s possible.// The tossing and turning of either stomach acids from nausea or caterpillars developing it what can be majestic butterflies.// Cacooned and unripe, perpetually shielded by the possibility of being free.// Oh, what serenity it is to be held by a man, to be adored as sacred. //To be loved. // I long to feel completed - A metaphor - metamorphosis.// To be sewn by the hand, and bound by admirable gaze, followed by sighs and unsure smiles.

Times get rough.

Calloused almost like, dry, cultivating hands that touch flawless faces with flaws only society sees.

It becomes so hard to find beauty in this deserted nature.

So confounded and convoluted by sky rises scraping off the last bits of green on this beautifully, ruined Earth.

I am the hands who sort through this dry soil to attempt at weeding out the beauty from these industrial ruins.

Times get rough.

We get so lost in picturesque horizons of high tides, we forget we’re drowning. 

Lapping, fierce waves that pull us downward when we just want to admire the beauty of the amethyst sun setting upon the indigo ocean.

When does it become reasonable to not be entitled to our birthrights —

The right to be able to enjoy life and not serve trivial chores?

They matter nothing because in reality, your being becomes disposable.

Easily replaced like a bishop pawned off as the king oversees.

This is what I see in my life overseas.

When times get rough,

All turn their backs on you, and you now become seen as a weak existence.

Vapid and useless because you don’t keep their assembly line of fabricated people going.

You don’t want to continue creating hollow vessels.

You become reprimanded for thinking and visualizing home because although

Times get rough, at home you are allowed to be you.

Freedom isn’t something else that becomes foreign, it’s what my home embraces.

Individualism and freedom aren’t censored because of background or gender.

Now I can’t say my home is perfect, but’s diversity, allows me to fit in and reflects my very uniqueness this place tries to obstruct.

Times get rough

The fragile dam supports the breaking, rushing waters from the river-stream.

A dark tinted river as if it was a moving black floor.

It is barricaded by a mold ridden, wooden force and it strives to break free. Illuminated by a lunar face watching over rushing high tides crashing over stepping stones made of combined minerals weathered over time.

A stellar landscape shone by the distant moonlight.

The people in awe at the twinkling waves and trickling sounds of fish swimming up-stream.

The night is quieted by the voices of people and is filled with the low-pitches sounds of chirping cicadas.

The night is embalmed with moisture of a passed overcast and clarity of a starry sky.

The night is as peaceful as it is silent.

A beauty admired by the people who inhabit it.

Quietly, watching the azure moving clouds as they make way for the moon.