his soul

seemed dipped in

h o n e y

pure and

s w e e t.

but i soon

r e a l i z e d

the

h a r d

way that this

h o n e y

was

d i f f e r e n t

than usual

for it was

b i t t e r s w e e t.

Enough of the ratrace

Enough of the greed..

Enough of blood

Enough hate indeed.

From Mumbai to Madrid,

From Italy to Spain..

The wealth we accumulated

All went in vain..

Still dying, nothing to eat

Still Crying no one to help

Stand still and think about those moments..

This happend in silence,not felt.

Enough of breakups

Enough of hurt..

Let's Start as a new

Let's press restart.

#sudipto_

I’ve observed your nature

I’ve picked up

on your mannerisms

and on your

stutter-like persona

I’ve seen you

in here before

once or twice

you get so close to the edge

of the blade

every single one of us

can already see you falling

right before you take a step backwards

I know you

you dance around in the flames

jump cliffs

catch bullets

and lit up cigarettes

you juggle hearts

with no hands

out in the open

for everyone to see

and catch them right before

they hit the ground

life and death is

nothing but a game of hide and seek

for you and do you think

if you hide in the shadows long enough

that it makes you immortal?

but don’t you know

if you play with fire

we all get burned?

don’t you know

the edge of the blade

can still cut right through

us?

and the cliffs?

some of us

don’t survive them.

A fuckboy’s exposé - {renata ferretti}

Dear Universe, I know it's been a while,

but please believe I miss you more each turn.

Foul poison blurs my eyes and dims your smile

while noise pollution warps your dulcet chirp.

I reach for you with hands that have been singed,

for fires rage; my greens have all turned brown.

New tears mingle in chasms that are tinged

with refuse of a staggering amount.

This infection grows more deadly by the day,

so potent I can't neutralize the threat.

I beg of you, send help; please don't delay-

fatigue is setting in and my core sweats.

My tongue thirsts for a speedy remedy.

Love, Earth, your planetary rarity.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dear Earth, I'll send the antidote at once,

and please forgive my inattentiveness.

As soon as this expansion work is done,

we'll be together- no more emptiness.

I miss your facets gleaming in the rays

a rich, sweet depth no other planet shows.

It saddens me to hear you fight malaise,

so please dispense this tonic I've composed.

Your symptoms should abate with the first dose,

but balance will take eons to restore.

Repeat as needed; culling must not slow,

for parasites will ravage, paramour.

I wish you well in your recovery.

Yours Always, Universe, my sweet lovely!

dear prosers!

unless things go very wrong , the quarentine on my city, Wuhan, will officially be lifted on April, the 8th. many establishments will remain closed, and it's going to still be scary to walk around, but the city will try to take a much awaited step towards returning to normality.

i know many of you are quarantening or isolating yourselves. it is hard. the panic that most residents experienced here is happening over where you live. i just want to say that you must be brave, creative , sympathetic to others, cautious and most of all hopeful. remember that this is not the end of the world, just a change. the world and most likely, you in it, will keep going for many many years to come, at least until the evil space-kowalas come.

Now. april 8th happens this year to also be the first day of the Jewish holiday of Passover. i am not a very observant person, but i can't help but see a connection.

Passover celebrates the jewish slaves of Egypt being set free.

You see, the slaves were suffering . the great Pharoh saw the many slaves as a threat. what if they rise and revolt? what if they take our jobs? what if they eat all the chicken wings?!

as population control, he ordered newly born males to be tossed into the Nile as crocodile feed. he and his minions found more creative ways to increase the hardship and break the spirit of those poor israelites. oppressive guy, that Pharoh..

so , wishing to save their son, one family set their young baby in a little boat made of reeds and let it float down the river, praying that he will be spared. and indeed the boy was spared. he was picked up by the princess, Pharoh's own, who went for a swim in alligator-infested waters.

she saw the crying babe , felt motherly and called him Moshe (moses) which comes from the hebrew word for rescueing or carefully pulling something out of a liquid.

Moses grew up in luxury and privilage, learned the right stuff, taught all the smart things to say.

but one day his life changed. he saw a foreman striking a slave. he immidiately forgot his painstaking upperclass upbringing, and came to the rescue, duking it out, and regretably killing the foreman, an officer of the king.

knowing he was in trouble, he escaped Egypt and travelled far, living as a shepherd.

one day, he sees a burning bush, but the bush itslef is never consumed by the flames. he sees this as a vision of god and true enough, it is god who comes and talks to him (moses is actually the only person mentioned to have seen god, and not an angel or hear voices in their heads).

god tells moses that he was chosen to bring freedom to the slaves of Egypt.

Moses goes south again, confronts pharoh. telling him that slavery and abuse are not the way to do stuff. pharoh just laughs him out.

moses comes again. this time he demands freedom for his people. and pharoh does not change his mind. that day, the first of 10 calamities falls on Egypt: the water turns to blood. moses comes again the next day. he probably sees that pharoh is drinking beer, cause the king does not relent. according to the book, pharoh does not relent, because god had hardened his heart, so that freedom will be seen for what it is and not taken for granted.

egypt is struck with furthed calamities.

head lice infestation, animals rampaging the streets, plague , skin rashes(exema?), locusts , a swarm of frogs and a terrible hailstorm.

every time, moses comes and demands freedom for the israelites, and every time pharoh's heart is hardened. it could be that at this point he is taking this personally. sees this as a witchhunt to discredit his glorious presidency, i mean reign...

then comes the great drakness. no light, even during the day. moses stumbles into the pallace hall and i guess they have a voice-only confab. pharoh still holds to his guns.

the next and final strike takes preperation. all those who believe in god are told to signal their devotion with smearing blood from a newly slaughtered lamb on the entrence of each house.

"why?" "don't ask. shit's going to go down".

moses asks pharoh to kindly let his people go. both of them are probably aware that neither is going to back down.

pharoh says no.

that night , the first male born of every Egyptian household dies. only the houses that were marked with blood are "passed over".

moses goes to pharoh again and asks again. pharoh, probably greiving, finally gives in to greater powers and emancipates the lot.

i will stop here. why continue? there is a mass tribe of refugees, fleeing. there is a chariot army galloping to catch up and kill every one (pharoh changed his mind and now wants revenge). there is the parting of the red sea, the passage of the escapees, between walls of water. finally the waters falls on the soldiers who gave chase, the death star explodes...big festival with Ewoks...it's in the book if you don't believe me.

now. you might think that i intend to show that like the poor slaves, you are kept at home, suffering, opressed, beaten and treated cruelly.

but that's not us.

we are more likely the Pharohs in this story. sorry to say.

for too long have we treated other workmates, schoolmates, teammates, planet-mates as not much better than trash. we chose to fixate on useless stuff, while so much was left undone or left to be done by others.

we let the environment become polluted, we acknowledge that every "truth" has a right to be aired. we care about ourselves so much, but can't see the wall we are about to run into.

we harden our own hearts. saying all this is too big to be solved. we hide our heads in the sand, while those who don't, get to wreak havoc .

so we are then striken by calamities. they are not a godly punishments. they are things that come about directly or indirectly from our apathy, and selfishness.

were there was the waters turning to blood- we have pullotion and global warming.

for frogs- we get needless extravagance, either by others or more pathetically, being pressured to getting all those useless social props .

for lice- we have "reality" TV and boredom.

for plague- we get obeseity

for skin rashes--we get stupidity and ignorance.

for locusts- we got traffic jams.

for beasts-we get invasive species, killing off everything, cause someone wanted to have a cool pet.

for hailstorms-we get political correctness and the hypocrisy it entails.

for darkness-we get extremism, populism, alternate truths, and leadership vacuums.

and finally, we got this virus. it will not take every first born. it will mostly take away the old (they were born first). but as most people are so concerned about the economy, it will definitely do wonderful things to it.

this is not a time to preach. those that can't see how the old world was full of failures and cruelty, and that it is related to the current crisis, are blind, dumb and deaf.

but here is the hope. just like the mass exodus that came out of Egypt. so does our civilization has a chance to break free from the way things were. we have a chance to discover new forms of advancment , progress and prosperity, that will not only be the privilage of the few. we can come out of this better directed to doing good, or we can wait for the waters to rise and drown us.

i wish you all a safe , healthy future, and a happy passover.

all at once, just like that, the world became habitable once again. no longer were there latex gloved hands reaching for our throats, or mask covered kisses during the endless indoor recess. the smell of lemon lysol no longer brings childhood memories, but sends us into an anxiety induced frenzy. is there enough toilet paper? what about food? will we be okay to go to the atm without gloves? can i shake hands with my priest again or am i going to die? from one day to the next, the world was turned on her head and slam dunked into reality. thousands lost. millions lost. this was not a game of two. this was not a game, yet everyone thought it was until we were the losing team. we always have been that way. we're humans, we can survive and conquer-can we? how can we expect for our life to be handed to us on a platter when we can't hand the platter of rations to our children, but we can restock on bounty paper towels, charmin toilet paper; why not dove soap? why not generic soap? why did we have to destroy our planet in our time of need? why don't we learn? the virus may be gone but the trees are too; nothing stands as beautiful as the nuclear plant down the highway. no sound is as beautiful as the exhaust pipe of a car with no muffler. so is the virus truly gone? perhaps it was not a virus at all but a security breech; a purposeful malfunction in the hardwiring of this computer of a planet. it attacked the virus like any reasonable software would-elimination was always the hoped result. this is not coincidence. though it is also not our fault. isolation only leads to one thing-rebuilding. this is a wake up call. don't hit snooze.

When people say they’re blinded by the light I didn’t know it could be taken so literally. All I see is white from the suns ray filling my eyes. I can’t see anything and although I want to I also don’t. We’ve been in the shelters for over four years. It felt much much longer though. Sometimes it felt as though time stopped itself. When my eyes finally do adjust I see a sight that’s different. Very different from the polluted city that we had lived in before. Thick patches of grass have sprouted from multiple cracks in the sidewalk. Flowers and other plants take up the surface of what were once roads. Bird’s chirps fill the air with their tunes. Wildlife has taken over the city. Many people scowl some even curse out at the world but I, I just admire it. We had taken away their homes and they had finally been able to take it back. We all crowd the streets stopping to gaze at the new world. The things I had missed about the outside such as the air and plants and animals are all here. In what used to be my home. The home that I and billions of other humans had stolen away from many animals. Vines have somehow managed to grow down from buildings and trees. The once controlled water in the pond has turned into the size of a lake. Ducks swim happily with their babies as if this day is normal for them. I suppose this is a normal day for them but us not so much.

No one has to say it aloud for we all can see it clearly. This is a message to us. That we should coexist with the wildlife in a way where we don’t force them out of their homes. That we should put more focus in finding solutions for pollution and other problems that cause the enviroment harm. This may have once been our homes but before that this land was their’s and that message is what sticks out the most. So to the new world I say, let’s get started living in a new way, a better way.

When all of this started, I have to admit, I was a little excited. I mean, sure the virus scared me, but everyone said that if you were young and relatively healthy, you had nothing to fear; so I figured I was fine. And when they told me I didn’t have to go to work for two weeks, well, how could I not be just a little excited? Work has been so stressful recently, and I was looking forward to all of the things that I never have time for anymore: the spring cleaning I’ve neglected for five years now, the DIY projects that I keep telling myself I’ll do one day, the workouts that I can never find the time for.

Surprisingly, I actually stayed pretty regimented. I got up at a decent time each day, less than an hour later than I usually did for work. I ate breakfast, worked out, read for a while and then got to work. I was in heaven. I’m not an overly social person, either, so I was just fine staying at home, just me and my husband.

Then two weeks turned into three. And that was fine. I still had plenty to do, but I started to worry. Maybe this thing was worse than I thought. I started doing research into it, and sure enough, it was bad. I started worrying more. I still got stuff done, and I was pretty proud of how productive I was being. It was getting harder, since I wasn’t getting a paycheck anymore, but hey, we weren’t spending much money anyway, right?

A month went by. Then two. I chugged on, getting mountains of things done. I’d never felt so productive. Who needs the outside world anyway? I had everything I needed right here. I certainly didn’t miss my coworkers, and I didn’t miss the stress of work. Sure, it would have been nice to see friends now and again, but we talked on the phone, and that was enough.

When it was finally over, I didn’t go out right away. I waited, testing the waters, making sure it was safe to come out. But when I finally stepped out, I expected everything to resume as normal.

And it did, mostly. People seem a little more cautious. Less people touch each other. More people wash their hands or wipe down counters. A lot of people give each other a wide berth. Not unexpected, any of it.

But what did surprise me were the smiles – the genuine joy on people’s faces when they see each other. And not just friends or even acquaintances. Complete strangers are smiling and saying hello when they once would have ignored each other and kept on walking. Neighbors are checking up on each other, offering to help each other.

Kids are outside. I mean, it’s practically summer, so that’s not surprising, but it’s not just the younger kids at the park. Teenagers are out riding bikes, playing football in the park, hanging out outside like they did when I was a kid. Everyone is outside, just enjoying life. After so many years of retreating further and further away from each other – hiding in our computers, televisions, and the conveniences of home delivery services. We’re learning how to be a community again.

When I look back on all of this, I know that it was scary. There were a lot of tears, and a lot of heartache. We won’t ever forget this, but maybe we’ll be okay.