Hands.

My mother’s hands, the same ones that held my own, when I was learning to walk, were not fast enough to catch me when I decided that I was going to run

I was precocious and believed I knew it all, that somehow I had outgrown her, my very first friend, and that I was invincible; I could not fail.  

She was there as I turned every corner, though I pretended she did not exist.  Despite my arrogance, I still landed into her arms with every fall, desperate for the cure of her doting kiss.

Nursed back to health, I chose to forget her loving care and was once again dedicated to my own detriment.  In a rush to grow up, I experimented with every poison, convinced that it was surely what would help me mature.

In my teenage haste, I failed to observe my mother’s hands folded in prayer, and wondered instead when she would distance herself from my despair.   In reality, she was asking God to help repair the lost little lamb that took too many wrong turns yet fancied himself a man.

Anyone else would break if subjected to my torment, my behaviour worsening by the hour with each new cry for help.  

But not my mother… she possessed immeasurable strength, and managed to withstand each atrocity that I unleashed.

Many would have given up or in, unable to continue fighting a losing war.  This was when her hands grew tired and ached with pain, weathered from my stubborn storms.

Sunny days surrounded by sycophants as I rejected the unconditional love at home, turned quickly cold as my false pride held my head up to deny the consistent truth.

My lowest moments arrived amidst the lost souls that also sailed through dire straits; they provided me with clarity, shaking me awake.

Tail between leg, I crawled home like a vagabond on the final leg of his journey.  Filthy and matted with shame and self-loathing, I reached out blindly in the dark.

My mother’s hands, tense but forgiving, were miraculously still there waiting to be accepted.  I fell to my knees, and caught the most brief, beautiful glimpse of paradise at her feet.

The hands that fed me, held me as I slept and also dried my tears in infancy, retained their memory and reassured me similarly as I grieved.

In adulthood, I look upon my mother’s hands in awe, as they age gracefully, and are still just as soft. 

I will never hesitate to count my blessings, of which, she is number one.  My own hands have learned selflessness from observing hers.  

The strength and guidance from my mother’s hands taught me how to walk and now I can finally stand, proudly holding my mother’s hand.

Snake.

Your lies were like wine, which blurred the lines of my reality  As I drank thirstily of you, I failed to see my city under siege.  Too intoxicated to retaliate and too enamoured to care, I became a ghost of a king, a mere shadow as I was hardly there.  Sobriety, though seductive, would have eliminated you.  So destructive of me to keep drinking when that was the last thing I should do.  Abandoned my awareness, replacing it with false comforts in the dark.  You were the only archer whose arrows would always hit my awkward heart.  Deserted by my disciples, autumn's leaves left the coldest winter when they died.  My screams could no longer be stifled, finally regained the strength to be immune to all of your lies.  New conscious eyes allowed me to see you for the first time.  You cowered in the corner pleading for another chance as you pressured me to drink until I was once again entranced.  That was the day your appeal melted away, stripped of your schemed, you were hardly the dream I had mistaken you for.  Awake, I reflect on how I remained numb and unaware as I sat naively wide eyed and how I was silly enough to trust a snake, assuming that one could ever play fair.  I called it love, confused though you had been devouring me alive right from the start, devoid of me, now we will see how you will ever survive without my blood pumping into your heart.

Compassion.

Inconsolable now, the collective unconscious of the world cries for the deserts that are no longer brown but red.  The oceans black from oil spills, all marine life placed in endangerment for the already rich governments to increase their greed quotient. The streets paved with the same poison that flows into our homes, numbing our minds as we succumb to the notion that we just might be this dumb.  Bombs are all that fall from the sky that once blessed us with rain and beamed on us through its magnificent sun.  War will not end until we refuse to attend yet the cycle begins anew then resets again.  Convinced by corporate slaves that we are in an emergency state, instead of helping one another, we lash out with hate, no safer now than we ever were yet mass hysteria increases from day to day.  Though my brother in the streets is no different from the rich, poor, or middle class, we are told he should help himself and hurry by, head turned, so fast.  Humanity abandoned, our focus on survival led us to forget what it means to be alive, selfishness and resentment isolate us from loved ones that once helped us thrive.  The damage we have done is far worse than we choose to accept as we continue to infect our Earth just because we can.  All that was once natural is now enhanced or modified, chemicals contaminate even our most sacred lands that filled our ancestors with pride, as we wring our hands as though it is too late to make a change because our hope has died.  The seasonal highs outdone by lows, as the climate we once knew abandons us  no longer wishing to compete with pollutants in the air or our twisted definition of progress.  Through robbing some of their civil rights, perceived threats were met with venom, eyes traded for eyes until the entire world went blind.  Deaf, and dumb to others' misfortunes or plights if they are out of sight, but instead entranced by happenstance, and scenarios that were most likely planned.  Ignorance is neither sadness nor bliss, but just the opposite of awareness; our beliefs our own to choose yet there is still senseless prejudice.  In the age of information, only we are to blame for staying uninformed, only we are responsible for conforming to the norm.  Free thinkers and light workers will help the world hold on, but until then all we can do is pray that compassion is just missing and not permanently gone.