Poetry Book PDF

Emotional Connections
Your sons and daughters will graduate and doors will open.
I will graduate alongside them, but as I approach those same doors,
A fear kindles inside me.
What doors will open for me?
I have stayed in the shadows for twelve years,
but it is time to come out.
My education has made it clear . . .
My future is near, in fact, my future is here.
I am undocumented

.
li

Eduardo Hernandez

Tus hijos e hijas se graduarán y las puertas se abrirán.
Me graduare al igual que ellos, pero al acercarme a esas mismas
puertas,
Un pavor resurge entre mi.
Cuáles serán las puertas que abrirán para mí?
Me he mantenido entre las sombras por once años,
Pero es tiempo de salir…
Mi futuro está cerca, es más, mi futuro está aquí.

Soy indocumentado.

Emotional Connections

About the Author:

My name is Eduardo Hernandez and I am an 18 year old
freshmen at the University of California Davis. I am an active
member of my community and I strive to eventually be able to repay
those individuals who have helped me get to where I am through the
fruits of my education. Growing up undocumented has been a fear
that has allowed me to fight forward and fight through the setbacks.
However, I am no longer as afraid as I used to be. In the end what is
fear itself? Fear is what we make of it.

I work hard to touch the lives of those who I meet and if I
were able to tell them one thing, I'd tell them this: “ Don't ever put
your head down and give up, because when the caterpillar thought it
was all over, it became a butterfly”.

I had never realized the power of my works until somebody
told me, “ Keep writing poetry and never give up on it, poetry saves
lives. I know, because it saved mine”. The different styles and the
ability to connect with my reader is just an amazing thing to
achieve. I have also found that literature and poetry have infinite
power, freedom of expression, and the power to live through eternity,
in the past, present, or future, limited only by the imagination. When
writing something, whether it be a poem, short story, or an entire
book, you pour your imagination into it. Applying the techniques and
experiences that you have acquired, into small pieces of paper.
Whenever somebody else takes those papers,they are reading you.
They feel the trauma of the character, and fall in love with the woman
you are describing. My mind can be expanded, my feelings expressed,

liii

Eduardo Hernandez

and I am able to travel through time unafraid of different
surroundings. When I put my work down, the joy of writing does not
escape my body, because when I pass my writings to another
individual, I can see how they resonate with their mind. Literature and
poetry is a gift so powerful, that cannot be destroyed, when
distributed.

This poetry book initially started at the end of the second
semester of my senior year in high school. I finished a draft by the
end of my high school year, but I was never satisfied with the
product. It is now over fifty pages and it features eleven poems.
These eleven poems each have something that have impacted my
life in one way or another. In life, one faces positive and negative
energies, and it is up to your own person to figure out how to deal
with them. Sometimes you feel like you want to give up, but you
can't because you'll never know how things will end. Maybe things
will turn out okay, maybe nothing will fail. Life is just a gamble on
a bunch of maybes, we just hope that we placed the right bets.

There have been many people who have helped me out during
this past year, and I would like to thank my parents (Adriana Garcia
& Nestor Hernandez), Mr. Alderson, Ms. Gurnee, Mr. Merino, Ms.
Rivara. Ms. Hutchinson, my mentor Susan Lewis, the 10,000
Degrees institution, my coworkers at Shiso Modern Asian Kitchen
and all those other people who have been a part of my life one way
or another.

As I mentioned before, some of these poems are very
emotional and very touching, which is why I decided to title this
book, Emotional Connections. I have found to be very emotional,
but I only express my emotions to a select group of people. I have
found it easier to express my emotions on paper.

Murmurs of a Hopeless Romantic, Love Lies, Thirteen Years,
Response of a Broken Man and Mistakes, are all poems which fall
under the category of love. Thirteen Years and Mistakes were
actually written for my coworker's wives', just don't ever tell them I
did that ! Love Lies was actually a class assignment which plays
around with Hamlet's To Be or Not To Be soliloquy. And last but
definitely not least, Murmurs of a Hopeless Romantic and Response
of a Broken Man are two of the three most emotional pieces because
they summarize how I felt about my two tragically ended
relationships. As you can see, I fall in love deeply and break apart
easily, but that is the life of an emotional man.

Emotional Connections

The Last Mile, is the most emotional piece I would say,
because it was written during a time of depression and fear. I had
family problems and college rejection letters did not fall easily on
me. The rough draft of this is actually stained with tears and is
almost nothing alike to what the final product came to be. I added
the death of the character because it would add to the trauma. I do
not know how you, the reader, interpreted it, but the character runs
outside his house and gets hit by a car. He was so emotionally
overwhelmed that he crossed the street without looking and got hit.
As he is agonizing, he sees himself walking down a path where he
hears the croaks of the frogs, and his last memory is of himself
talking to his girlfriend and hearing her voice one last time. The
softness of her voice allows him to speed up his process. Once he
wakes up, everything is darker and he realized that he is actually in
the middle of a body of shallow water and his soul is floating, and
the frogs were actually souls who were punished and made to roam
the earth because of an improper burial.

Life is Short was written while I tutored in the after school
program at Adele Harrison. I was teaching a sweet girl named Emily
that with the right words you can attract anybody. So I told her I
would write a poem about a piece of grass. Yes, a piece of grass.
Although it could be thought about more philosophically, it is just
about a piece of grass and how he views things. However, if you
notice, there's a little bit of Plato's Allegory of the Cave.

The End of a cycle is a short poem that plays around with the
idea of war and heaven. A man is killed and he is just thrown
around like a nobody, because in the end, how much was his life
really worth?

Persecution of the Innocent and Married to the Sea follow two
African American characters who suffer immense pain. In Married
to the Sea, one can see that the young man doesn't have any options
in life, because no matter where he goes, he will be attacked. Life on
the ship is the safest, although he wants to read and write he is
married to the sea who will not let him go until his body and soul
are no longer one. Persecution of the Innocent was written on a
napkin in the middle of a dinner rush. I remember telling my
coworkers Jack and David that I had to write my thoughts down
because it was going to become and awesome poem. Sure enough, it
became one of my favorite pieces, because it is so strong and you
can see the thoughts of both men. And although they are not equal

lv

Eduardo Hernandez

they both believe that they are acting under gods order. The white
man trying to clean his race, while the black man doesn't fight back
because of the teachers of Reverend Eli and the Lord.

I saved my comments about I Walk in the Shadows, because
that is the piece of poetry that defines the lives of 11 million
immigrants in this country. It expresses my feelings towards the
subjects and It helped me release the weight off my shoulders by
publicly stating my status. This was actually a mixture between two
poems which my mentor Susan Lewis helped to edit and forge into a
single piece. It was also the center piece of my college application
essays and of the art gallery at Sonoma Valley High in 2016. Mr.
Mitchell and Mr. Hansen used photography and a video to expand
the reaches of my story and poem.

Thank you for reading all of this and I truly hope you enjoyed
my poetry. If you are able to connect with my poetry in one way or
another, than my work was a success. I live a busy life, but if you
ever want to contact me about my work or your own poetry, my
email is [email protected]

Stay humble, work hard, and stay beautiful.

Eduardo Hernandez