Hi, ranters. This is my firts post in this community. This post was originally published in Spanish. My dear professor @hlezama challenged me to translate it keeping the rhyme pattern. I don 't know how well it reads for native speakers, especially because of some literal translations of local terms (such as "stew," meaning a bribe or illegal business). It was a hell of a challenge, but here it is. Hope readers like it.
Appealing to verses and humor, I dare to write this story-in-verse about the state of abandonment in which the town of Río Caribe is found. The electoral campaign began and the people will elect more of the same. No problem will be solved; the rich will be richer; the old town, older and uglier; and the poor, well, just poorer. In these verses I tell you some of the reasons for my lack of love for this backwards town where, due to fate circumstances, I find myself trapped.
1
Life in my little coastal town,
It is not that of yesteryears.
and the poor local always fears
re-electing a mayor clown.
2
The next elections are coming
And it is always the same crap.
They fuck us with a food CLAPtrap
like tamed trained idiots humming
3
The light goes out daily four times;
Sometimes for more than a damn day
And when it comes back on: How GAY!
People thanking them for the crimes.
4
Never mind if in the process
Refrigerators and TVs roast;
“Better times will come to our coast
We won with candidates express.”
5
The overflowing sewers reign.
Garbage floods our streets floor.
Where there was beauty before,
ruinous poverties remain.
6
Meanwhile our pretty goats and cows
wander leaving shit and horsefly
turning the town into pigsty.
Who’ll take us out of this drowse?
7
Down a cliff the town is falling.
No end to this nightmare in view.
The police procuring a “stew”
to get dough in every brawling.
8
So much wickedness must have done
Venezuelans in other lives.
Always walk without tens of fives.
Hiding ass with hands is not fun.
9
Thus, here we are and we still plough
While we don’t grow fully aware.
People’s patience runs thin, I swear.
I lost mine a long time ago.

