I watch as I walk the streets of Brooklyn, the well-laid paths for so many I pass told by the ways in which they walk.
Where the paths some walk are so well laid,
Where the fortunate walk amongst the decrepit and trying,
As we may try to understand how this has all come to be,
We walk and consume those places around us which bespeak of a forgotten time,
Where we shared that which we all know:
That most of us, forgiven of our trespasses against one another in the pursuit of
that ever-elusive American dream
May one day remember that none of us, however brazen,
Have reached anywhere but the continual pathway of the pursuit
and the illusions that our struggle’s ends are close
are to be never met but within the idealistic dreams,
Yearnings that one day, somehow, against all odds
We will be better off than our parents, rub shoulders with the well-to-do,
And how little the costs, and how little the personal sales,
And how little we actually take the time to take it all in,
Immersed within our personal ecosystems and the myriad faces of the misconstrued,
Again we walk and lest we perceive
Perhaps this walk
Will simply be enough.
For what are we to do?
The personal revolt once singular bleeds into the stories of all those around us
And so perhaps it is best to talk,
That opening of the mouth perhaps the most trying moment
In some of our lives.
Shared, never forgotten
We ride those pathways well-laid by the multitudinous before
Yet to be recognized, they await resurrection
And perhaps it is to this hope that I walk these streets of Brooklyn.
And so I walk.
Faulty beams of fluorescent light
Shine upon the moonbeam corporations
And the red lights of braking commuters
Burn through the dark entrails
Of the never-ending freeway.
Walmarts, In and Outs, Applebees,
Valeros and Shells and I sit,
Encased in a mean, lean Greyhound machine,
The squealing of its worn brakes
Lulls me to sleep on my rock-hard pillow
We who travel at the hour at which I travel
Are lost souls bent on making one long journey
To a hopeful tomorrow.
People get lost on nights like this:
Insomnious circumlocutory time.
And through the haze we realize we
Have had one bag of Doritos too many.
This land wears its people
Like a rag-tag mish-mash
Of hopes and dreams unrealized
And one promise too many.
People are the products of this society—
The seedy underbelly clinging to a bloated beast
The grunge upon our streets
Within their hair
And a tread mark riding on every hip,
How dare the top marshals sing
That we be the land of the brave
And the free
Whilst so many are encumbered by
Their very un-freedom in the face of
Economics.
