The American Dream Legacy

potholes of psoriasis scar roads

pools of tears cover fields

records of planetary sobbing

             fall and spike to new high’s and low’s…

a pathetic fallacy never  

                     tolerated by animal care-givers

in zoos…

coffee-shops and diners overflow

                   with idle men

whose gravel voices and wrinkled eyes

               tell tales of pride in their

loyalty and accomplishment over

            decades producing metal and

rubber and wood and paper and cloth things

          all now crowding sea-ports

waiting on ships for their

                    unloading from the east

 their abandoned factories sit like empty

          caves a deceased and decaying

testament to former bosses and

             their bosses and union leaders and

their investors

        all of whom put personal

ambitions above the

needs and hopes of their workers

whose eyes now seem boarded like the

             windows and doors of their former

factories

the butt-ends of a squandered promise

drink their black coffee, leave blank lines on

civic budgets and fill prisons,

                                        hospitals and hospices…

the new reservations are in the middle of

                       towns as the new elites

impose a new colonial serfdom

                   on their own…

cats and rats and stray dogs

               scavenge through trash emulating

their former care-givers

              in a desperate gasp to

survive.