I am a refugee
You know, part of that unseemly and really needy
melee of freedom seekers
fleeing their meager means of existence;
whose plight is merely intriguing to those seeing
the evening TV screens of competing scenes
of my people's misery pitted against trivial reality series
and cheap ads for viagra or designer jeans.
Maybe I'm just another news item to you, not a big to-do
for those comfortable in pews used
to limitless consuming and using.
But for those who don't do huge parties of schmoozing over booze
and whose brood never even got a taste
of what you deemed as refuse and refused to eat,
we're just confused and can't get used to this abuse of privilege.
I've been deprived my whole life of good living, having instead
to trade my trite livelihood for life in this forsaken neighborhood.
Fate made me inherit in this R-rated estate
of inherently degraded concrete castles saturated with hate
Berated by raging suburban white faces as the reason why the races
of those who immigrate to your crowded city gates
is the place to squarely place the blame
of what plagues the space you embrace as YOUR home.
I am an immigrant, yes.
But more than just a grungy dark runt who grunts
in an unintelligible accent you poke fun at.
I bear the brunt of all the social ills that confront
the society that I aspire to.
I've longed to linger longer here and stay long-term
even if only as a stranger langouring just to make it
rankled by the anger strangely aimed at us,
your estranged neighbors
All because you haven't been able to lay a finger on the bling
you figure you deserve.
I sigh as a seeker of asylum
assigned to be lumped
together with every other border jumper
Jinxed to be linked with the illegals or those on the lam
limited by slim chances
slum walls and meager choices,
slammed by all manner of malicious banter.
My means to make for myself a meaningful future
was a boat bloated with bodies
that stank and nearly sank in the dank starkness
of an endless sea,
endlessly floating in the darkness
toward a nameless coastal destiny.
Finally that drifting raft of rowdy pilgrims arrived to drink in
the refreshing draft of intoxicating freedom.
Now that I am here, hear me out sittin' out here
on the fringes and margins of your plague-ridden inner city
where pity is hard to be had.
And had I heard how hard it would be here
hidden and forgotten in the nitty-gritty of immigrant living
I might have given it more thought.
Cause right now I am at the bottom rung,
an all-wrung-out dead-ringer for a lifer
on the wrong side of the tracks
But I was born for more than being some faceless, brown skinned
brow-beaten burned-out row house renter.
I entered this nation with a notion of a better future
than barely keeping my head above a bleak
bare-bones state of being.
I believed this to be a continent that contained
considerable opportunities and possibilities. I promise you,
I will prove I can surpass the limited potential
passed on to me by my predecessors.
But could you cast aside for awhile
the condescending and sideways glances
given in my direction and instead give the same chance
to my generation of dream chasers as was given yours?
Not closing your mind or minding your borders
but first putting your own house in order.
Remembering how those other imigrés who bore you,
bred you and bequeathed to you your name
once walked my pathetic path -
but put forth enough faith and fortitude to forge the
future you now know as your present reality
We are all a family of immigrants.
Let's not let deception and misconceptions limit us
but accept all, without exception.
We're in the same boat
in need of liberty, if you please.
In general, we're all just a few generations removed
from the immigrant stranger
We're all seekers
We're all dreamers
All of us are refugees.
