America Still Dreams
America still dreams.
People still strive,
still focus on making pay,
still dream they can comeback from setbacks.
There are people raising children
inside a GMC panel van,
toiletries kept safe
inside decrepit bank deposit bags,
canned cold dinners reminding them
they were not always unemployed.
There are people graduating college
after suffering homeless embarrassment,
dreaming out loud as the bitter and defeated defecate on their words,
“ because I want to be a Child Protection Lawyer,
I want to be a CEO,
I don’t care if I stutter when people
ask if I live in the car with my mother,”
second hand dreams still reveal first place goals.
There are people taking pay cuts,
$100,000 capitalists accepting minimum wage realities,
drug dealers hoping they can save enough cheddar to go straight before DEA raids,
doctors pushing mops to stay in the hospital environment
while emergency rooms over crowd,
making broken legs wait and fevers go home.
There are people still dreaming,
we dream for the comeback,
make America an underdog,
give us strife because we look at recessions
with the vigor of a 1930s America conquering The Great Depression,
like we did in the original U.S. economic crisis,
Panic of 1792,
we overcame those terrors as we did through the panics of
1796, 1819, 1837, 1857,
using the heart of a post Civil War America to break through the Panic of 1873
1884, 1893, 1907,
through it all we fought harder, smarter,
solving the Wall Street Crash of 1929,
adapting past the Oil Crisis of 1973,
1987’s Black Monday did not deter our determination for success,
make America an underdog,
we will rise like suns consistent with time,
we will ignore prophets of doom,
we will force revolutionaries to admit they have no solution beyond self-serving words,
we will solve this Great Recession whether it takes
World War 3, America’s Federal Republic being revised, or Democratic-Socialism for all,
make us an underdog,
make us the down trodden,
make us embarrassed of our present when compared to our triumphant past.
America,
we must never
stop
dreaming.
________________________________________________________________________
About E.R. Sanchez
E.R. Sanchez’s poems have been published in Single Mother Magazine, Zombie Logic Review, Examiner, Poetry Super Highway, and Zouch Magazine, as well as the anthology, Men In The Company Of Women. He is a National Poetry Slam veteran who was on teams that ranked in the top 15 from 2003 to 2005. He lives in Los Angeles and tweets from @ERSanchezPoet.
Ray's Road Review 