Neon Dreams
i would like a double cheeseburger, medium fries, and a coke
made with love and served on a tray that will never decompose
i would like a range rover, all blacked out
made with luxury and rolled off all the best belts
and that’s all i want, right now
but tomorrow, tomorrow i’ll sell everything for bigger dreams,
for a kingdom that shakes the earth-
for dreams that don’t leave me swollen
and shallow and stinging like the shorebreak on my face
it’s difficult to believe there’s anything better when all i see are:
lies and garbage and poverty and destruction,
recycled fashion magazines and politicians who never say anything new,
who just stand in puddles of vomit and repeat what happened yesterday;
who just say the problem is me and the problem is in how little i have.
and so i drink the kool-aid
don’t we all drink the kool-aid?
but the sugar is getting to be too much and we want to come down,
don’t we all want to come down?
crawl out of the shells of nothingness debt
rip the papier-mâché off our not-lost-yet faces
but coming down is the hardest part—
turning our backs on the systems that turn on us,
that we can’t seem to do
our tired throats can’t say no,
because breaking away feels like splinters through our hands and needles in our hearts
and so we just keep collecting shoeboxes full of dreams too tiny,
lackluster lanterns are barely lighting our way—
but even in this, in all the small hoping, i feel the fight that’s left in us all:
where are the doers, the wild lovers, the ones who raise hell with fire burning tall?
where are the ones who aren’t dying in our shopping malls and classrooms and cubicles?
we’ve got bubblegum eyes and lips and ears and
we keep chewing ourselves out the best we know how—
but we need better, deserve better than all the self-hate that the tempter sells
the better story is, is that we deserve more than this
better than dreams for reality-television and the glow of our name in neon lights
better than ill-fated romance and image that asks for too much
so keep your number one and your luxury class, i don’t want to upgrade
i want to rattle the foundations of greed and pride and make a trade for honest living
i want to declare a new way not found on shelves of selfish acclaim
i’ll take hope that’s strong enough for grief and pain and fear altogether
i’ll be the one who raises hell in a place that wants too much of everything broken
