I am a Refugee

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.

Could you cast aside the sideways glances

     and just give the same chances

     to a new 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 émigrés who bred you,
     bore you and went before you
     once walked my pathetic path -
     but put forth enough fortitude to forge the
     future that has engorged you.
We've migrated from the former grateful to forgetful ingrate
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.
Residents engendered by an indigent.

We're all seekers
We're all dreamers
All of us are refugees.