Dirt-stained sweatshirt
Torn jeans and muddy kicks
Spent fifty years in the streets
Never got any books, never seen any flicks
Never saw the inside of Uptown
Never ate in any restaurants
Felt only the biting winter wind
And the painful jests and jaunts

My people felt the whips way back when
They hurt too
I feel it now and then
I remember the eagle’s eye upon the lake
Seeing for fish, but none to find
My eye’s silver tinge gleams at a nickel’s embrace
Now I can eat something, anything
First time in two days, I find a peace of mind

My blistering feet fall under me, slamming hard on the pavement
Horns and talking, clamoring and clanking
A misty haze falls back over me
I am back to my homeland, on my great, great, great granddaddy’s patch o’ grass
A morning dew sticks to my bare ankles, cold yet refreshing
How nice to be back in my dreamland
My dreamland I’ll never go
My homeland I’ll never know

Streams of smog making me sway with nausea
Dreaming
I want to toss a rock in the stream
If only I had a rock to throw
I rocked back and stared up into the night sky
The city still screeched and howled around me
A vulture circling a wounded rat
Oh, how this rat yearns for a reprieve

And I’m back again
Stars baked into the deep, opaque night
A longing for flight, to touch the silver tinge lining of the quiet luminary

Fixed filter on the film lens
Fixed focus, can’t unblur the distant tears
All I see is the finger’s ends
We’ve all had our share, throughout our years
No sense in crying, just wasting water
So thirsty, doubt I can even shed a tear
Eyes dry, lips cracked, throat parched
Threats of death doesn’t waver me, not even fear

The dream that I’m dreaming
Longing for sympathy, empathy, a hand to raise me up
It’ll never come, I’m knowing
No shiny pitcher to fill my silver cup
Truth is, only air is flowing