Orphans of the American Dream

One long strange night, we took the time to remember why we were friends. Cooped up in a house, surrounded by the cold in all directions, we told tall tales about the places we had been. Orphans of the American dream, one and all, we knew our words moved no mountains, rattled no cages but our own, it still felt good to be heard, to be understood, to feel known.
We had all climbed various ladders in our lives, and subsequently found them utterly unfit for our kinds of minds. It’s not that we felt we were special, more specifically, that everyone else had been fooled. Tricked by little gifts given at just the right time to make them believe in the beauty of more. While we sat smiling, drinking beer, laughing, and developing ground breaking philosophy seated comfortably on the floor.
We began to feel pity for those we saw as trapped like rats on a wheel, forced to beg borrow and steal, just to make it to their next carefully arranged meal. Hopefully relying on the coming horizon to bring their ship to shore, to finally bring upon them that great American Dream of the infinite, never waivering, more. In spite of all that, there we sat, telling tales of the dreams we threw away, with the kind of smiles they might never know, and could never fake.
Over the week we’ll all punch in and earn our keep, but it’s never what matters, it’s never what we think about when we’re going to sleep. It’s these stories we keep, and the faces and names that haunt them because we’ve started to understand fate. Started to see that it’s never been about zeros in some account, but rather the souls we touch and meet, and we could never keep count.
Clued in too early, we may become victims of this conclusion, most people are way past our age before they see past the illusion. It’s tough to play along with something so many people believe in so strong, like going to church but getting the words to every prayer all wrong, it feels disrespectful to just pretend like you’re really in to what’s going on. We earn just enough to pay our way and when it comes time, we don’t let them have any input on how we play. It’s just how we’ve learned to do things. We, the orphans of the American dream.

~ by Jay-Will on February 21, 2011.