We suffer out of many hardships
living twenty years within the oblivious
like the fog within a city, we travel
moving circles around square buildings
never knowing if we are making progress.
This is the life I tell my mother
often in the late nights after work
with the work boots, the numbing pain
and the no se que but
life has to be better than this.
All our lives only living for paychecks
working jobs we don't even love
and for what,
to not be exiled out of communities,
into homelessness, the outcasted.
I say, to be homeless means to be free
and yet I never do a thing.
I live in five star hotels eating holographic steaks
paying random tips, watching the city beneath.
All I do is starve myself in prisons, albeit luxurious.
I say, the real life is outside these constructs
observing the universe outside, exploding over the heads
of the most "unfortunate."
Our ancestors, in our terms, were all homeless nomads.
They built cities, but never charge for breathing,
for loitering, for medicine.
Those are things that are part of God's green earth
and plentiful, we know, you know.
In my last months as a teenage adult, I will soon turn
thirty years beneath the starlights.
It was only until recently I began to laugh,
hearing younger people wanting to be rich,
to be more of prisoners in luxuries.
VILLANUEVA
01.28.23
