an honest thief

it is a promise made and daily broken
to brake, and slow, and stop
and strip keys from their ring
and throw them haphazardly into
the wide open lock of the world.

to walk south
down the Pulaski skyline
that bourgeois revolution,
that polish caballero, my head holding ideas over it
like Hitler held tanks. That brazen defiance in the face of total
inadequacy. That American dream, that sleepy sneer.
That bridge that wasn't even new in 1930,
that bridge that couldn't do it's job when it was built.

to walk past that land of opportunity,
and to walk past Newark,
and to walk past Trenton,
and to walk past Camden.
and to walk past terror,
and addiction, and corruption,
and racism, and inequality,
and rape, and money,
and Patterson,

and find a field, dusty brown, no more green
in which to stagger and starve
and steal oneself
and live outside labor
finally an honest thief.