Refugee

Refugee

By Armando Ortiz

I'm a refuge-

Here without permission.

Paperless wanderer

On a journey to peace-

A Mormon pilgrim

Searching for that land of plenty.

This peregrine existence

Pushes me to take drastic measures.

So I paraphrase freedom as arduous wage labor,

Becoming a modern slave without shackles,

Building those vacation castles

And cozy winter palaces.

Laws make us retreat into the underground pageant,

Where tweaked freaks walk the streets and blood feuds exist.

Into a panopticon of violence and filthy pleasure seekers.

We even patrol the perimeters of your holy grounds,

And are pushed away when we play in front of your gates.

We are weather beaten and dark like the earth,

And welcomed with chants of, “go home, wetback.”

You buy off politicians that turn our healthcare system into a place for penitence,

And our forms of government are brought to its knees by your weapons,

Your military aid and your democracy.

They root us out of coastal villages and mountain towns,

Pushing us away with Mack trucks that replace the swings of our youth

With vacation villas and wilderness retreats,

And sit back on their leather recliner

Sipping gourmet coffee from our highlands,

Watching their banana republic exports fly to the sky.

And we are forced to carve out our space in the bottoms.