a gray area

a gray area exists when the light dulls &
when it begins to tint this way
we run frantic, like the unluckiest chicken on the
farm,
who’s up next for a beheading---
like roaches scampering from a dry place to a damp one &
though the light is craved by many
the reality is that so many more live in the darkness
wishing, wanting & waiting
for a chance to walk into the gray
with that almost seemingly impossible notion that
the light on the other side
may be open to one more
occupant.

crossing through the gray area requires a better hand
than one is born with,
if one wasn’t born with the silver spoon---
it requires those things found necessary to survive
under the man’s pressing thumb
it requires money, ultimately &
in the disease ridden system
which breathes in dollar bills (for now)
in order to get it,
there are a series of steps perpetuated by the old money &
updated, supported & thrust upon the rest of us by the
new money---

so that if you stay in school &
if you do well in school &
if you apply to college &
you get into that college &
you don’t drop out from that college &
you do well in that college &
you apply to a grad school, or a med school or a
law school &
you do get into that school &
you do well in that school &
you come out of that school all the better,
you are supposed to be well equipped to
get a job whose pay will correspond to all the years spent
going in & out of schools
keeping your brain to the metal &
putting anything else in your life on hold
until you are ready to make that paper in the
“real world.”

but when all your academic struggle is over,
you still have all the debt you accrued while
dreaming
that one day you’d be able to pay it all off,
that one day,
you’d be able to walk through that gray area
from dark to light &
thrive,
like the good capitalist empire has
promised---
in fact, if you have traveled from other countries
believing all the images & stories
from exported american films,
you are in even more dire straits,
for the inability to get a job &
pay off all the debt,
might mean dragging yourself back to your
native country,
now, with a debt the size of jupiter &
nothing but disappointment in the eyes of
all the people who put their beliefs in you
when you decided to move to
“the land of the free.”

staring in the mirror
said individual finds themselves stating out loud
(as if anyone was listening)
that “had i known things were going to end up like this,
i never would have tried so hard.”