I shot up in 70's/ 80's England
For sale, there really was only one dream
It was sold to us through Thatcher
Star wars, Magnum P.I. and The A.team.

Now that dream is old and dusty
And the world looks for something new
Will it come from India, China, Brazil
Or will it come from the shaky E.U.

Or will, as I hope, there be choice
For my daughter and her 4 year old clique
Will she choose the American dream
Or will she dismiss it as a kitsch antique.

We know you, and your little dark colors too. A picture book in your purse penned in mustaches on the full faces of your fare. We call you from bed, 8 o' clock in the morning, dog-light you slow wander the Peruvian darkness making jellyfish tentacles with your hands while you feel your way through Salem. We're colder than night and we wake thrice the bits of your day gig. You collapse in a green field of dandelion where thrushes drown you in Brown. We gorge ourselves on mango slivers, pineapple yolks, a half of grapefruit. We know you are close to your end.

On the tops of the cities you call to your lycan friends, the half-sick and muted bray allures them to you, from Bratislava and Mimon, the thoroughfare through the suq. We wait. The foregone untold, the beep beep jug jug swoop sound of the nightingale, in all her dun glory, we wait. Then, as if descending through the moor-lounging silver smoke, the cool stickiness to your fingertips; the fog.

We are there when the blue-less and smoky screen surrounds you, when you shank the auburn Scot hair of the sly fox that stalks, say, a cigarette from your lips. When you take the corners swiftly, gadding the streets. The prize king of vulpicide. You rub its matte fur against your bristly gray beard. And while you lay in your lumps of twelve carat flesh you bleat and you nag. One day you will never come home.

Or, at least what you might think.
Judgement hurts in too many ways to count.

I stand in the local thrift market
looking for trinkets and such with my father.
He came here to look for vintage picture frames,
to put up on our pastel coloured walls.
He brought me to be a translator,
of his broken english.

I see the looks some give him,
but I am proud of my father.
And mad at how our society works.
Looking at my father you think,
he probably only knows his own mother tongue,
no education,
bad manners,
had lived in poverty before.

But you are wrong.

An Italian man sits by this booth,
selling picture frames.
I point and tell my father, and he walks over.

"How much for frames?"

I taught him how to say that well enough.
The Italian man says fluently,
"$40 a piece,"
but behind it you can hear a faint Italian accent.

My father hears this and his face lights up,
and he replies in Italian,
"Great, but can you lower it to $30. For me, man?"

The man seemed shocked to see a dark-skinned man,
speaks such fluent Italian.
The man got up with a smile on his face,
and told my father,
"Man, I was born in Italy, but you speak it better than me,"

My dad laughed.

Next time you see,
a strange man,
struggling with his english,
stop to think,
he might be able to speak to you in,
German. Italian. French. And in a tiny bit of Spanish.
And of course, his mother tongue.
He might have learned the culinary arts,
in a world-renounced school.
He might be able to do anything.
And he might even be a little more impressive,
than you will ever be.

Judgement hurts.
But all it takes is you to stop it.