On waking

What is the American Dream, exactly?
What wretched refuse of what teeming shores of what shithole countries still look to our shores, our own wretched refuse, and aspire?
What hallucination, what hologram, what choking regurgitation or recapitulation still serves in slumber or sentience?
What is the content of our national character, and who is judging?

The American Dream:
Manifest destiny. Meritocracy.
Robbing, raping, pillaging, decimating, dividing the earth, splitting hair from scalp, detonating bombs, assault rifles and air strikes is wrong, except in the case of acquisition.

The American Dream:
Walking or jogging or driving in any neighborhood without risk to life.

The American Dream:
Cheeseburgers and Freedom Fries and Bud Light and Marlboros. The right to refuse and demand medical care in equal measure.

The American Dream:
Eighteen hour days that amount to something, like heat, or like a good school, a crisp uniform laundered bi-weekly. It is something like “better,” but we don’t know what
could be worse than this
wet heat of toil, relentless,
pressing strands of sticky hair on the napes of necks.

The American Dream:
Protection from the airborne particles of asbestos, agent orange, formaldehyde. The availability of masks, the freedom from masks, the right to choose
for others.

The American Dream:
More credit, more time to pay rent, a bus that arrives as scheduled.

The American Dream:
A break in the dull drunk-quiet of Christmas Eve, a glass shattering, blazing holiday lights and green lawns,
red, blue, white lights and sirens
that do not slow on our street.

The American Dream:
Snow on a parched earth.

The American Dream:
Plastic produced here; job creation. More synthetic goods, more disposable income, more disposable things, more disposable people.

The American Dream:
A cure for cancer. A week with no roommate in the only local assisted-care facility Medicaid will pay.

The American Dream:
Lottery tickets and pawn shops and flourescent lighting and fully-stocked shelves. Poverty we don’t have to see.

The American Dream:
A roof, four walls, running water, a small garden, a community, someone who cares, a day without hold music. Respite.
Just one
day off
before hospice.

The American Dream:
Skyscrapers and neon lights, manufacturing plants, minimum wage for the workers who steam the windows, profits for shareholders, sprawl, decaying urban centers. Calling 911 and getting a rapid response. Setting — or pulling — the alarm.

What is the American Dream, exactly, and how do we wake up?