Rising In The Morning
Poem By Miguel Gonzalez

Rising in the morning to take on another day of my mediocre life
Happy to be alive but my childhood dreams haven't left my mind

Instead they became the same as my neighbors, a house and green lawn
As American as the flag I've pledged my soul to, for the sake of freedom's song

I have to laugh at the fact that I won't play on my perfect grass
It calls out to me but when I talk back all I hear is the pain of my past

We used to play outside with the rest of the kids from the block
Until the wind blew them away with the years of Americas fast clock

Elementary through highschool and college for a degree I was told to want
Wiping my ass with the piece of BS paper so success knows I haven't forgot

I got my castle in the burbs now, with a small family I love with all my heart
We're hardly ever home so the driveway knows how happy we are in our cars

A trip to the garage will show angry ghosts you can feel as you open the door
Old clothes and those things made by forgotten working hands invisible as people are poor

Let Mr. Tv tell you how to live, with Ms. Entertainment as his gift
and witness the creation of a fairytale we call happiness, cuzz it's a lift

pretty colors and people on the screen that tell stories like mine
a part of me relates and recognizes that I want to buy to shine
Cuzz its not enough to survive when your image is on the line

working hard, or not, for what i have and throw away, a funnyshame
somebody's living is forgotten for the food-cemetery on garbage day

but the law sais it's okay to make waste of life as food and labor
a slave made it for the market of desires for higher with green paper

help the economy and buy more than you need in the daily commute
this is america and your money is free for your fantasies abuse

I didn't know i wanted so much until the culture taught me
so as I write this, denial pains my thoughts about a world that bought me

Sold only for my potential as part of the next generation of consumers
Living to work, not working to live, thus is my life as a tax-paying producer

It doesn't matter that there is more death from hunger than ever before
humanity has reached her highest when landfills reach our beaches shores

Clean water is just a drive away so I get in my shiny car
windows up on sunny days because community is just too far

My native language, forget it, I've worked hard to talk right, and my features are light Marriage to a European last-name will make me white and American overnight

Recycling and voting are enough to feel connected
to a world i can't control and only makes me feel neglected
I don't talk about it much with my neighbors, this issue of acceptance
sometimes it hurts to try and clean-up past dirt piled up on my reflection
no place to express it other than on this computer, which is nice but electri
c and plastic so my intentions come out as half of my souls perception
been in the dark about it up till now but the light offers redemption

Watch t.v. and eat out tonight, I've lost my will to cook
momma's recipes and a high school diploma in the same ol dusty book

Just pop it in the microwave and let the buttons do the work
sit and watch my culture spin away, and some rum to help the hurt

Wrap it and unwrap my life, a trash can for what i don't like
it's all just been a movie night, in the end the actors die

Mondays here again, however, the alarm is going off
similar to crying sirens that get tired, but never stop

Forget rethinking my life or making changes for the better
I'm a stranger to my spirit, and childhood's gone forever

The dream has become reality, and its everything I never thought it would be
I'm the product of someone else's fantasy, faking blindness to what I should see

But it's funny how some people like to laugh the truth away
like me to keep from crying when the sun shows me the day
I'm going crazy cuzz happiness said she won't take my pay
Sad how many Americans think freedom is money in the bank
Though the White House was built by Africans in chains, on Indian graves
I wonder if our founding fathers knew that their children would be slaves
And if they were alive today I bet Dead Presidents would try to buy what God gave
But it's okay, we make mistakes, and mine was writing this with hopes of getting paid