Los Angles, the city of dreams,

Where anyone can go to be

 Someone.

America, the land of the free

Where people dared to believe,

Once.

Los Angeles, filled in her streets,

With people who think the world of their dreams,

Of singing and acting and dancing and seams,

While the world doesn’t seem to think much of these things.

America begins, Lady Liberty and sea,

And ends with people saving and working and fighting,

For an education that won’t save them from fighting for work,

Yet keeps them in a debt that rises and lurks.

When did being someone go from seeking and finding your goals,

To starving yourself to fit thousand dollar jeans with holes?

When did the dream go from a family in a house with a white picket fence,

To an education system and housing bubbles that create a debt that never ends?

Los Angeles, with people who aren’t what they seem,

Bright smiles and cameras and flashes and gleams,

The neighbor of poverty, street living, and pipe dreams.

Was this the someone you thought you would be?

America, a country built on the idea of free,

But free to love and to hate and to speak and to dream,

Aren’t enough for a home, or a job, and food to eat.

Is this the American Dream you dared to believe?

When did the city of vanity and belief in me and myself,

Become the perfect analogy for the country in which we dwell?

When did high schools stop preparing kids for reality,

And start making sure they passed their SAT’s and AP’s?

When did success go from making a living from something you love,

Without hurting those around you by being overcome by capitol lust,

Turn into corporations build on the blood,

Of the people in countries and living conditions that Americans don’t like to think of?

And when did safety go from countries at peace,

To over numbered weapons and armies born from money on lease?

It has been asked what it is that makes America the country to live in,

But is America still that country of dreams for the average her and him?

Then again, we might still be going about asking questions the wrong way.

Perhaps we should instead ask how to bring back that land of the free and home of the brave.

Perhaps we should instead ask how to again make the American Dream worthy of its name.