We have grown lofty.
We have lost the sense of what we need,
We don't even know how to define it
Accept in terms of debt: the monthly payment
So that a man amounts to the quantity of debt that he can shoulder.
And most groan under the weight of it.
But instead of erecting something new,
We reach out toward the American Dream.
And what is the American Dream?
To free ourselves from debt
By heaping debt upon another.
We want to own the block,
To buy up this street and that.
We are a pack of aspiring landlords.
We practice in our youth with monopoly money.
And as the years roll on,
We exchange it for real money.
And some win. Most lose.
Until the poor have no place left
Except between the jaws of the rich,
Or on the street.
And even then, it's not enough.
We chase them from this place to that
And insist that it is their fault.
And it is.
They fell behind.
They lost at the game of life.
But I wonder if perhaps it doesn't need to be this way.
Perhaps we have been sold a bill of goods.
Perhaps we don't need to play the game.
For myself, I have ducked out.
My place is on the street.
My place is on the street.
Or in this house or that
But nothing very long,
And to speak these words while I still live,
To wander, wander, wander 'round
Raving like a madman,
And one day return home
To the world where a man is measured
Not by what he can amass,
But by the love of his Maker.
There, He says, in that heavenly place
is the inheritance of all the poor.
And I think that I can wait.
