On the ruins May 28, 2024
I sit on a stoop of a building that used to be a convent,
next to what used to be a Catholic school, across from a church that is soon to
be demolished to make way for still more luxury housing, bulldozers already
pointed in its direction from a lot of rubble that used to be two family houses.
This world changing the way it did when my great great
grandfather came from Italy to destroy the Dutch farms to pave the way for the
Italian immigrants flooding into old Lodi to work in the mills, he and his sons
helping to establish churches that would accommodate these families, and to
build one family box houses where they could live.
From then until recently, all seemed the same, the dreams of
people who wanted a car in each garage and a chicken in each pot, and a piece
of the American Dream that including a home of their own.
Even back in Lodi, the bulldozer roll over the ruins of
those dreams like Nazi tanks, destroying more than just buildings, but also a
way of life, as greedy politicians rake in cash from even greedier developers,
and those of us, who have seen the Dutch destroyed. we don’t dare use the term
Freeholder because it implies ownership when our society plunges into a new slavery,
where people work pathetic jobs for pathetic wages ignoring the fact that
minimum wage no matter how high cannot afford the minimum rents charged and the
only people who thrive are those entitled to government handouts, we, being
controlled by men and women who keep us hand to mouth while they bask in
luxury.
I’m sitting on a stoop of a world that is rapidly vanishing
before my eyes, the rubble of my life exposed with each rat-infested basement,
with each stair that goes nowhere, with each dream that seems to evaporate in midair
with the dust stirred up by the demolition.
I’m sitting on a stoop where the past collides with the future,
matter and anti-matter coming into contact leaving only wreckage and ruin, and
glittering towers of people who could care less.
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