Funnel

Sparrows navigate

through radioactive fog

Glossy brochures are selling the dream

Ornamental trees placed sporadically

near coffee shops and phone stores

Unforgiving concrete

choked up the streams

but developers were still hungry

They swallowed the river

and spat out luxury homes

Newly paved roads funnel shiny cars

into a rat maze

Competing strangers mow lawns and try not to drown

in rain that burns

and mortgages that sit like cinderblocks

on heavy chests

Keep moving in the circle

Don’t stop working

Don’t breathe

Don’t ask questions

The banks want you to hold on tight

to their dream that stops

everything from singing

Image description – photograph of snowy forest of barren trees. In the center of the barren trees is one small, bright green tree.

The county where I live is becoming more and more overdeveloped. Each month, a new cluster of expensive houses, condos, and high rises appears. The amount of forestland and waterways that have been destroyed in the last ten years is astounding. The traffic is an ever-increasing nightmare, and the air isn’t fresh and crisp anymore. The haze of funk is spreading and thickening. It’s harder to breathe. There are shops everywhere but nothing good, or strange, or weird, or unusually fun, just phone stores, vape shops, coffee places, and chain restaurants- the same old thing up and down the main road.

Did we really need more of the same? Was this necessary? Was it a good idea? I guess it was for the banks and real estate developers, but there are so many other ways to increase revenue to a county or city. There were other options. One of the best options, of course not the most beneficial to developers, would have been to help the people who were struggling with employment and with home maintenance and with feeding their families- on a scope beyond just the basic crumbs that barely suffice. When people are able to do more than just barely survive, when they have hope, there’s prosperity within the community. I guess it’s just cheaper and easier to ignore the people who need help and ignore the people who could use a few steps up the ladder to lift themselves into better circumstances, and to build new, expensive homes instead.

The people living in those new, high-end homes have their own share of problems. Some live in constant fear of losing what they have so they spend their lives working but not living. Others have so much, they forget to see and care about the struggles that people below their income bracket face, and instead become the monsters that eat the rivers and pour concrete over the truth.