Home in the heartland

Several tilting "condemned" posters plaster the front door Aluminum foil covers windows busted out by a meth lab gone wrong Like silver fillings scattered throughout a tweeker's half-smile This is the home I've come back to Where people park in the park And sit in their cars 'till its dark smoking and wishing their diabetic ankles would stop swelling while a 62 oz Big Sip keeps them company And their phone is a constant beacon reminding them they're not alone Despite their loneliness This is the town where European is considered a language and saying an uncle moved to South America is as specific as you need to be And New York is a place of impatience and Times Square shopping adventures This is the home where crows by the thousand stare down at folks in all-day sleepwear sitting on front porches watching the cars go by A city where you measure who's coming and going by who is parked where Your car a permanent calling card Where gaggles of hip-heavy soccer moms speed walk the mall and leave their teenage daughters at home for the midnight showing of the last chapter in the Twilight saga This is where you insist everybody speak "Amurican" And where black people can be seen driving pickup trucks with confederate flag bumper stickers And where pizza is never folded in half before being eaten This is the reminder of all that I left behind, for good reason. It's calling home by a new name: Brooklyn.