What They Promise

What they promise
On the platforms
Is jobs
Mostly jobs


Every year jobs


And sometimes we feel bad for them
These job-promisers


Because we know
What they won't say


There aren't jobs
Not more jobs anyway
Not better jobs
Not jobs that we'd want


Those jobs belong to those
Who went to school
Who did better by themselves
Who got the hell out of here
And never looked back


They come here
And they find a box to stand on
And they tell us all about
Where we live


As if a place can be looked at on paper
And described
In numbers
And statistics
And potential


They tell us about our potential


But this is not a place
Of potential


This is an eroding place
A place that will one day
Be two warehouses
And a sign
That says 'Pop Zero'


We are on our way out
And here they stand
Telling us
They can help


They can stop our erosion
Our imminent demise


But they've been telling us that for years


These men in suits
These smart men
Who went to college
Whose parents never let them set foot
In places like this


These men who roll by
With their tinted windows
Never having to look out
At people like us
From their limos


Until they need our votes


These men with their clean hands
And their ties tied by people
Who get paid to do so


These men who don't need a thing from anyone
And never have
Looking out among the needy


Among the hungry
Who ignore
The rumbling of their stomachs
Because the rumbling of their kids' stomachs
Is so much louder


They stand and they promise


They promise health and education
And wealth beyond our wildest dreams


Decades ago
When we were still
Within an oasis
We called the Dream
We would listen to these men
And cry for them
A cry like a war cry


Stand behind them
And say 'These men are here to help'


And we would believe them


But that was decades ago
When we believed them
When they said we could change


Not we don't even believe ourselves
When we tell our wives
Our kids
Our neighbors


That we can change


This is not a place of change


There can be no change
When survival
Is the only thing
On most of our minds


But still we listen
Because despite what some may think
We are polite


We are nothing if not polite


Because polite is free
And so we can be
Polite


We listen to what they promise
But we heard it
And we hear it
And we'll hear it again


And once they're gone
These men
We won't see them again
For another four years


Until we're brought back together
Because it turns out they do need us
They need us to go
And vote
And agree to pretend
To believe
What they promise


Even if we don't


What they promise
Can be put on posters
And pins
And stickers
And signs


But it can't be put in our hearts
In our minds
In our systems


It can't be put in brand new textbooks
Or paychecks
Or broken down cars
Or beaten up marriages
Or battered lives


There's not enough paint on their promises
To cover us all up
And make us
Look new again


There's just not enough
To go around

They come from different parties

Different places

None of those places

Like our place

But all of them better

Shinier

Nicer

Richer?

Yeah, we'll say richer

They come with different sayings

And shortcomings

But all the things

Boil down

To nothing in the pot

They come

And they come

And they come

But they promise
And we applaud


It's like we're watching theater
The only theater we can afford to have
In this kind of town


And when they leave
We talk about how good they were
What a good job they did


Not at making us believe them
But at making themselves believe
That they could do it


That it's even possible


For them to deliver on
What they promise