We’re Dreamers

By LV

They had promised us a better future.

We’re the ones that dream with a better future,
One by one our dreams were being achieved
We’ve built a future, in this country we’ve anchored our lives
At the end of the day, we have been awoken
to face the rawness of reality.

We’ve pursued the American dream,
they have traded our American dream;
Now we’re only dreamers,
that’s the title the government has given us.
A dream that in reality is more like a nightmare,
a nightmare that we’re forced to live day by day.
Dreams are one thing, but the reality is another.

Now we’re dreamers with an uncertain future,
My future seems like the next nightmare
It seems like they want to lock away my dreams
in a cell of an immigration detention center
“It doesn’t cost a thing to dream.”

We’re the dreamers,
The ones that claim justice, because we love this nation
We’re the ones that have overcome many obstacles,
We have reached plenty of achievements.
There’s many that wish to crush down our dreams

3 Comments

  1. Ryan on June 11, 2018 at 1:46 AM

    The contrast between dreams and nightmares here is really vivid and this is a very stark illumination of an American societal problem.

  2. Ginny on June 22, 2018 at 10:28 AM

    Thank you for this heartfelt poem. On line one, you might like to say, “they promised us…” and in the last line, consider “crush” instead of “crush down.”

  3. Freddie Hoskin on October 9, 2018 at 4:53 PM

    I really deeply love the lines “At the end of the day, we have been awoken/
    to face the rawness of reality.” They roll off the tongue in a way that is simultaneously beautiful but also makes your very throat aware of the punch of the words, the gulf of being left with what now are only dreams.
    I’m also very fond of the lines “they have traded our American dream;
    Now we’re only dreamers,” This play with words really makes the reader aware of how language is shaped and used by society to control the direction in which you think of something. You highlight the disparity between the way we are taught to view the phrases “American dream” and “dreamers” extremely well in these two short lines.

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