This Army (by Jason, obvi)

This army, the color concrete, used to be red.
Ghost towns, new and empty.
Rows like armies.
20 apartment blocks 10 floors each
Next to another 20
As far as you can see.

Clean, barren, concrete
Waiting, hoping, begging
For money, for tenants, for industry.

"Who will buy? Who will invest?
Who will make this Adam breathe?"

Build it and they'll come, hell,
1.2 billion of them.
They'll come.

On bicycle carts with canvas bags that hold everything.
Everything.
They'll come.
And things in canvas bags
Could fill wood, mud, straw, brick houses and huts,
But what can fill concrete? And who can afford it?

So much
Too much.
How could we ever have that much.
Money from job from education from money.
Maybe in the next life.

We'll live in dirty neighborhoods
Like the ones we left, but more crowded this time.
Like the ones we left, but with less dignity,
Like the ones we left, but with lucky ones looking down their noses at us.

"Peasants!" they'll say. "This is our city,
Do you have the right papers to live here?
Come work construction, that's ok.
And you may sell your fruit on the street,
It's cheaper than in the chain stores.
But please keep your filthy fathers
and brown-skinned mothers
and ignorant children off of the streets,
they get in our way and they make us feel bad.
And what will the foreigners think?"

We'll live in dirty neighborhoods,
Like the ones we left,
Like the ones they're tearing down to build
This army,
The color concrete.
Remember when it was red?