Casualties of an enforced lifestyle shiver in the breeze
Along the rugged roads of old dust and ditches that divide
Rest a group of modest enclosures they call home
Built out of left over wood and delivery slates in 90 degrees
They seem content with their simplistic lifestyles and unsightly miles
Water is delivered in worn out trucks and stored in their homes in discarded tanks
There is no sewer system, very few working water systems are scattered
Yet, if you were to pass through for a visit, the women would be cooking with smiles
During the day, men are bused to work in factories and earn fifty dollars a week
Few people have the resources to receive a doctor’s visit and medications
“Anencephaly” a brain birth defect that their infants have, now significantly rise
When it rains there the roads become virtually impassable and unusably bleak
They are a hard working people with values and a drive to nurture their youth
Bathing their children in the same lavadora they wash their dishes in
Tijuana is among one of the poorest places in the world
With these living conditions, it’s hard to turn your back from the truth
I smell the tar burning in the heat-wave
The cigarette almost lit itself
Spontaneous combustion pirouetting
Into stacks of smoke, rising steam
From the pavement like breath in winter
Travelling with half a name, on the road again
The crowds of people like flocking birds
Almost devil-red in colour
Meaningless mumbles, an applause of tongues
Forming like sheep into lines and rows
A fully formed dance troupe, they never learned
Showing half my passport to the hostesses like escorts
Foreign rhymes which they think I don’t understand
The cigarette writhing in the cold
Slowly turning into vapour, an eruption of clouds
Looking like bundles, the way the people dress here
Asking with gagged mouths for half my name
Half my nationality for where half my loyalty lies
If only half and half could make a whole