Photographs from Zuccotti Park
Notes on Zuccotti Park One: Mic Check! A Pay Check Away From You. 
Mic check!
They are just a pay check away from being you. Take strength
Keep your courage, for yourself
And for them, they need you.
They who are today up there
Imprisoned– parked in concrete shelves—scraping the skies.
In these towers rising all around you
Surrounded by walls
Clinging to a useless fantasy that these streets are meant to lead them
To those paved with gold
But no! Yours is the golden path.
You who sit here in the park, enclosed by police barricades-
Liberated by thoughts, your dialogue.
Under an October night sky without stars
Sounds of your drums beat the police sirens
And rise above the din of ongoing construction
Called Freedom at the crossroads
Of Trinity and Liberty.
And there, a surveillance—NYPD tower
And a sign that says no skateboarders allowed in the Park.
Winter’s mist begins to rise off the damp pavements.
You see the lit windows high above
And you think they shine like places light years distance from you
Here in the park in the darkness below,
As though signaling–a passing, to you.
Silhouettes framed in the windows high up above you
In amber light, they appear caught in an eternity of fear, petrified.
And you sympathize
For rents have to be paid, mortgages met
What happens if there is no pay check?
They know they are just a paycheck away from you.
As you Mic check, in your attempt to reach them,
They know this too: it is not light that distances them from you—
They are just a pay check away from you.