The Leading Indicator

Give me your sneaky, your sly,
Your huddled masses yearning to pay no taxes,
The artful dodgers of Justice’s watchful eye.

Send these, the undocumented, tracks redacted to me.
I wink my lamp beside the hidden door.

Here, in the shadows where the wild cards play,
Where identities shift like desert sand,
They stand, a nation of the no-work visa,
Bribing patrol squads with a silent, swift hand.

“[redacted],” they whisper, ‘twixt fence-links woven tight,
Nurtured by the watchful drones that by night do creep.

Seeking shadows in the vast and starry night,
They dream of lands where they can safely sleep,

While, beyond crumbling alleyways, the statue of [redacted],
Mere survival is a game played with corruption and luck.

Here, they navigate the new urban kingdom.
On crooked streets leading nowhere they run, yet often amuck.

So come, ye crafty, to this land so broad, so wide,
Where the brave may hide, and in hiding, forget to rise.

Here they stand in a shadowed, shifting tide,
Till dawn or justice find them, and they meet their compromise.