The Caged Dreamer
After a long and brave journey across the seven seas,
He arrives with a heart full of hope, knees weak in the breeze.
This is the land where the bold carve their fate,
Where sweat turns to gold—unless you arrived too late.
He speaks in code, as he builds their world,
Yet remains unseen, much like a half mast flag unfurled,
An architect of progress, a ghost in the frame,
A nameless cog in the gargantuan tech game.
They sell him a dream, then chain his feet,
With silent shackles, soft deceit.
“Wait your turn,” they chant, with hollow grace,
While others sprint ahead in the green card race.
He obeys the rules, signs every form,
Plays their game, weathers their storm.
Yet every step feels rigged from the start,
A broken system, a bureaucrat’s art.
Every now and then, he takes liberties,
Not out of defiance, but necessity.
He bends the rules that make no sense,
That mock his life at his own expense.
They call it the land of the free, the home of the brave,
But freedom’s a riddle, a promise unmade.
The immigration beast is a venomous tide,
A viper coiled, watching from the side.
Oh, it’s not a rattlesnake—I dare not tread,
But a scaled monster with paper trails spread.
USCIS, DHS, and ICE,
A red tape Kraken, cold as ice.
He codes their systems, secures their lands,
Yet they bind his fate with unseen hands.
For years he waits, for years he toils,
While time slips by like burning oil.
A guest in a house where he built the walls,
Where he answers the summons but ignores the calls.
Still, he waits, still, he prays,
Still, he dreams of freer days.
But perhaps that dream was never his to own,
A mirage, a myth, a fate fickle & unknown.
For an Indian man on an H-1B,
Is free to work, but never free.
