A Mexican Beer at an Irish Pub in Chinatown

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I grew up in Maryland, just a few miles away from a number of manufactured communities in the DC suburbs.  Almost invariably, each of these communities had a designed-to-be-quaint "Towne Centre."  The spelling accounts for a 15% markup on whatever might be sold there.  Impeccably manicured, lined with over-priced generic restaurants, and complete with some sort of water feature with ducks that may or may not be real, these Towne Centres seem emblematic of so many things I experience when something's either ripped from its original context or has no context at all.  

So this is my silly (yet serious?) attempt to grapple with that sense of dislocation.   

"A Mexican Beer at an Irish Pub in Chinatown"

WalMart just built its own Towne Centre in the northeast corner of the store

There's a water feature, a movie theater, and houses with cute little doors

Synthetic grass, fake flowers that last, if it ain't living, it can't die

Though it's well-intentioned, I neglected to mention, it's all just a big lie

It's a funny, mixed-up place

You think you're there, but you're really here

Like at an Irish Pub in Chinatown

And you're drinking a Mexican beer

You may think you're home, but you're not if your kids have no trees to climb

The ground's naked and bare, so folks just sit and stare at little screens all of the time

And you work your butt off, sometimes get blown off, all the time getting nickled and dimed

Let's get in the car, some lake can't be too far, I gotta change this state of mind

Why do we feel the need to move things from where they are

We dam up rivers, we change the weather, while people sleep in their cars

New things we create, already out of date in such a short time

With nothing to lean on, all I can depend on is a simple song that rhymes