Paul took a long drag
on American exceptionalism
while he drank
a pint of upward mobility.
He looked
from his laborer hands
to the barroom mirror
and searched his face
for the American Dream
and found the Liberty Bell’s crack
and the manure piles
of Paul Revere’s horse.
He taped the ashes
off exceptionalism into a glass tray
and relived the putdowns
he hears each day
by those people paid for their brains
not their physical actions
and the currency of elitism
over his bartered production.
Paul might have been created equal
but what was equal
about the poverty he was born into
and the wage war
his father fought each day
trying to achieve decency
against the ideals
of free markets and capitalism.
copyright © 2021 Kenneth P. Gurney
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