SELF MADE
Look at you now,
Mr. Hotshot, Ms. CEO,
boasting you’ve earned
all your stuff
completely on your own
Maybe you had nothing more
than a childhood
in a drafty apartment,
dry cereal most days,
fearful streets,
handouts for clothes,
filthy clinics for the flu,
foster parents who
needed cash and only one lousy
stinkin’ teacher who thought
you just might be worth
a damn
Did you make your own genes,
choose the time and place
of your birth,
earn those gifts of luck
and circumstance
that keep dropping at your feet?
Nothing there to chisel
into stone,
no bragging rights to wave
at the clouds