Look at you now,
Mr. Hotshot, Ms. CEO,
all puffed up,
boasting you’ve earned
the spotlight
completely on your own
Maybe you did have
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 other 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
or stir small kids
of little hope
to leap with joy