America

I read a passage by Ben Franklin.
Some wise words.
He said not to come to America
If you wished to be a patron of the arts.
Not to come, if you live luxuriously on land estates.
Not to come if you wish to attain public office.

More importantly, not to come if you're a writer.
Americans are valued based on our abilities
To work on cars, or smith, or tailor shoes.
America is valued for the farmers
The blue collar workers
And being industrious in a trade
And earning a small living
Where there are neither abject poor
Nor incredible wealth.

I find this is the modern struggle
That there are gentry born from California orchards
And Southern Cotton Fields.
There are politicians making obscene money
And neither working, nor doing anything
But profiting off of their positions.
For, Ben Franklin said that didn't happen in America.
And surely, Americans remember it in our race consciousness
That it was true at a time,
That American politicians were not rich.

But, more on that
Where is my place in this economy?
America's founder said this was not a land for poets.
Europe was.
And I have not the money to move to Europe.
Nor do I have the skill to do anything
Beside write arcane poems about politics and psychology.
God forbid I ever be a governor.
But, I'm born with a mind that understands human nature.
I offend people with it---
Surely, there is an argument with a woman
I am having, which presumes to be that I am stupid
For seeing exactly what I've always seen since a child.
But, there is nothing in this country to reward that.
For it is dead.
Our country never needed it
A mind like my own
For we were mechanics, tailors, farmers,
Cobblers, smiths and coal miners.

With that said,
I ought to have heard it from Ben Franklin himself.
I am unwelcome in my own land.
My talents unnecessary.
However, it is all I am capable of doing. 
I wonder what he would say about it.
 
If this poem seems critical of the United States
It is not.
Rather, hearing it from one of our founders has given me great peace.
Though, it has also shown me that I am incredibly useless.