Karl’s Labor's Lost - edit2

[dukealien]

edit;

Karl’s Labor’s Lost


Fuel-oil and later gasoline
(its distillate) excused us from
a Marxist coup d’etat for they
required no stokers, men to throw
black coal on fires for others whom
they couldn’t help but envy for
brute muscle power they employed
for pennies as if stokers had
no minds resentment could consume.

Instead, petroleum ran slick
from fields which paid their drillers well
through pipes to far refineries
or into ships that burned it neat–
no sweating stokers to resent
their exploitation, or dark pits
of sullen miners primed to strike.
When stokers’ sons drove motorcars
their envy failed, and Marx retired.

I like the concept. It’s an interesting idea and well put
My suggestion would be to make it less didactic.
Both “overthrow” and “expired” are too much authorial intrusion

Thanks again for the critique.  Not sure "coup d'etat" is less didactic than "overthrow" but it does describe (for example) the October Revolution better.  Did manage to work in "petroleum" after all   .