10-01-2019, 05:36 AM
edit2;
Karl's Labor's Lost
Pumped oil and later gasoline
(its distillate) excused us from
a Marxist coup d’etat for it
dispensed with stokers, men who threw
crushed coal on fires for others whom
they couldn’t help but envy. Their
brute muscle-power was employed
for pennies as if stokers owned
no minds resentment might inflame.
Instead, petroleum flowed far
from fields that 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 earned motorcars,
their envy failed and Marx retired.
Sincere thanks to all critics. I've tried to follow the advice of both @Knot and @alexorande, though (as usual) not quite as offered. Remaining temptations are (1) colon after "strike," but that's back to a 9-line run-on sentence, and (2) change title to "Karl's Labour's Paradise Lost," but it seems too twisty. In particular, with the change in the second to last line @alexorande's change of punctuation seems an even better idea.
Karl's Labor's Lost
Pumped oil and later gasoline
(its distillate) excused us from
a Marxist coup d’etat for it
dispensed with stokers, men who threw
crushed coal on fires for others whom
they couldn’t help but envy. Their
brute muscle-power was employed
for pennies as if stokers owned
no minds resentment might inflame.
Instead, petroleum flowed far
from fields that 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 earned motorcars,
their envy failed and Marx retired.
Sincere thanks to all critics. I've tried to follow the advice of both @Knot and @alexorande, though (as usual) not quite as offered. Remaining temptations are (1) colon after "strike," but that's back to a 9-line run-on sentence, and (2) change title to "Karl's Labour's Paradise Lost," but it seems too twisty. In particular, with the change in the second to last line @alexorande's change of punctuation seems an even better idea.
Non-practicing atheist