A Penny Unsaved

A Penny Unsaved

Lincoln woke up,
stuck in a wad of gum,
copper taste in his mouth,
there in the gutter
with the other useless trash.

He’d never been a drinker,
he’d rather been a thinker,
a doer and a man of words.
Now he could only see
one side of the coin,
and it didn’t look good.

He’d been stamped
with a legacy
he didn’t deserve;
he knew he wasn’t
a racist.
He’d been tarnished
and stuck in a rut
in a tiny cubed Booth,
and all that he’d done
could be written
on a penny.

They’d burned down his home
So he no longer had an address.
Gettysburg in shambles,
Just a well preserved tourist trap
where losers in blue and grey
shot off their big boy guns,
drama queens by the thousands.

At least things were looking up,
it might have been the other way around.
A smile almost broke through his steely lips,
but a tire ran him over and ruined the effect.

And no one even stopped to pick him up,
A penny wasn’t worth much anymore.