Face Value

What is my said face value?

What is the grade of soul?

How does one increase self-worth?

How does heart become whole?

Does it increase with favor

From adulating peers?

And reduce into ruin

When approval disappears?

Is it contained in beauty?

Does it fade with our years?

Is it clad in our clothing?

Then wear out as fashion blears

Is it counted in riches?

Can thieves break through and steal?

Does it lie in vocation?

Can it be fired at will?

Or does it lie beyond all things

That weather, rust, or fade?

Does true self-worth transcend this life

So death cannot degrade?

Is it in possessions?

Are these attached to soul?

And wherein is their ownership

bequeathed when the bell tolls?

Is it in our breeding

Or our nativity?

Is it in our culture?

Is luck a mastery?

Is self-respect in who you know

And not esteem you earn?

Can a starched framed diploma

Circumscribed all one can learn?

Can circumstance define us then

At any point in time?

Or is potential limitless

A self-created prime?