Money Poems
A Ballad Of Ducks
by Banjo Paterson
The railway rattled and roared and swung
With jolting and bumping trucks.
The sun, like a billiard red ball, hung
In the Western sky: and the tireless tongue
Of the wild-eyed man in the corner told
This terrible tale of the days of old,
And the party that ought to have kept the ducks.
"Well, it ain't all joy bein' on the land
With an overdraft that'd knock you flat;
And the rabbits have pretty well took command;
......
God Sent Us A Savior
by Clarice Reid Hart
If our greatest need were money,
God would have sent a banker.
If our greatest need were pleasure and fun,
God would have sent us an entertainer.
If our greatest need were food,
God would have sent us a chef and farmer.
If our greatest need were education,
God would have sent us an educator.
God looked beyond our needs and into our sin sick soul.
He sent us a Savior to behold.
......
Skunk Hour
by Robert Lowell
(for Elizabeth Bishop)
Nautilus Island's hermit
heiress still lives through winter in her Spartan cottage;
her sheep still graze above the sea.
Her son's a bishop. Her farmer is first selectman in our village;
she's in her dotage.
Thirsting for
the hierarchic privacy
......
Poem
by Elizabeth Bishop
About the size of an old-style dollar bill,
American or Canadian,
mostly the same whites, gray greens, and steel grays
-this little painting (a sketch for a larger one?)
has never earned any money in its life.
Useless and free., it has spent seventy years
as a minor family relic handed along collaterally to owners
who looked at it sometimes, or didn't bother to.
It must be Nova Scotia; only there
......
Power
by Edwina Matthews
To some power is guns
To some power is knifes
To some power is the ability to read, and write.
To some power is control
To some power is a fist
To some like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. power was words.
To some power is like a trapped animal trying to get out of a cage.
To some power is love
To some power is art
To some power is money
......
Everyones problem
by Morton Litwack
Bills, Bills, Bills
They're Starting to Give Me the Ills
We have to Pay
Whatever They Say
And Watch How They Empty our Tills
Get Your Head Out of Your Ass
by Randy Johnson
You're a woman who has beauty but not much class.
What you need to do is to get your head out of your ass.
You only want a man who earns a million or more each year.
You rejected a man who's a janitor because you disliked his career.
The problem that you have is that no rich man has ever asked you out.
When I tell you that you're going to be an old maid, I have no doubt.
You are also poor and that is why rich men don't want you.
Many of them are just as superficial as you are and that's true.
If you and they could realize that rich people and poor people are equals, the world would be a better place.
Get your head out of your ass, being rich doesn't make people superior and believing that it does is a disgrace.
......
ACROSTIC OF A REFINED SELF
by Jonathan Tafreg
Enlightenment is essential in overcoming
Darkness which is the most scariest and
Ugliest of all that obscures human
Character and personality whereby
A man who trades wisdom for
Taboos and a bag of idiocies
Is as useless as a curse and
Omen that stands before the prosperity of the
Nation.
......
I'm In Jail Because of My Wife's Breasts
by Randy Johnson
Even though my wife is somebody who I love and adore.
She decided not to let me touch or see her boobs anymore.
Every time I wanted to see or caress them, she said no and I would cry.
She wouldn't let me anywhere near them and she told me the reason why.
She said that I couldn't see or touch them because I'm poor.
She said that I could see and touch them if I got rich but not before.
But I've always been so poor that I'm destitute.
Last month, I decided to rob a bank to get the loot.
I was caught by the cops after they shot me in the dick.
I knew that I would go to jail, I knew that I was licked.
......
Mannahatta
by Walt Whitman
I WAS asking for something specific and perfect for my city,
Whereupon, lo! upsprang the aboriginal name!
Now I see what there is in a name, a word, liquid, sane, unruly,
musical, self-sufficient;
I see that the word of my city is that word up there,
Because I see that word nested in nests of water-bays, superb, with
tall and wonderful spires,
Rich, hemm'd thick all around with sailships and steamships--an
island sixteen miles long, solid-founded,
......
