I walk past the poor every day
The ones that ask me for money
For the change
That I hear jangling in my ears long after I walk away
Money comes to me like a slip of paper
A white page
Stateing times and dates and hours spent
In the pursuit of happiness
Because that's how I feel when I get my wage
Like the hours I spent didn’t just waste away.
The jingle of my work, my age
Is what I pour into that man’s cup
It might be fifty cents
But it’s really six minutes
It might be six minutes
But it’s part of what I earned with my time.
Money is a sense of safety
A paper cushion
In my back pocket
That protects me from them.
A buffer of light green
Silver, copper, gold
That speaks of books
And travel
And new worlds
So I pour my dreams into that man's cup.
Maybe I can share my dream with him
Maybe the money
Will help him
In a way that it helps me
Maybe he will feel safer, warmer,  happier
With my hopes jangling in his pocket.
It may be fifty cents.
But it was still money
My money
That isn’t gaining me anything
Except a lightness in my pocket
And a quiet evaluation of where it can take me.
Money controls me
Just as much as I control it.
As I tip the coins
As they fall
I can hear them
They keep me going for another six minutes, then another six, then another.
That fifty cents,
Screams at me
Power, effort, time.
I want to think that money is good
That the people who get it are
But I see how I spend
How he spends
How she spends
And I think that the dreams that money whispers are for adults
And maybe I have to truly be an adult to know
That it’s not what my money does to me, but what I do
To those without.
My coins get caressed in his hands
***** in a  way
That’s so  different than mine
God bless
He whispers, and I think of the coins
That have that
Exact
phrase stamped on them.
Money should be used in Thomas Jefferson’s say:
To promote happiness in a responsible way
Because the tail of the devil must be dipped in the stuff
The economics of everyday making decisions tough
I can feel the relief it gives me to part with the money
But I calculate the loss
The casual toss
Of the money,
The money
That represents so much
Good
And so much hope.