"moneyed" poems
**** head, struggling for breath
Final hit, before the red
Light flashes, warning to stop
Over dose, **** the innards
She never chose to lose this
Battle, between herself & it
Where'd she go, lost in space
Chasing herself, a dog with his tail
Praying to an above, to lead her
Straight laced, not swerving off track
Please God save me, her last plea
Before another day dawns, her final wish
Sketcher, tweaker, where's that syringe
The lights too bright, reality a curse
Rolled up in rehab, another ghetto kid
Not this girl, high class, white, moneyed
Lost to the night, speed freak, hopeless
Drowning in addiction, using again
Chemical structures defining her fate
Her brain the game
Disfigured face, unrecognizable eyes
Family love, isn't ever enough
Rushed to ER, another broken soul
Promises that drugs will save her
When only she can ever
Save herself
This time, she's not another life
Lost
The Gods sure blessed her, not with
Her wish
So she's packaged off to rehab
The third times a charm, right?
© Sia Jane
Nov 14, 2013
Nov 14, 2013 at 3:11 PM UTC
We all want someone to hold whilst the music plays
but this is a delayed reaction to teenage hormones,
you're clutching to not-a-lot-of-nothings,
smart jeans and smart cologne, a stolen ring
from your step-father's collection tidied away,
deep, in a box under bed sheets in that drawer.
Your mum says the right one will come 'round
soon enough, but so far the results
of dressing differently have resulted in
women speaking like spray from under a van:
rainwater white noise and not a lot else;
though you're still searching, if not for you,
for your mother instead, elderly and re-married:
some else's burden, another husband to carry.
Carry out of the bottom of drunken wine glasses
and into clear meadows on weekly walks
where discussions take place, peace treaty
talks about holidays in the Mediterranean,
upon balcony ledges they'll embrace, learn
about fading stars, the history behind buildings
visit local bars to drink sober cocktails
conjured up in off-the-web smoothie makers
bought with the ambition to make a living
and help the community out.
If not now then when, your **** shouts
hiding beneath moneyed material
cut in sweat shops, washed in sweat heaps,
delivered by the sweaty mail man of the Bronx,
will women love me you'll say,
will women want a house with me, stay the night
under reclaimed, bought from thrift shop,
lights and kiss until mornings turn into weeks,
those weeks into new jobs
and before you know it, retirement plots
in allotments off Broadway?
Sep 17, 2013
Sep 17, 2013 at 7:49 AM UTC
Only last week did my phone ring,
I let it linger for just a moment to appear
like I get these calls all the time,
but briefly lost myself in the window and the view it kept for itself:
The trees that cut their leaves
Because they can do winter alone and bare,
Hard stone walls running rings around the land,
Bound together forever as a pair,
Cars are parked on roadsides at math-book textbook
Angles, parked without care,
Curtains covering windows across the street
Hiding makeup clad, moneyed affairs
Bus stops perched on top of the hill,
Red and built up from the ground, level and square,
Up the high street and off on the left
Are the new deigned houses of the poor millionaires,
Walking dog husbands walk unaware
Down paths belonging to the youth
Who sell drugs to each other with a
Giggle and an old rug to cover up their stash.
Only last week did my phone ring,
I let it linger for just a moment to appear
like I get these calls all the time,
my mother was on the other end,
“What took you so long?” she says.
Oct 23, 2013
Oct 23, 2013 at 2:03 PM UTC
Cordoned off from moneyed people
Kept at distance by the clique,
Separate by class and culture’s
Moneyed boundary is their trick.
Wealth creates a boundary zone
Where only wealthy tread,
Admission is beyond the reach
Of those who toil for bread.
The maintenance of status
Is defended by their code
Of only Rich association
With no dilution in the mode.
Rich parties held on tropic isles
Exclusive to their wealth,
Accessable by private jet
And curvey blondes with stealth.
With status strictly guarded
By muscle, dogs and fence,
And fawning politicians
Who clamour to commence
The photo opportunity,
The handshakes and the smiles
Of wealth and power in unison
To win them votes for miles.
The Rich protect their Rich friends
In their universal club
Exclusivity’s the keynote…
And you’ll deftly get the rub
Should you smear your gloss and polish,
Lose your money in a fraud,
Then you’ll be exorcised at once
And immediately ignored.
The rules here are quite simple
And elementary my friend,
No matter how you gain your wealth
Or make it in the end….
By fair or foul’s acceptable
Just so long as banks’ remand
That you OWN a ****** fortune….
Then the Rich will shake your hand.
Marshalg
Broke@the Bach
Mangere Bridge
4 December 2010
Dec 3, 2010
Dec 3, 2010 at 1:47 PM UTC
As beautiful as the sunrise Mwende was
With an enchanting figure which
Was wrapped with other features,
Miraculous features which performed miracles
Of sending masculine minds to another world.
Her rich-brown complexion was like highly scented roses
To men who would transform to bees on seeing her,
And began visualizing how to harvest her honey.
Most of them were influentially moneyed.
Her heart, however did not go for them,
Did not go for any other man even.
Her blood was, however, a sister to that of Eve.
Severally did she find herself having divorced from her Father’s command
Of not eating and sharing the forbidden fruit with Adam.
Now, she walks with her heavy stomach protruded
As though it has become the real body
Her once rich Mount Kenya compartments have shrank to the size of ugali
Capable of feeding only a family of two, if not one
Or even a half.
Her mother had great hopes for her only investment.
Any form of ‘dirt’ should not catch up with her.
So, the doctor executed his duty to the fullest
As Mwende lay uncomfortably on the bed.
The innocent mutilated creature emerged
Mwende saw it and nearly died.
A sight she would never forget its existence
Or rather a creature which would keep on haunting her dreams.
Her mother was jubilantly elated
When her daughter’s heart was bought with a lot of goats and money
By some financially worthy man
One, two, three, five, seven----------
Many years passed and Mwende was yet
To be called mama somebody.
Her man chased her away
After realizing her genuine productivity state
For her body baby sleeping mat was the problem.
It could not accommodate a breathing creature.
Jun 12, 2013
Jun 12, 2013 at 7:09 AM UTC
I used to stand, a little girl,
In the face of the mighty River,
And try my luck against the current,
Till my thin frame would shiver.
The River was a muscled god
Of milky Grecian marble,
Who'd swallow up the flotsam,
While the safer songbirds warbled.
My mother told me "stay away,
The River, he is hungry,
He'll twist you round and break your bones
And take your sweet self from me."
And, from then on, I'd heed her word,
And steer clear of the River,
Or throw in sticks to harm it,
Vainly, watch them be devoured.
And sometimes, when the rain came down
For long days at a time,
The River would rise from his bed,
To drown all that was mine.
So he got many over on me,
And I, nothing on him.
The River was so sly, you see,
The Devil, just too slim.
And then I grew up proud
And beautiful, and moved away,
To a moneyed place in the northern states,
Where the River stayed away.
But I met a man just like that Body
Rolling, roiling, wild,
That took and drowned all I did have
And left me with a child.
And my mother took me in again,
And told me just the same,
To shun the River, guard myself,
A man's worse than his name.
I took to daring, once again,
That arctic current down,
I'd dip my toes in evening time,
And smooth my forehead's frown.
I'd talk to him, my belly swole,
Confide in the River wild,
I prayed to God in the water's hearing,
That I did not need the child.
The River told me he would help,
That I could use his ways,
For he wanted only sacrifice,
And I wanted not the blame.
So I waded in, the hands of water
Cupped beneath my thighs,
And the River's water turned blood red,
And my eyes rolled to the sky.
Now I live alone again.
Playing mother was not my lot.
The River took my baby in,
Because my arms could not.
Oct 30, 2013
Oct 30, 2013 at 9:49 AM UTC
Four and twenty ladies fair
attend St Martin's Hall.
And out then came fair Janet,
the fairest of them all.
She told me of her father's gold
as if it was a joke,
I saw no others laughing there,
and ordered *** and Coke.
She told me of her sculpture course,
and asked to write a ballad;
at such a form in moneyed hands
I choked upon my salad.
"I'll see what I can do", I said,
"to satisfy your itch,
but ballads are a pauper's form,
not open to the rich:
You wanna write in the common metre?
You wanna write how common people write?
You wanna make repetition sweeter?
You wanna churn out ballad stanzas all night?"
Well, what else was in sight?
I smiled and said, "All right."
Jun 1, 2010
Jun 1, 2010 at 10:31 AM UTC
Modern day heretic
With death filled eyes
Hand stroking long black beard
Sipping ambrosia tea of aniline
Smoking rolling snorting his pleasure
Speaking on Lenin, Watts, and the price of heaven
He offers nothing, slips of LSD
His mind a traveler, the smell of burnt almonds is everything
Ask him if he has ever advocated for the overthrow of God
He will coyly smile, and politely nod
Yogic Tantric, naked downward dog
In the morning, he salutes the sun
Christian, Buddhist, he accepts not one
Yet he will quote Jesus and the Dalai Lam
Born again, always dead, rock n’ roller
Passing through the karmic gates of fire
Going out where politicians fear to tread
Drinking whiskey with the devil, eating mushroom heads
He wears his hair long, despite what the moneyed men say
Not for glory, not for fame, not for one care who remembers his name
He only bows to the wind, that truth eternal
The bronze gong shatters
He knows he is mortal
Jan 11, 2015
Jan 11, 2015 at 9:31 PM UTC
Overman—
Follow you the music of a generation
Premonitions of the culture
Constantly unseating one another
At the throne beneath your soapbox?
Quarrel you with Parrish Priests and
Local Lords and
Moneyed Many and
Other Overmen?
Overman—
Speak you in uncommon tongue
Through veils of bourgeois idols
Through clouded visions blinding you to pleas from those beneath
Through impenetrable barriers about your plywood castle?
Overman—
Reject you any god lain at your feet,
Any miracle as trivia,
Any sincerity as foolishness,
Any ethnic pride as blasphemy,
Papal Pagan figureheads as absurdity?
Overman—
Have you children born unnaturally,
Brothers cross the moonlit gulf,
Sisters of incestuous intimacy,
Fathers of musical prowess,
Mothers of a warm genetic lab?
Overman—
Your day is coming
One hundred million of you
In synchronistic harmony
Of uniform variety
Of classless social rigidity;
Becoming one with the orbital network,
A single entity to govern life among the planets,
An immortal computer god
Expanding past the reaches of
The spent and worn-out orb
That keeps revolving, spiraling downward,
Closer, closer to the sun—
Overman, will you outlive them all?
Overman, you were there first,
Will you be the first beyond?
Jan 22, 2011
Jan 22, 2011 at 7:50 PM UTC
If I were a moneyed human,
I would buy us our first home.
I would buy the paint and knick-knacks
to decorate it as our own.
With this imaginary wealth,
I would buy every single book
and gently place them on the shelves
that would surround our breakfast nook
If I could stay this prosperous,
I would buy the L-shaped sofa
for our beautiful living room,
with the sandalwood aroma
If I could remain affluent,
I would buy anything to showcase
how very much your love has meant
to this silly, lonely nutcase
but I am not an up-scale girl,
I have no pennies to my name
I sadly can't buy you the world
and that truth brings me so much shame
but although I'm poor in pocket,
I'm super filthy rich in love!
so please accept my deposit
I hope for now that it's enough.
Feb 4, 2014
Feb 4, 2014 at 10:40 PM UTC
I. Parting The Seas
With Their Acid Tongues
Have you seen the herd
Their disparaging words
Ever felt their burn
Their teeth newly
straightened
Their letters
capped boldly
And augered in -
Never ?
Parting the seas
With their acid tongues
Overzealous murderers
Twirling their guns
Finger painting
In puddles of blood
Far and above
The multitudes,
Fainting -
Prose, my love ?
They're but disgraced mystics
Moneyed for nothing
Soon to face their own
Caustic hmmmmm,
Hatred's vast acreage.
For an ill wind
Blows no one good -
You don't say -
Ask anyone.
Or haven't you heard
Page Six -
This is the way
Come
Inside !
James R. Morse, NYC 2012.
All Rights Reserved.
Oct 13, 2012
Oct 13, 2012 at 1:10 PM UTC
Fools blather about the glory of the fight
And don’t hear the mothers crying at night.
The wives of those marauders on the roam
Cry because their husbands can’t come home.
The children of these battle-addicted men
Go away, eyes ashine, never to return again.
And still the moneyed few, urge on toward
Yet those godlings never pick up a sword.
Mandates from government palaces abound
But not as many as the dead on the ground.
People are expendable to the military,
There are no pensions in the cemetery.
It’s all about honor they tell the press.
Leaving someone else to clean the mess.
Fight for liberty and freedom, they say.
They really mean die for them every day.
It’s all about profit and always was.
It’s that and no more noble cause
When a nation not being attacked
Falsely claims they’re striking back.
Then goes on to leave thousands dead
So they can wear a crown upon their head.
If you see no words of shame in this
Then you have found what is amiss.
These people are not motivated by grace.
They have the look of evil upon their face.
They already own most of what is here
But they keep a running tally all year.
As too much is not enough they crave,
Even if that puts us all in our grave.
Jan 25, 2016
Jan 25, 2016 at 10:06 PM UTC
When bit by proboscis of bullying ********
When flayed by management’s moneyed constraints,
When cowed by political pressure’s publicity
….Irrepressible positives will cut the restraints.
For regardless of age or the state of the body,
Regardless of worriment carried in lieu,
Your irrepressible “up” shall rise to the surface
To wipe negativity’s blemish from you.
Irrepressibly, positively beaming in sunshine
Gleaming blue eyes in the sweet morning air,
Sprinting ahead of the crassness negated
We won the moment with wind in our hair.
Marshalg
In beating the odds
AUCKLAND
6 February 2014
Feb 5, 2014
Feb 5, 2014 at 3:43 PM UTC
Money can buy a house, but not a home,
she can feed one's lust, but not one's love
she can give everything that you wanted
but not everything you need.
Money can't invade all the things in this world;
don't let her control us, for we have better minds,
she might nail you into the zenith of success
but with friends taken away.
Mar 12, 2012
Mar 12, 2012 at 8:55 AM UTC
*your words are like soft pattering rain
falling upon multiple consciences
on the day after nasty weather
and the predicted heat wave
your words drip from invisible funnels
and sweeten the air that we breathe
verily verily you're the voice of doom
lulling our beings into a deep slumber
there will be pangs and passions galore
in this world of moneyed automatons
who smack their pale but avaricious lips
that spew stale drivel from dead hearts
lo and behold the bell tolls indeed
and we stagger forth in compliant unison
and wait for the confessions of the age
words about how we slid into turmoil
swallowed in an abyss of sticky froth in bubbles
and a cacophony of dismal largo choruses
that say it's time for another thorough round-up
as the skies darken and the rain comes down in sheets
forever a curse and a blessing unavoidably certain
so friend and brother from another place and another time
let's do this thing together and crush this flea that won't flee
generous givers are beckoning frantically from the horizon*
Mar 31, 2016
Mar 31, 2016 at 4:32 PM UTC
Hope is a luxury
for the moneyed
Existence is the art of dying
with style
You wait for rose petals as I
Chew
on the thorns
Aug 28, 2012
Aug 28, 2012 at 8:45 PM UTC
Shamira looks
at the sleeve
of the LP:
Mahler's 6th,
box set.
You shouldn't
spoil me.
Summer evening,
a country lane,
high hedges.
I wanted you
to have it;
it's what I think
you'll enjoy.
You can't afford
to buy me
these gifts;
you don’t have
to buy me anything.
I know;
I want to.
We go
to the local pub
and she has a wine
and I have a beer.
We sit outside,
watching the sun setting.
How are your parents?
She looks at me.
My mother's ok,
but my father's
not sure of you.
Thought not;
the way he looks at me;
different class,
I guess.
I sip my beer;
she sips her wine.
I like her
long brown hair,
tied in a ponytail;
her brown eyes,
sharp,
not deceived,
intelligent.
He worries about me,
she says,
wants the best for me.
Can't blame him;
I’m just a nurse
and poet.
She smiles.
It's more than that,
he looks to the future,
wants me up there
where my education
and grooming
is setting me.
Do you see me
as holding you back?
I don't look at things
like that;
it is people in themselves
that matters.
I light up a cigarette;
she sips her wine.
Anyway, I’m off
to university next month,
so I won't see
you that often,
she says.
Guess not.
I know she'll meet
other of her class there;
more educated,
more moneyed.
Our brief encounter
will be a history;
our love making
an episode
or margin note
in the book
of her future life.
I inhale;
I like
how she looks;
I like her small *******
her neat
compact body
poured into her jeans
and tee shirt;
she a father's princess,
me
a dead beat flirt.
Feb 4, 2015
Feb 4, 2015 at 2:59 PM UTC
O People of time’s salutations, my love is gathering seashells by that hilled windy gathering place the sea (like dim worlds vexed with sound in the stuck conch, to undo this day the scaly wrongs that scuttle in the soul’s sea); for gull-winged griefs that drop their vowels on spat hills of light, my love is gathering portents like sea-made money for the truths found there in untruth, and hearing them there, I see them there:
Summer folk that come from cold to these great gathering hills and find one breasted ounce of ocean silver to keep like crying know that taut pants cringing came, the color of kisses, scattered on the sand grains like arms and legs. O People of time’s salutations, this shell and ear will bray there for the weeped hills that leaving love labored.
Folk of autumn come from fear, wracked by youth, grow old there where the hills recede — gather dust of water to glow the sun over with knowing that came too late. Sad gone days lean to and fro in the salutating tide that tugs the land for lack of care. O People of time’s salutations, this conch and ear will hear them scratch as the days go out to sea.
The morning folk that come from shadow gather wand watered proverbs in the still light. Great hills for these mad people who froth like waves for the sayings of ages. O People of time’s salutations, though eternities implode like new suns in their slow gatherings, shell and breath can not blow them out beyond sound’s ill reach where the sea goes endlessly rocking and mocking their finitudes.
The folk of evening come from labor, their wasted souls on hill and sullied waves dropped like shells in wrong places. Muscles matted on sanddollar days yield no virtue’s wages. Work is a shark’s tooth for the weary. O People of time’s salutations, shell and ear will hear them breathe though the sun going down can not.
Shell and ear for these splay sounds that daunt and dabble (by a sea of hilly days go on). But to pity and praise this great endeavour, my love is seashell gathering by that same great sea while the waves go pithily out on this hill and moneyed water like thoughts and implications. O People of time’s salutations, this conch and ear will trumpet eternities in the long-winded tides that walk there.
Aug 7, 2018
Aug 7, 2018 at 8:42 PM UTC
Irma
I wish I were a sorceress.
I’m surely not a scientist.
Just a reader
Of the leaders in the news.
North Korea, Harvey, rockets
Boston Red Sox in the dockets
Charged with using Apple watches to steal signs.
Violence, hurricanes,
Cheating: Why?
This is too, too crazy.
Are these phases
Showing us,
Going towards
A monster breakdown?
Skirmishes
To Irma!
Flesh will go.
Insect, bird, yes, every minnow.
Families child-less, widowed;
Dis-endowed the moneyed crowd,
Castle, mansion, slum will go.
Marshes all will overflow.
(and we thought Bangladesh was low)
The planet’s being bashed,
Yet there are people who cash in on it.
Prayer will never be the answer.
Cancer from our own behavior.
Karma’s germ:
Now it’s Irma.
Irma 9.6.2017
Our Times, Out Culture II; Circling Round Nature II;
Arlene Corwin
Sep 6, 2017
Sep 6, 2017 at 8:47 AM UTC
I can’t sit here and pretend I’m seeing a person
Who’s
Not you: the genuine spell, the real self-starter,
The Devil’s in my hands
In the drag, on my forked tongue
That’s full of emotion;
Do I play with his fire? Do I dance with his devils?
I’m putting my words through Hell, darling
To get to Paradise.
A lunch-moneyed fist pulls fame towards you
I walk
With something that’s significant of
Romantica
And so important in the first draft
So raw.
Jun 11, 2014
Jun 11, 2014 at 11:47 PM UTC
A feeling.
A burst of light.
A desperation.
A cry for help.
A hint of joy.
A ray of hope.
A sadness...
Haggard men in tattered clothing
On the concrete sandbars
Of the great black stone
Rivers.
Thirsty. Starving.
"Thank you and God bless!"
Can you help me?
Do you care?
Pastor sits in his wooden box.
On your knees in your
Private prison.
Pass the collection plate.
Glory, hallelujah!
Can you help me?
Do you care?
High school kids shoot ******
One long row of
Slack bodies.
Deep nods.
Where am I? What am I doing here?
Can you help me?
Do you care?
A new government, built on
Bad decisions.
For the money, of the moneyed.
Blinding white hair, trading blood
For precious oil...
"We, the people of the United States..."
Can you help me?
Do you care?
A sadness.
A desperation.
A cry for help.
A burst of light.
A hint of joy.
A ray of hope.
A feeling...
Feb 24, 2018
Feb 24, 2018 at 1:54 AM UTC
Vehicle Island
While the owners of parked cars at the seaside
sat in overcrowded restaurants and was served
by sweat dripping waiters the cars started and
drove in a neat formation into the sea.
A mass suicide that lit up the sea for hours, but
more cars came and they became an island
and when there were no more cars left, motorbikes
were used as top soil.
Up from this mess grew traffic cones filling the space
with stop signs and pelican crossings.
A bike, a fortune for a bike, the moneyed class said
and there were the street fights; “it is my bike no I saw it first”
the veneer of civility broke down.
When the populace stole the horses of the Gypsies
undelaying social hatred broke out; it was their right
to steal to defend their country and the Gypsies
horseless now had to live behind tall walls this because
prisoners don’t need cars.
Aug 16, 2016
Aug 16, 2016 at 4:06 AM UTC
With the horizon in your eyes
And Kathmandu below
You said:
“I Can Do
ANYTHING
I put my mind to!”
While the moneyed well-to-do
Looked nice in their ties
You arrived
Black and blue
And bloodied and bruised
And cut right to the front of the line
–no time for niceties here—
And grabbed a glass
Of champagne
– the price of a mortgage—
And chugged and ran
Frost Bitten
Sand Bitten
Bug Bitten
And a pack of lions, and bears, and snakes at your heels!
You pulled a half gainer
And left them behind
Your motto:
“Memories
Are more important than things.”
And Peter said:
“This one has a story to tell...”
“Let him in.”
In Memoriam Of Those Who Dare.
Mar 1, 2017
Mar 1, 2017 at 7:37 AM UTC
By: Cedric McClester,
Why are they at war with science
Especially when it calls for our compliance
They’d rather go by their gut’s reliance
Then to acquiesce so they remain defiant
Global e warming isn’t surreal
It’s fact-based not just how we feel
The moneyed interests know the deal
They just hope the science lacks mass appeal
The snowcaps are melting every day
And soon where will the grizzly bears stay
But as long as they can hold the truth at bay
They won’t let the evidence get in their way
Clearly it’s all about dollars and cents
And the public be ****** it’s at our expense
Some day it will all come out in the rinse
But until then we’ll remain in suspense
It’s for sure that our usage of fossil fuel
Will cause us all to drown in their polluted pool
Although ******** baffles brains as a general rule
I have to ask who are they trying to fool
It’s as if they don’t think we have eyes to see
And that we must be blind, or is that just me
You can fool some people that well may be
But they’re gonna see the light eventually
Florida is four feet above sea level
And that can be measured without a bevel
But it’s going down rapidly yet they’re not troubled
So their effort to obfuscate just gets doubled
They can say that the jury is still out
Guess they missed the verdict’s but there is no doubt
So they can continue to scream and shout
Though the truth of the matter they’ll never tout
Cedric McClester, Copyright © 2015. All rights reserved.
Sep 30, 2015
Sep 30, 2015 at 7:55 AM UTC