"pennies" poems
Deceive me
Lie to me
**** with my head
On the edge of the cliff
Then you pull me to bed
Your love is a drug
*** with you gets me high
I’m a full blown ******
Makes no sense; don’t know why
You're an ever present torment
The fission laser splitting my mind
A jig-saw puzzle that was completed
Slowly each piece from each piece you unbind
Seductively you tear me down
Like the clothing you disrobe
A deer staring into headlights
I am frozen on the road
The weight of the world bearing down on me
As those focused beams get closer
Gladly I welcome them
Even though I’m not supposed to
Every rational thought I have
tells me how wrong you are for me
But they are drowned and muffled out
No more thoughts; keep your pennies
No sensible way to explain
Why I ******* love you so much
You’re a psychotic crazy *****
that I don’t want anyone else to touch
A blowtorch ignites a flame
A fire fierce and burning bright
Even though I know it will burn me
With all my gathered strength and might
All it takes from you is that look
You cast that Vampire’s gaze and grin
Instantaneously my defenses lowered
and you know you’ve ****** me in
Immerse myself into the flame
Intense pain; you melt my skin
Until pain I feel no more
I’m enveloped in your sin
And like a ****** choosing dope
Everyday, your sin I’ll take
I will gladly sell my soul
The most egregious of mistakes
A preying succubus appears
like a dreamy demoness
A world of dreams are turned to nightmares
Fills her needs for human flesh
Feb 19, 2018
Feb 19, 2018 at 10:39 PM UTC
when she was eight years old
she
asked her mother
have you seen the girl with
lashes like butterflies against sharp cheekbone branches?
a dandelion sprouting from sludge covered gutters and streets
streets, where you feel that bitter bland nothingness in your stomach
it feels buttery to stare at her:
see how snow outstretches arms and twirls tippy toes, envies her grace
see how balloon sized raindrops pop, target the freckles on her arm
see how her forehead crinkles when she concentrates, nothing more than a beacon
proclaiming she trickles with stars
when she was eight years old
her parent's violent protests slipped bruises under her skin like pennies in a coin slot
but they could not contain the celestial girl tucked under her ribcage.
she would still look at her like she was the breakfast sun on a saturday
whistling by the creak, catching glimpses of dresses from behind the legs of trees.
see how this is special love, sweet as strawberry fields under soft sun
they would never feel on their forked, sour tongues
Oct 15, 2017
Oct 15, 2017 at 2:35 AM UTC
Barefoot, blistered and bleeding
She wanders in from the street
People stare, flabbergasted
Very odd, unheard of in fact
She doesn’t know her size
So like Cinderella, she tries them on
Randomly selecting pretty colours
Silvery, glittery heels
She twirls for the mirror
Sales assistant sighs
Wellingtons for the garden
If she had one!
Satin ice skates
She would glide on the icy pond
Pretty sandals
To feel the sand between her toes
Boring, black brogues
Perfect!
With no pennies in her pocket
She wanders back to the street
Barefoot, blistered and bleeding
Jan 27, 2015
Jan 27, 2015 at 5:59 AM UTC
The city spearheads the futures we sincerely sold,
As it pluckers your pennies and your coins of gold.
I felt poor amid the auras of their fearsome metals,
Cowering in the clothes of our daily struggles.
I am destitute enough
To bleach out the interests of my cards,
To shatter your savings for a disabled future,
To rummage the stock markets for apertures.
Yet within you exhales tentacles of the color Yellow.
Yellow as in,
The scattered stars that scorch the injured sky,
The mellowing voices of neon artificial lights,
The apex of fire alight in frostbitten nights,
And the yolk of hope my cheers rely.
So while you chase the sun
with your copper-clad hands,
remember but this:
all that glitters is not gold,
It’s the color Yellow in these eyes I behold.
Aug 31, 2017
Aug 31, 2017 at 10:56 PM UTC
I know you’ve heard these words before
I've said them many times before
I wish that I could use them more
To make things better like before
There was a time these words had meaning
Sheathed in heartfelt cries and feelings
But a shaman who can't heal
Is just a man and nothing more
Like worn-out, old and ***** pennies
Now diluted by the many
There's so many, many pennies
Don't care there's one on my floor
My cries of “wolf” no longer heeded
When these words are truly needed
To the darkness they've receded
Blindly searching for that door
In my chest still beats a heart
While pained regret tears it apart
Can't fix or go back to the start
And you don’t want me anymore
My anger and my finger pointing
Foolishly like I'm anointed
Not the one you are annoyed with
You were wrong; I was so sure
Attentively I listened to you
In-and-out my ears your words flew
Silenced; Gave no value to you
Truth revealed strikes at my core
Awakening I newly have
With gained awareness of how bad
I took for granted what I had
A rolling tide erodes the shore
Alone I sit and think of when
We were not lovers just good friends
Fun times together that we’d spend
And from that my heart starts to soar
Reality then brings me back
Jolts like a sudden heart attack
A deep sharp pain gives me a whack
I scream until my lungs are sore
Can't fix the memories or replace
My nightmares wake me; Teary-faced
Past filled with guilt, shame and disgrace
Start questioning what life is for
Jan 11, 2018
Jan 11, 2018 at 11:33 PM UTC
What would you do if you saw a girl spending pennies and pearls on food?
She gobbles it up and then she barfs, which she thinks makes her feel good.
Later that night, with her conscious she'll fight as the guilt eats her for lunch
But she'll never tell of the story where of she went to after brunch.
May 26, 2018
May 26, 2018 at 9:08 PM UTC
I’m unemployed
And old enough to realize
That’s just not cool,
While kids around me
Friends of friends of parent's kids,
Are working their way
Into small names at big companies,
And it’s my job to clap for them,
To make them feel success
At selling out young,
While I give in all I have
All I’ve ever wanted
To live a dream
Worth chasing pennies for
Because I love the way
They click when they fall into
My piggy bank.
Mar 14, 2014
Mar 14, 2014 at 11:37 PM UTC
gee i like to think of dead it means nearer because deeper firmer
since darker than little round water at one end of the well it’s
too cool to be crooked and it’s too firm to be hard but it’s sharp
and thick and it loves, every old thing falls in rosebugs and
jackknives and kittens and pennies they all sit there looking at
each other having the fastest time because they’ve never met before
dead’s more even than how many ways of sitting on your head your
unnatural hair has in the morning
dead’s clever too like POF goes the alarm off and the little striker
having the best time tickling away everybody’s brain so everybody
just puts out their finger and they stuff the poor thing all full
of fingers
dead has a smile like the nicest man you’ve never met who maybe winks
at you in a streetcar and you pretend you don’t but really you do
see and you are My how glad he winked and hope he’ll do it again
or if it talks about you somewhere behind your back it makes your neck
feel pleasant and stoopid and if dead says may i have this one and
was never introduced you say Yes because you know you want it to dance
with you and it wants to and it can dance and Whocares
dead’s fine like hands do you see that water flowerpots in windows but
they live higher in their house than you so that’s all you see but you
don’t want to
dead’s happy like the way underclothes All so differently solemn and
inti and sitting on one string
dead never says my dear,Time for your musiclesson and you like music and
to have somebody play who can but you know you never can and why have to?
dead’s nice like a dance where you danced simple hours and you take all
your prickly-clothes off and squeeze-into-largeness without one word and
you lie still as anything in largeness and this largeness begins to give
you,the dance all over again and you,feel all again all over the way men
you liked made you feel when they touched you(but that’s not all)because
largeness tells you so you can feel what you made,men feel when,you touched,
them
dead’s sorry like a thistlefluff-thing which goes landing away all by
himself on somebody’s roof or something where who-ever-heard-of-growing
and nobody expects you to anyway
dead says come with me he says(andwhyevernot)into the round well and
see the kitten and the penny and the jackknife and the rosebug
and you
say Sure you say (like that) sure i’ll come with you you say for i
like kittens i do and jackknives i do and pennies i do and rosebugs i do
9.1k
When did Wishes become as commonplace as pennies in Fountains?
When did Unicorns stop dreaming?
In a place where Unicorns can Dream
And Stars are Paths
And Fat Orange Cats are Sullen Irish Dancing Potatoes
With Biscuit Legs and Waterfall Eyes
With an Everything complex
Due to feeling the Absence of all
Whilst having felt an overwhelming Nothing
And Ant Butt's full of Honey and Air
Pirouette and bend their slim Amber eyed head backwards
To see such hopeless Unicorns Dreaming of
Trollops and Almosts who don't know what Mermaids are
Mermaids that only Sing Underwater
And watch Sullen Irish Dancing Potato Boy
With Biscuit Legs and Waterfall Eyes
And an Everything complex
Because Garfield can't figure out
If Fat Orange Cat is okay with loving Selfish Harlot Mermaid
Or not
Maybe we should all just stay Honey-Eyed Harlots
And Hero Twin Flames
Maybe the penny can be a Wish
And the Star's dust pathways
And Unicorns can see black instead of Dreams.
Mar 19, 2012
Mar 19, 2012 at 9:05 PM UTC
Yellow is
a high-minded mood
the extravagance of sunlight
to be touched--
before long
by colors of play
____________
It is of hair
tendering golden sun
brown pennies for lemonade
____________
Yellow is
bumping into the screaming end
of a lit
cigarette
_____________
Yellow is
dripping from the eaves
onto an empty soup can
_____________
It is
spindling sparrow song
from highest perch on roof
his pitch can aspire
_____________
Yellow is
in rattled doorknob
an infant's sweet
voice wanting – in
Reciting menu
above mattress
edges into sleep
two dark eyes
plead
for yellow
waking
Mother into morning--
“juice.... eggs”
Yellow ____
is
opening a car door
at the shore's
unmistakable!
Smells of life
warmth and breeze
touching strings
those kites
of sense
harmonics
above the tone
octaves of excitement
to see to hear to touch to taste
to know
again –
the ocean of my mother
as she calms the waves,
ignores the pouts of us
with stuff to lug out to the beach
the towels, pails and shovels
Picnic basket, cooler
lotion, comic books, her magazines
Mom looks out
She is a good swimmer
Her glasses, dark
Preside
reflecting beauty –
“Take your sister's hand.”
Yellow are the squeals
Feet thrashing sand
of cannot wait
May 22, 2018
May 22, 2018 at 10:06 PM UTC
i don’t count aloud anymore.
i can't stand to hear your name,
such a common word.
it doesn't matter the context-
i still go quiet every time.
i used to pick up pennies, called them lucky.
i remember picking up a few
on our way back to your place.
nowadays i don't give them a second glance.
it's not their worth i've forgotten.
they say one is the loneliest number.
is that why you did it?
because you felt you’d earned it
after all this time being by yourself--
that you deserved it?
what about me,
did i?
i remember exactly what i wore that day:
short shorts, a big baggy t shirt.
i haven't worn those shoes since (and i so loved them).
they were these expensive purple velvet platforms;
i'd actually had to beg my mother to buy them for me.
"you better wear them", she warned.
that day i went home with you was
the first time i'd ever worn those shoes.
and the last.
sorry mom.
Feb 19, 2017
Feb 19, 2017 at 5:19 AM UTC
I Send my words hurling into your airway like swords
I bite off your tongue with every sharp response my body conjures
I have every witty comeback on speed dial to drill into your spine
The way your gays drilled into mine Pull old pennies from my pockets and throw them into your eyes
So you may not look at me the way you have for so long
You're are barely worth my pennies anyways
Here's a donation to your sorry ***
How about I grasp your neck, at just the right spot, just hard enough, to crush your voice box
To dwindle your air pipe just a little
So you cannot throw those trash comments at anyone else
How about I crack each of your fingers
Push them deep into your pockets
So that you can't feel anything without remembering me
You look at me like a mannequin in the window of your favorite retail store
You try yo put a price on what I'm worth
Maybe you can try me on
Throw me on the floor
Grab another
How about I tattoo my name on your chest
So that you cannot take off another piece of clothing
Take off another girl
Throw them in the floor
And not remember me
You will never throw me on the floor again
For I am permanently burned into your chest
How about I burn off each hair on your body
One at a time let it Sizzle down and sear the skin
Let each tiny poor feel the pain one at a time over and over and over again
Until you are left, raw
This
Is the day I speak back when you catcall me from across the street
Jul 4, 2018
Jul 4, 2018 at 7:21 PM UTC
Do you hate the way
that our magnetized times
turn us all to metal shavings--
push and pull--charged each
day to fill up negative space
with negative attraction?
Were you repulsed when polarities
changed?
Or was that me?
Flipping switches
switching sides
siding
with pivot points showing, caught
with pants down?
"Be a man now!"
While the female end
of the port calls out,
"Shipwreck! Shipwreck!
All men down!"
Count me out at minus 4
it leaves a balance: minus 3
At minus 10, our blood could freeze
and fall back earthward; blood red snow.
Caught on the tongue it tastes like pennies.
Tastes just like
the metal shavings
we become
in magnetized times.
Polarized
and "Family Sized." Underpaid
Overfed. Neutralized America.
Greatest country in the ******* world.
Right?
Jun 23, 2014
Jun 23, 2014 at 11:25 AM UTC
the red glow of her cigarette.
the fingers of her left hand
yellow with nicotine
clutching dying flowers
"buy a rose for your lover," she says,
"buy one for your wife. buy 2."
"the flowers are wilted."
"maybe it's your eyes that are wilted.
she had black hair
black as the night
the violent night
and gray eyes
the shade of ***** ice
"you must love
someone,
some of the time, no?
put a rose on
your father s grave, then."
"love is like lost pennies
falling from a broken jar."
she smooths her hair with one pale,
long, fingered hand, "you re crazy."
"my mom says so."
i was born to
have adventure
I followed her up the steps.
i was born to chase the night
through the forest
of dead roses.
Mar 30, 2021
Mar 30, 2021 at 4:16 PM UTC
EVERYBODY got ‘em a cell phone
pissant with not a nickel to pay his rent got him one
i ain’t got one or the quarter to use this pay phone
sittin’ there behind me waitin' for me to feed it
and hear that jingle like some slot machine that always pays out
temptin’ me like some shiny new toy
but i got two pennies and i ain’t even rubbin' them together
back then, back when nobody had no cell phone
i filed pennies down on the street to make them the size of dimes
when one of them dimes could by me a marshmallow pie
from a vendin’ machine at the bowlin’ alley
that ain’t there no more
but some cell phone store is
but that don’t matter
i don’t want no cell phone
i would like me one of them marshmallow pies
and an extra quarter to give this hungry phone
yesterday, some lady give me three quarters
and i give two of them to Jose to call his mama and sister
he gave me two smiles
i kept that other quarter to make a call
but couldn’t think of no number
or no soul
want to hear my voice
so i give that quarter to a little boy
who was all alone
and didn’t have no cell phone
Nov 7, 2011
Nov 7, 2011 at 8:33 PM UTC
at high noon
at a small college near the beach
sober
the sweat running down my arms
a spot of sweat on the table
I flatten it with my finger
blood money blood money
my god they must think I love this like the others
but it's for bread and beer and rent
blood money
I'm tense lousy feel bad
poor people I'm failing I'm failing
a woman gets up
walks out
slams the door
a ***** poem
somebody told me not to read ***** poems
here
it's too late.
my eyes can't see some lines
I read it
out-
desperate trembling
lousy
they can't hear my voice
and I say,
I quit, that's it, I'm
finished.
and later in my room
there's scotch and beer:
the blood of a coward.
this then
will be my destiny:
scrabbling for pennies in tiny dark halls
reading poems I have long since beome tired
of.
and I used to think
that men who drove buses
or cleaned out latrines
or murdered men in alleys were
fools.
5.4k
Kissing you was like swallowing
the salty, salty sea:
I have corals for ribs,
and seaweed limbs;
my bones are ship-wreck saves
and wishful pennies.
My heart is a sea-shell:
if you put your ear to it,
you’ll hear me screaming, shouting,
pining
for you.
Apr 11, 2015
Apr 11, 2015 at 6:04 PM UTC
The Miner, Absolom
(a haibun)
green hill where sheep graze
white bones and coal, buried, held
seasons all the same
My grandfather worked in the mines from age thirteen to seventy. His life was closed in by mountains, the green one at the back, the dark looming one at the front and the pit head along the valley., winding the men in and out of the shaft, day after day, dawn until dusk when they came home singing
boots ring on the road
deep valley voices echo
backyard starlit smoke
.
They worked on their bellies or crouched, often in water for days, water that undermines rock. Shaft collapses where frequent. Life was cheap. He came home covered in coal dust to his wife and two sons, sons he was determined to keep out of the mines. Yet he loved that coal - coal that he always polished with care before lighting a fire, brushing dust off black diamond surfaces.
water breaks through rock
with wood and straining shoulders
man becomes the beam
He saved twenty lives that day, men he had known from boyhood. When his lungs were affected they laid him off, no pay, no pension, no life. He bought an insurance book with the money he had and every day he trudged over the mountains and valleys gathering pennies that would help to secure some livelihood to the widows who lost their men in the mines. He never told his wife that when a family couldn't pay he put the pennies in for them rather than leave them unprotected.
winter, summer, fall
the mountain hangs over all
tired to the backbone
When the mines were nationalised my grandfather went straight back to the coal face despite his age. He wasn't going to miss those days of glory. Safety was suddenly the watchword and changes were made very fast. Hot showers were installed at the pit head and the miners came home clean at last.
men stripped to the skin
hot water, steam, baptised
brothers singing hymns
Jun 13, 2014
Jun 13, 2014 at 9:25 PM UTC
Before guns wore make-up,
We used to put pennies in our socks
So we’d always walk on the root of all evil.
Now Wall Street angels frolic through satellite clouds borrowed
from youths educated by universities of smoke and plastic bags.
(The tears of a child are homage to the waning gods)
For in a day not far away,
Over the painted moon of the Morning Son,
The sun will rise wearing the finest war scars money can buy.
And the screams of humanity will be heard from Venus,
Forgetting that the reciprocal of L-I-V-E itself is E-V-I-L
And perhaps death is the life meant to be lived.
Jan 9, 2013
Jan 9, 2013 at 6:01 PM UTC
Inflation, I tell you.
Back in my day, happiness was a stuffed bear,
Or finishing an ice cream before it melted down your arm.
And you came back with change.
Now it takes a life loan, entire people involved.
Might as well cost a first-born.
I hear they make it over-seas now, for pennies a day,
But I'm sure not paying any less for it.
Maybe if they subsidised it, like a good government,
I could afford three square smiles a day.
Hell, one would be nice.
I'll just have to work a second job
To afford being able to afford things.
That **** inflation,
Always driving up the price.
Jul 30, 2012
Jul 30, 2012 at 11:10 PM UTC
"In a row???" I ask, incredulous.
"Nah, man."
"Were you at least #37?"
"Well, yeah. But still that gets to me," he says. He starts counting change, playing with pennies on the glass counter.
"If you didn't see it, it didn't happen," I reply. I pull out a $5.00 bill.
"That's childish!" He looks at me like I'm a babbling idiot.
"That's my life!" It was my life.
"I can't believe you sometimes," he says. Nobody can, bud.
"You better start. I'm smarter than I look." I'm bluffing now; I'm a ******* idiot.
"Yeah, yeah. Do you wanna buy anything or not?" he goes back to his pennies on the glass counter.
"Yeah--Marlboro Reds," I reply hesitantly. For a moment I thought about Camels.
"$5.00 even." It's always $5.00 even when you're with friends.
"Alright."
"Shorts or 100s?"
**** man, shorts!" It's my turn to look at him like he's a total stranger.
"Just asking." He puts the bill in the register.
"Shorts say badass. 100s say suicide mission."
"I suppose you're right."
"It makes perfect sense!"
"Either way you're going to die."
"Yeah? So are you, buddy."
**** you."
I exit the convenience store, pack my Marlboro Reds, turn two up (one for luck, one for **** to be smoked lastly out of the pack) and light one.
Jun 14, 2014
Jun 14, 2014 at 10:03 PM UTC
In a fit of pique truths were written.
In a moment of reflection all was deleted.
Platitudes were written back instead.
Who am I to speak of the dead?
A wife was ungrateful with truth.
Did a pen pal want
what the sacred vows of marriage
Make unacceptable realities?
For whom would I have written? Who would it have pleased?
Staring at a fresh e-mail in humbled wonderment
that someone would give decent pretense to care
I -safely back from war- now ask: what do you want to know?
Do you really want to know?
Is it my place to tell
of seeing a man's insides
on the outside
of a vehicle who's occupants he unwittingly saved
by stepping on the landmine instead?
The mine splattered the survivors' vehicle in red.
Is it my place to tell
Of listening to the medic's confession?
Hearing him speak of tasting the blood in the air
like pennies on his tongue.
There's a tale I haven't heard sung!
I met my Shadow
I embraced him so deeply that I
As I had existed before
Ceased to be.
The naive child thinking it was Light
The Predatory Survivor others (cowards!) may judge as Dark
Were forged together
Stronger perhaps
Time will tell
As the alloy of two selves is unified by a personal hell
Cheering at outgoing steel rain
Laughing after the whizzing of bullets is a memory
Running, racing to donate more blood
Mourning the fallen while bathed in the dim red glow of chem lights
Watching honored corpses loaded in near darkness for their last helicopter flights
Is this what you wanted to hear?
Perhaps you knew.
Perhaps you imagined you knew.
Regardless
For your consideration
Thank you
For your innocent
Well-intentioned
Beautifully petty
Gloriously naive
And honest letters
Thank you.
Truly
Sep 19, 2013
Sep 19, 2013 at 6:18 PM UTC
I spend my love on you
like pennies tossed into empty fountains of youth -
like loose change loyally saved,
built up in a piggy bank,
a compilation of broken promises you never made
becoming blood clots in my lungs.
I would say they're in my heart
but I can't breathe when I see her.
Tax season is over and my savings continue
to drain -
they sit at your doorstep
waiting to be cashed in
for what I thought was an investment
but has become a liquidation of my entire being.
Empty wallets haven't caught wind of my addiction,
but the pennies on the ground talk.
Found heads down, I give them a voice,
and they, too, drown with the rest.
May 2, 2016
May 2, 2016 at 9:01 PM UTC
‘A festive song for thy ears’,
Sang the jovial busker;
Brimming with gratitude,
With pennies of silver
Or the coppers from well-worked hands,
The heavy gold of the rich;
Once weighed down pockets
Generously giving.
‘A festive song for thy hearts’,
Sang the jovial busker;
Playing with precision,
With clarity and care
Or the subtlety of pristine art,
The blending sound of the voice
Soothingly warming.
Feb 5, 2022
Feb 5, 2022 at 12:50 PM UTC