"pensions" poems
V.B. Wigglesworth wakes at noon,
Washes, shaves and very soon
Is at the lab; he reads his mail,
Swings a tadpole by the tail,
Undoes his coat, removes his hat,
Dips a spider in a vat
Of alkaline, phones the press,
Tells them he is F.R.S.,
Subdivides six protocells,
Kills a rat by ringing bells,
Writes a treatise, edits two
Symposia on "Will man do?,"
Gives a lecture, audits three,
Has the ***** club in for tea,
Pensions off an ageing spore,
Cracks a test tube, takes some pure
Science and applies it, finds,
His hat, adjusts it, pulls the blinds,
Instructs the jellyfish to spawn,
And, by one o'clock, is gone.
8.5k
full circle
I'm laying here with the window open listening to the rain for secrets or something or waiting for you to tell me what you haven't been telling me
like maybe there really is a girl out there with love in her eyes and flowers in her hair and her eyes are the kind of blue that is never mistaken for grey
she touches your chin before she kisses you, real softly or maybe she traces the spot above your lip where we all know angels rested their fingers before we were sent down here to rot or thrive
maybe you talk about gardens with her, how you'd never ever own an orchid cause that ***** ex of yours demanded one every hospital visit
how flowers aren't for boys but you'll pretend to watch football while you're really watching her bend down to touch the dirt like she used to smooth her baby brothers hair out of his little eyes
before their parents decided that it was more convenient to buy them a little apartment and keep money in the safe while they spent their pensions in Florida watching alligators and Dolphins and toucan ******* Sam but never at the same time
you see, I don't drink earl grey cause it tastes like fruit loops
and I don't eat fruit loops cause it tastes like the childhood I erased from my memory by forcing myself to dissociate
maybe this, is something else altogether
maybe this... is not true, another delusion, maybe your hands are busy counting change out for cardboard signs
maybe your feet move a little bit faster, not because you're in a rush to see someone who isn't me but because you're so scared of ending up back where you started
Apr 13, 2015
Apr 13, 2015 at 7:00 PM UTC
Tax the poor and reward the rich
This line should be reversed
But, the politicians always use this line
It's a line they have rehearsed
As soon as they are voted in
They give themselves a raise
When we question what they did this for
They just sit there in a daze
They use all sorts of doublespeak
To tell us all their reasons
For taxing poor and elderly
The rich are out of season
A few cents here, a nickel there
No one will notice that
While our old folks sit at home
Sharing tinned food with their cat
Tax the poor and reward the rich
This line should be reversed
But, the politicians always use this line
It's a line they have rehearsed
As soon as they are voted in
They give themselves a raise
When we question what they did this for
They just sit there in a daze
The veterans they are targets too
Their pensions get rolled back
They hit those who can't defend themselves
Or are too poor to fight back
They give out tax cuts to the rich
Big business gets the most
While our working poor are stuck at home
Finding new ways to serve toast
They sell our jobs and tax our lives
Until we're better dead
But then we can't afford to die
We've no place to lay our head
They sit in ivory towers
Looking down on those below
Wondering how to get more money in
How to make their pockets grow
The parties not in power
Try their best to make a change
But to do that, we need lots of help
Parliament must rearrange
The way the parties govern
The way they ***** the meek
There must be changes at the top
To help strengthen the weak
There's people on the system
Who worked hard and did their part
Now they can't afford an apple
Let alone the apple cart
Tax the poor and reward the rich
This line should be reversed
But, the politicians always use this line
It's a line they have rehearsed
As soon as they are voted in
They give themselves a raise
When we question what they did this for
They just sit there in a daze
So, at the next election
Don't just vote because you should
Go and vote for something different
Go and vote for something good
Because your parents vote one colour
And you choose to do that too
Is not a true democracy
You've a choice in what to do
If you're voting for the first time
Think real hard before you pick
All their promises look tasty
Until you give them a good lick
Remember how your grandpa
Said "It was much better when"
"We were treated fair and equally"
And it can be done again
So if Tax the poor and reward the rich
Is the motto that you choose
I hope that you'll rememer this
When you can't afford new shoes
The time to change what's wrong is now
Start giving money back
To those who can't afford to lose
The one's who fall between the crack
So tax the rich, reward the poor
Take the tax cuts all away
And make our seniors equal
Don't make them be the ones that pay.
May 13, 2012
May 13, 2012 at 7:46 PM UTC
A figure in the distance
lives on a monetary hill
by siphoning off pensions.
An absence of motive
for this hellish apparition.
Grandiose a la mode,
Slaves to inattention.
Pace yourself
Take your drugs
Sign for help
Relinquish us
Pampering lifestyles
of dying and self-destructing ones
spiraling into the light
disintegrating amongst the dance of suns.
Because eyes are always watching
taking notes on what you've become.
Jul 24, 2014
Jul 24, 2014 at 12:00 AM UTC
Vulnerable adult just what does it mean
Elderly left wanting or Adolescent special needs
Those without heating or those without food
Or because they are homeless no place to go
A woman alone on a dark night in the city
A guy in Paddington turning tricks
Vulnerable adult well it's me and you
Three days from anarchy no water no food
Scared of old age and what we will do
Our pensions are butchered our taxes are high
We are the vulnerable adults yes me and you
Goodbye merry England it's taken from you
Mar 22, 2013
Mar 22, 2013 at 7:27 PM UTC
A candidate from Springfield town
Confused, was wandering all around
He addressed the voters with a grin,
“I do not know what state I’m in,
But we're headed toward election day
And here's a game you all can play!"
The game is "Voting Booth Roulette"
Spin the wheel and place a bet
Put all your money down on me
I think as voters you'll agree
That a vote for me is a **** good bet
Here’s a list of what you’ll get:
Fewer jobs and
Higher taxes
Shredded emails, notes and faxes
Promises
That I won’t keep
Longer work hours
Much less sleep
Construction work on every road
Less money for the schools
More politician pensions, yes
Vote for me, my betting fools."
PwL 5/26/15
May 26, 2015
May 26, 2015 at 6:37 PM UTC
Working for our future
putting our money away
ready and waiting for our retirement day
Businesses closing
banks shutting
The world in recession
Pensions cutting
Working all our life
Never living free
I'll end up working until the day I die
you wait and see
No more money
It's all gone
Giving up our futures one by one
putting our money away
ready and waiting for our retirement day
Jun 9, 2014
Jun 9, 2014 at 12:12 PM UTC
***Always with the separate rooms, same separate landlocked pontoons. Another follow up, billow of rank stank air, stale like the calming still of shell shocked monsoons, into the deep dark abyss I stare-
Heightens my senses, that still begotten presence of quarantined ill begotten dimensions, left stark and in the dark with nothing but the whistling of our declining pensions-
Repentance ask it of yourself, there's always an extra bottle on the tippy top shelf, reach high, you don't have to lie now, go ahead and lay that lye down-
Corrosion never felt so **** good...***
Mar 17, 2013
Mar 17, 2013 at 12:29 PM UTC
Regular as clockwork
the spotters gather there
binoculars and notebooks
as up the track they stare
assembled on the platform
with all the day to spare
they put the world to rights
and wait without a care
clad in finest anorak
tweed caps are in this year
their fleecy inners covering
heads once thick with hair
Every day I see them
sometimes just a pair
shuffling on the concrete
sometimes with a chair
Pensions less than peanuts
Blame young Tony Blair
But everything forgotten
at sight of one thats rare
Life is breathed to tired legs
nostrils start to flare
sweaty palms note hastily
with eager thank you prayer
And oh the day the Queen came
They stood in open air
and cheered to see that engine
sweep in with royal flare
I'll not be hear to watch you
From comfy office chair
From now on I'll be missing
But I know you'll still be there
Jan 24, 2010
Jan 24, 2010 at 9:50 PM UTC
In fifty years, all my land
Might be swallowed whole by the glorious ocean
By means of erosion.
See? I do learn things in that concrete prison,
Where they raise concrete children, in a plaster mould
To fit their vision. Aren't I rebellious.
Tell me I'm brilliant, I am the future!
I am all you people's pensions, I choose your nursing home
Give me your money.
I am your investment. If I spend it on *******
That's your risk factor right there. No insurance policies dear.
I am reckless. Aren't I fabulous.
In fifty years, my nasal septum
Could be eroded by means of class A narcotics.
But there's always rhinoplasty.
And I'll be married to a big fat banker,
With comprehensive cover on all of my dreams
I'll divorce him for millions. Ingenious.
I'll be a plastic hollow Barbie,
Dripping with diamonds. I will be everything
That I ever stood against. Sitting
perched between two fingers delicately
The fat rich men will take drags on me
Until I am ashes. Old nicotine.
Mar 6, 2013
Mar 6, 2013 at 1:48 PM UTC
Time slips by me, wearing a disguise
I don't notice him stuffing my youth into a pocket as he passes.
Time slips by me and covers my eyes with magical glasses
So I don't notice the lines arriving on my face,
only
on the faces of others.
Time slips by and takes with it my friends' children, suddenly tall
Suddenly adult, suddenly married with children of their own.
Time slips and the hours turn to days turn to weeks turn into months and it is
suddenly
eight months since I touched you, since I kissed you, since we said goodbye.
Time went past and suddenly I am old,
Peering into misty autumn days, worrying about pensions and arthritis.
Time and tide wait for no one and the truth is that there has only ever been this moment... this now...
That even as I grasp hold of it, time snatched back into the past.
Remember when your grandmother told you time flies...tempus fugit... yesterday?
Time flies, it was forty, no forty-five years ago and
seven
seemed like an age to aspire to.
Living in the moment as we all have to do has dragged you to this place, and whether all your moments spill out of time's pocket at the moment of your death and parade past you in their toe-curling glory, or whether they simply fade into the winds of eternity at your passing...
remember to live before you die, experience the moments that you have to come and
breathe
in the pleasure of living.
Tomorrow and tomorrow are unravelling from the tapestry of time,
all you can do as they pass you by and ****** your moments away is to be alert to their passing and
kiss
the ones you love.
May 15, 2012
May 15, 2012 at 7:15 AM UTC
Is an old poem of mine that I tender to you to turn your mind away for just, even just, a few minutes from the sadness and the depression that I read about in poem after poem. I am an old man whose sighs are recorded in the lines on his hands. It will be better. You will be loved.
Be brave.
Lead to Gold, Philosopher to Poets
When the philosophers abandoned
castle turrets for ivory towers,
lost was the secret of
I and thou,
of turning lead to gold,
but these cagey, canny scholars in new residences,
who traded
perspicacity for pensions,
before they left,
they tasked to the poets,
a singular task,
cloaking them in a life long responsibility
charging them as follows:
Be the harpooners of the unexamined life,
with unfettered rhaposdy,
exhort the loopy
to light candles of illusions,
canonize the nursing mothers to deliver us
the kinder Ishmael's who will revel,
lead us with warmth and apprehension,
with the strength of sinews
fixed and flexible,
we will believe and
they will teach the rest of us
that the first commandment
is to empathize.
**with clinical observation,
dense and demanding,
make us laugh at
the comedy of our situation,
the comedy of our conscience,
our free to see,
the peep show of us,
explicate and deconstruct
our unexamined lives,
help us to extend the boundaries,
record the voyages of our timepieces,
declare us all free and victors,
file away the chains of language
and declare us all poets**
Aug 4, 2013
Aug 4, 2013 at 12:43 AM UTC
Tucked away in the edge of the trees
Roses round the door
The old greyish thatched roof
A haven for small birds and little things
The old couple who lived there always had a smile and a kind word
They didn't have much else living on just their pensions
I used to walk past there and always there would be the aroma of fresh baked bread
A home made pork pie cooling on the window ledge
Occasionally as a kid I would go round and feed their chickens
Collect the eggs
My reward a home made cake and a mug of sweet milky tea
As they grew older and more frail
I would dig over their vegetable garden
And saw a few logs
But that old man was fiercely independent and still insisted
On doing much of the work himself
Then one wet foggy day I saw the ambulance heading to the cottage
He had collapsed and died near the front door
Natural causes they said
The old lady died just two days later
That old couple had been together for more than seventy years
Together in life and wouldn't be separated by death
Dec 10, 2014
Dec 10, 2014 at 2:26 PM UTC
Between you, me, and everyone in this society
I am not currently smoking leaves or burning trees
But if I was puffing up smoke like the Beatles
Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, and Bob Marley did
Not snorting coke like our former president
But if I lit up at home when I was alone to get ******
If I had a pound or more of natural plant goods
The kind that Mother Nature made with her green wisdom
The kind that help chemo’s patients and other victims
Of social, physical, emotional, and spiritual ailments
It is not the state’s or the patrolmen’s business
They shouldn’t get me locked up then put me on parole
Then on some list so I can’t get government assistance
When I was just trying to ease life’s tension
And I have to mention we need freedom
From prison as a profit type business
Locking up children for drug offenses
Turning young men into harden criminals
While people making a hundred grand or more
Do not get punished for their narcotics store
Cops keep picking on the poor when they should hunt for
White supervisors who run and ruin other people’s lives
Those punk mother ****** telling lies
Using the law to steal other people’s houses and pensions
Making drug offenses look like a pittances
But the poor have poor defenses
And the rich ***** our lives like it is a business
Because it is their business to make money from our suffering
So why don’t they go on a hunt for the white rich ***** punk
And leave the poor *** smoking people alone
Jul 8, 2015
Jul 8, 2015 at 10:09 PM UTC
The ashes of our loved ones are blown in the wind,
The blood of our siblings fill the streets,
Politicians we elected rob us, with impunity,
Working tirelessly to reduce us to bits;
They **** our soldiers- our dearly beloved brothers,
Send them to a war which they themselves create,
They have underarmed the soldiers but arm the enemy,
Their callousness and negligence- we cannot underestimate;
Their is no one to speak for us- no one at all,
They sit in their noble seats lobbying for themselves,
They fill their homes with the resources of our people,
While these people are left with little to fend for themselves;
Our educational system has been brought to ruin,
Medical system is now in a deplorable state,
Fund looting is now the order of the day,
To impoverish my people even further is all they debate;
Our security operatives are those that **** us more,
Our hearts are always filled with fear when they come our way,
They maim and **** even when we protest for justice,
Who then should we run to when killers come our way?
The minority among us are disenfranchised,
Jobs belonging to our youths have been stolen away,
Those who create jobs for themseves earn too little to live by,
The pensions of pensioneers are hijacked day by day;
Our bills are on the increase while salaries remain the same,
The salaries of some are slashed day by day,
In the midst these difficulties is the firing of workers,
As wages become burdensome for companies to pay;
I pray that youths like me will open their eyes and see,
That all we have is ourselves not these enemies,
If this lesson is learnt we will quit fighting eachother,
And tolerate one another- finding ways to sustain peace;
Shall this oppression continue while we stand and watch?
No- we will rise and create a new era of representatives?
A people who will be elected from our very own,
People of our own generation to replace these theives.
Dec 1, 2016
Dec 1, 2016 at 12:17 AM UTC
<soft spoken intro>
...see your still here again,
.....think your still welcome here?
...here,
huh
Closed our mills, took our jobs, put in down our throats,
Fed us lies, took the pensions, thought we were a joke,
Media all bia's -steal my sentence, voted 'ere to revoke,
Cratering down! Cratering down the steepest slope!
*We're taking you, out back and to the side,
Gonna be a genocide...*
*We're taking you, out back and to the side,
Gonna be a genocide...*
White people,
are raging, against,
The Machine..
So Welcome, welcome...welcome...
To The Machine...
Floyd
I once woke up covered in blood on my parent's steps,
My truck was miles away on the side of the road.
*We're taking you, out back and to the side,
Gonna be a genocide...*
Jan 5, 2017
Jan 5, 2017 at 11:22 PM UTC
Hello there, come in .
Welcome to the world of broken rocks
Air filled with thoughts,
Inferno's of Nature.
Interwoven, ever-still flowing, making fluid resonance
Split apart, into more complex creations
Melds of clay, resided in soulful intention,
Building up life filled, so called pensions
I'd call them more, a well full of worthwhile meh - mer - rants
Sifted through an instant blink of lives constraints.
States of one's loss in harmless consideration,
Yet alert simultaneously,
Sleeping inside awake.
Resides the content of your mind
Visions of the life you have chosen to create.
The paths walked, free or through fates. . .
Nov 21, 2014
Nov 21, 2014 at 8:14 PM UTC
By Arcassin Burnham
In all seriousness I've became what I was
Afraid of being in the beginning,
Was never in the line of winning,
Been a loser all my life while making
Choices that create the bad moments,
That I Almost forgot about sinning,
In all seriousness, I'm starting realize that
Life and love is shorter than our fingertips
That reach the stars whenever we need
Jesus,
And they say "you're very blunt aren't you?"
And I say well take a walk in my shoes
Theres nothing worse than fresh Cuts,
/
I could die a thousand deaths but at my own
Expense,
Gotta pay the price to make it right with Moses again,
There will always be some recarnation of anything that you fear or you
Cherished while your life was at the beginning stages playing
Constant melodies and buying into propaganda,
Lines are being crossed for taking everything you stand for with a set
Of hands and a heavy heart who has ya',
So listen to the paster cause he knows the trials that come with living,
Giving you obstacles and lower pensions,
There's no God like the god I know that is based on ascension,
Death only settles the score not a cost of extension.
Sep 6, 2016
Sep 6, 2016 at 12:38 PM UTC
The waters stagnant
The wind won’t blow
National laryngitis
And no one knows
And no one sees
Our generations so empty
Were apathetic
So unoriginal and bleak
We haven’t got a voice
We haven’t got a face
Where’s the infinity?
Come on evolution pick up the pace
Where’s the great poets?
Where’s the philosophers?
Abstract artists
All I see are pretentious mindless shoppers
We are the future
We are tomorrow
So let us all bring light
And forego the sorrow
No pensions
Just tension
No security
Conformity
They don’t care
They don’t see
They want what’s now
And what’s trendy
Fakes and phonies they surround me
Actors leading false lives
How oh how will
Our generation survive?
Dec 3, 2013
Dec 3, 2013 at 5:34 PM UTC
That silly flood made me
Tread all the way down
Here.
Political pensions over.
Spent on pens and ties.
Bipartisanship is basically
A commandment now. They’re
Only there because they have to be, I say.
They would send relief,
Should I wait a week so the
Check don’t bounce? I
Know how that goes. They
Got a profit on us anyway.
They’re checkbook turned to
Chicken scratch, more like chicken ****
We’ll see how that goes.
At least I got time to locate
My house that floated off its
Hinges a few miles south.
*Note: these next poems I’m posting are going to be more political because it’s a project I am writing for a conference.
Jan 16, 2013
Jan 16, 2013 at 11:21 AM UTC
I used to love his dark T-shirts
such that
words in my language turned into hieroglyphs
nor, cer, dor
there were some dreams about
myself as a she creature
who didn't know the difference
between body and soul
endings and beginnings
his blood was unstoppable
foretelling my future
oblivious of all the serious things
like deserted crossroads, eager pensions or
sand storms on Mars
he promised my death to me
like a haiku:
more core less sore
happy woman
poppies in the wind
Aug 26, 2017
Aug 26, 2017 at 4:23 PM UTC
Who says being a Senior Citizen makes us old?
Put on the brakes with a moment of hold
We have worked all our life
We should be retired and relax in stride
We earned our Social Security which is our expenses that Social Security provides
Senior Citizens do have rights
We are designated and don’t have to act polite
It is god that redeems our light
Washington, DC wants to take away in thinking we don’t need
Social Security and Pensions is how we proceed
We are not asking the House of Representative to do a good deed
We do have Medicare power
It is our provider regardless of the hour
All Washington, DC wants to do is be sour
Washington, DC has no plan of its own
The Senior Citizens just want to be left alone
The Multitude of Seniors voices that want to wake up the Capitol
It’s a battle worth communicating about
“Seniors in strength, and voice having an Old Age High”
We are the why and we are in Washington, DC’s face in the “I”
Don’t touch what you don’t understand
This is the Senior Citizen demand
Our fight has been going on throughout the land
So President Trump recognize us Senior Citizens
You are a Senior Citizen yourself
We will not allow you taking away
It is not ok
No you cannot have your own way
We Senior Citizens have the experience and endurance
Our voices conclude being our assurance.
Nov 8, 2017
Nov 8, 2017 at 3:43 PM UTC
How can this be allowed for our people
worked all their lives.
Trying to save for their own retirement
and reap the rewards.
They labour hard and toil over the years
finding they can't as it nears!
Eroded away the money they thought was safe
wrongly by employers.
Government changes depleting their nest eggs
then having to work longer.
Pensions worth far less than they'd expected
many retirements affected!
Placed on the stock market by speculators
too much squandered.
As it's not their own money to fritter away
to get it will take longer.
Not able to retire on the original date
some may not last the wait!
Unaffected are the wealthy usual story
they never lose out.
Richer by the day without any idea
from their high perch.
Viewing the masses in total disarray
gloating it makes their day!
The Foureyed Poet.
Feb 17, 2012
Feb 17, 2012 at 6:53 AM UTC
Cats eyes line the meanders, drifting off right, wondering left.
Clutching fog lamps, casting back a luminous dot to dot;
morse code decorated trenches: cracks in the trails ahead.
White noise peters in as waves crack the shore,
salt water droplets - tortoise and hare; that game
you played as a kid willing the underdog to win.
The dogs on his back in the backseat, legs in the air.
Underneath him the blanket you wore the first time
we jumped from the pier to the sea, a pair of young fools
romantically free, not strung to the walls of marital tension,
mortgage loans, pensions pressing the wind out your lungs
and life out your heart; the bond we shared has drifted apart.
Crash on the land, the pounding waves;
gush of the tides shivers down your braids.
One hand on the wheel, one hand on yours
you take it away as we brush past the moors.
Rumble over rubble, our suspension knocks
wooden slats creek as we speed past the docks.
Turn to me teary eyed nostalgia, I swerve between the bench
and the toll booth, two dodgy dogs notice running and flailing,
as the last fence approaches. The tiniest movement, a twitch
of the wrist could take a toll on our carriage of bliss.
The carnage we left, lit from the west
your glistening pupils and rain soaked vest
tinted gold from the sunlight and pink
from the sky. The clouds above part as prepared,
those adulterous pedigrees, tore our peace treaty
your cuffed hand reaches over muffled screeches
that beloved mut in-the-back, most bedraggled
of creatures howls as you pull the hand break
twist the wheel our tires carve etches.
At the end of the structure, we howl with the dog,
and the tyre with all the punctualness rendered
functionless with two deep punctures
hisses and sinks with much of a muchness.
Mar 27, 2014
Mar 27, 2014 at 6:37 AM UTC
The Wealthy must pay their fair share
Here in the “Golden State”
Fifty three percent or so
Here by the golden Gate.
They will likely move to Utah
where the skiing’s just as great.
We rule by Proposition,
It’s Democratic and it’s fair!
But when we have to pay for Pensions
It seems the money isn’t there.
California pays its workforce
with Golden I.O.U’s.
We hope Obama bails us out
Before they all come due.
Our growing Mexican population
plans for la Reconquista.
They smile as each old ****** dies
They mutter “Hasta La vista”
Governor Moonbeam’s back in charge,
The Terminator’s gone
Pelosi’s back in Washington
What could possibly go wrong?
Dec 30, 2012
Dec 30, 2012 at 1:02 PM UTC