"pittance" poems
BLESSED be this place,
More blessed still this tower;
A ****** arrogant power
Rose out of the race
Uttering, mastering it,
Rose like these walls from these
Storm-beaten cottages --
In mockery I have set
A powerful emblem up,
And sing it rhyme upon rhyme
In mockery of a time
HaIf dead at the top.
Alexandria's was a beacon tower, and Babylon's
An image of the moving heavens, a log-book of the
sun's journey and the moon's;
And Shelley had his towers, thought's crowned powers
he called them once.
I declare this tower is my symbol; I declare
This winding, gyring, spiring treadmill of a stair is my
ancestral stair;
That Goldsmith and the Dean, Berkeley and Burke
have travelled there.
Swift beating on his breast in sibylline frenzy blind
Because the heart in his blood-sodden breast had
dragged him down into mankind,
Goldsmith deliberately sipping at the honey-pot of his
mind,
And haughtier-headed Burke that proved the State a
tree,
That this unconquerable labyrinth of the birds, cen-
tury after century,
Cast but dead leaves to mathematical equality;
And God-appointed Berkeley that proved all things a
dream,
That this pragmatical, preposterous pig of a world, its
farrow that so solid seem,
Must vanish on the instant if the mind but change its
theme;
Saeva Indignatio and the labourer's hire,
The strength that gives our blood and state magnani-
mity of its own desire;
Everything that is not God consumed with intellectual
fire.
III
The purity of the unclouded moon
Has flung its atrowy shaft upon the floor.
Seven centuries have passed and it is pure,
The blood of innocence has left no stain.
There, on blood-saturated ground, have stood
Soldier, assassin, executioner.
Whether for daily pittance or in blind fear
Or out of abstract hatred, and shed blood,
But could not cast a single jet thereon.
Odour of blood on the ancestral stair!
And we that have shed none must gather there
And clamour in drunken frenzy for the moon.
IV
Upon the dusty, glittering windows cling,
And seem to cling upon the moonlit skies,
Tortoiseshell butterflies, peacock butterflies,
A couple of night-moths are on the wing.
Is every modern nation like the tower,
Half dead at the top? No matter what I said,
For wisdom is the property of the dead,
A something incompatible with life; and power,
Like everything that has the stain of blood,
A property of the living; but no stain
Can come upon the visage of the moon
When it has looked in glory from a cloud.
37k
There is something magical
in the whirring
of a midday laundromat.
A cessation of pride,
maybe.
People all dressed in sweatpants
the air full of detergent smell
and the sound of coins clicking
against great tumblers
as they go round
and round
and round
and round...
The people smile back,
no use pretending superiority here.
Whistlers twitter on, folding towels and socks into neat, organized piles.
The children are well behaved,
their hands full of potato chips
given by their parents as a pittance for their patience.
The patient patrons
ponder on,
their empty hands crumpling receipts.
This, with the crunching of chips
and the distant whistle
over the percussion of clicking
coins clattering
in a dryer
compose an unintentional opera,
an ode to humility.
Humility's honorable honesty heals humanity's hubris.
Noisy trucks pass outside the floor-to-ceiling plate glass windows,
Where the hot air wreaks its violence
and men make their ways
in spite.
Oct 6, 2014
Oct 6, 2014 at 5:00 PM UTC
I'm not too lucky when I gamble
I lose more than I win
I would probably do better
If I tossed my money in a bin
Gambling is not just luck
It's timing and some skill
Some gamble for the fun of it
Some gamble for the thrill
To define exactly what it means
To risk money that you've earned
Means throwing out sensible thought
And not heeding what you've learned
For example, I played poker
And I lost most every cent
I lost my mortgage payment
Now, I'm living in a tent
To win it back I chose to go
And bet double at the track
The first horse that I bet on
Fell and broke his back
The second horse was scratched
I was in for a bad night
My fifth horse only had three legs
And he could just turn right
The next one had a jockey
Who's eyes were badly crossed
I won't tell you how he finished
But, I'll tell you that he lost
To gain back my small pittance
I went to the greyhound track
My first dog had a rider
A small monkey on his back
In the third race I got daring
And I bet on number three
Once the race got started
He had to stop and ***
I picked a dog in the fifth race
Just because I liked his name
It was the best one I had ever heard
"I'MBETYOU'RESORRYTHATYOUCAME"
The odds were long but what the hell
I was now gambling just for fun
Not only did he catch the rabbit
My ****** dog had won
I think I've got the secret now
I know just how to win
If I get tempted to go back and bet
I'll throw my money in the bin.
Sep 6, 2012
Sep 6, 2012 at 5:16 PM UTC
1081
Superiority to Fate
Is difficult to gain
’Tis not conferred of Any
But possible to earn
A pittance at a time
Until to Her surprise
The Soul with strict economy
Subsist till Paradise.
5.7k
My soul is as grey
As the weather outside
All I see are dark clouds
For ******* miles and ******* miles
The puddles on the floor
And discarded cigarettes
Finding myself reflecting over
One of many of my life's regrets
Where did it all go wrong?
Or where do I even begin?
The edge of that bridge looks nice
I might go for a swim
(splash)
Flashing lights in the distance
Thinking of a mere existence
Addiction and no resistance
Born with nothing
And leaving with a pittance
Feb 15, 2024
Feb 15, 2024 at 6:33 AM UTC
It is like some steampunk nightmare
Where working overtime is a racket
When what was time and a half pay
On the day I get my check, I make less;
Some kind of tax bracket scam thing
Where working extra hours put me
Into another category and increased
The tax they use to grease the wheels
Of a bloated government that hates me.
Maybe that dates me and it isn’t true;
That things have changed and it is
No longer arranged that way. And maybe
The way things became done was that
I got it all back as a refund. But isn’t that
Redundant, that I had to pay it to them
To use it like per diem for their games?
The shame is that I chafed and did nothing
Besides ******** and frothing at the mouth.
It’s not like I could go south to Ensenada,
Buy a piñata that looked like Mickey Mouse,
It was just that the house always wins.
But I have to pay for my tiny, mundane sins.
Why don’t they? Why does it go on and on
And then the money’s gone and I pay more
The next time some fat ***** of a politician
Begins a petition to increase their slice
And nicely reduce ours to a pittance
So low there is no admittance to a show
Or enough to replace a car that is a wreck?
The albatross around my neck gets larger
As it I move farther from the day it died
Even though I have tried standing up straighter.
It’s The Grand Guignol Theatre that life is
And the strife is to not let it get me down;
To be the happy clown and not the sad one
In a game that was begun to make me lose.
I am not confused. I see it, but it seems
Even in dreams I get no kind of relief
From a governmental thief with immunity;
The pillages with impunity and teases
That he does what he pleases. Neener, neener
What in hell could possibly be meaner?
May 3, 2015
May 3, 2015 at 6:32 AM UTC
we'm from the valleys,
high in wales,
dull as donkeys,
hard as nails.
torvaen town,blaenavon gwent,
council caves,that some pay rent.
black and white tellys,
run on gas,
houses wiv lectric,is upper class.
we shoplift in winter,
cos summers no good,
you can't wear coats,
you can't wear hoods.
we once mined coal,
made steel and iron,
honest hardmen,
pittance relied on.
now thats all gone,
thro government bullies,
now hoodies steal goodies,
from tesco and woolies.
valley boy logic,
philosophy real,
all good fings come.
....to those who steal.
Feb 24, 2010
Feb 24, 2010 at 9:58 AM UTC
In this Developed Nation, a 19 year old woman sleeps in a bag in a door way.
In this Developed Nation, a working family of four relies on the local food bank.
In this Developed Nation, grandmothers live on a pittance and die lonely.
In this Developed Nation, my friends use drugs to fill a spiritual chasm.
In this Developed Nation, stateless refugees are kept in cages while processed.
In this Developed Nation, slave labour is abolished, but persists.
In this Developed Nation, the media patronizes and panders to the lowest common denominator.
In this Developed Nation, the unscrupulous employers bulldoze workers rights.
In this Developed Nation, the population is kept divided and ineffective.
In this Developed Nation, ‘I’m not a racist...but...’
In this Developed Nation, black people are stop/searched nine times more than whites.
In this Developed Nation, under four percent of **** reports end in conviction.
In this Developed Nation, seventeen percent of adults take anti-depressants.
In this Developed Nation, suicide is the biggest killer of men under fifty.
In this Developed Nation, children cut themselves to relieve pain.
In this Developed Nation, I’m a snowflake if I care.
What has this Nation Developed into?
Aug 16, 2020
Aug 16, 2020 at 10:41 AM UTC
I would rather you kept the change than reward my hard work with pittance. On second thought...I'll take it. Thanks.
Sep 10, 2013
Sep 10, 2013 at 2:32 PM UTC
J R died
I guess many cried
J R Ewing, Larry Hagman,
son of Broadway’s Peter Pan
offspring of a famous clan
I guess a decent man
another J R died, Jenny Rae
I guess many cried
but not likely fans from afar
perhaps
her nephew in the corner bar
when he recalled
through his wine soaked haze
younger days, when his Jenny Rae
would meet him payday
and give him a five she earned
keepin’ those old folks alive
well, cleanin’ up their slop
may not have been keeping anybody alive
but she did it just the same
even long after the cancer came
and pain buckled her over on the bus,
she kept goin’
smiling at their ancient vacant stares
when she could
when she was gone
when she passed,
curled up like a baby in that noisy ER
there were no headlines about that J R
only another wretched woman
paid to clean up slop
who hunkered faithfully over her mop
to wipe up the remnants of Jenny Rae
to earn her pittance of pay
perhaps for another nephew
or other lost son of an angry day
Nov 24, 2012
Nov 24, 2012 at 1:11 PM UTC
I work in a coffee shop
For little more than sight
The sight of those who enter
At midday
Those that don't work
Their faces lined like
Maps fully filled
They come in to talk
Those that can't work
The sight of the infant in
The man who is led within
They come in to be somewhere
And those who do work
Their lines only filled a little
But I know they will be unchanging
They come in to earn a pittance
And me
I can leave
I am so unexplored, but
It's easy to imagine life ending here
In the coffee shop
Dec 6, 2014
Dec 6, 2014 at 4:45 AM UTC
Here lies, whom hound did ne'er pursue,
Nor swiftewd greyhound follow,
Whose foot ne'er tainted morning dew,
Nor ear heard huntsman's hallo',
Old Tiney, surliest of his kind,
Who, nurs'd with tender care,
And to domestic bounds confin'd,
Was still a wild Jack-hare.
Though duly from my hand he took
His pittance ev'ry night,
He did it with a jealous look,
And, when he could, would bite.
His diet was of wheaten bread,
And milk, and oats, and straw,
Thistles, or lettuces instead,
With sand to scour his maw.
On twigs of hawthorn he regal'd,
On pippins' russet peel;
And, when his juicy salads fail'd,
Slic'd carrot pleas'd him well.
A Turkey carpet was his lawn,
Whereon he lov'd to bound,
To skip and gambol like a fawn,
And swing his **** around.
His frisking wa at evening hours,
For then he lost his fear;
But most before approaching show'rs,
Or when a storm drew near.
Eight years and five round rolling moons
He thus saw steal away,
Dozing out all his idle noons,
And ev'ry night at play.
I kept him for his humour's sake,
For he would oft beguile
My heart of thoughts that made it ache,
And force me to a smile.
But now, beneath this walnut-shade
He finds his long, last home,
And waits inn snug concealment laid,
'Till gentler **** shall come.
He, still more aged, feels the shocks
From which no care can save,
And, partner once of Tiney's box,
Must soon partake his grave.
2.3k
Work your fingers raw for a pittance
and you wish one day to bid good riddance
to your destiny,
good riddance to your destiny
Looking up you see them grinning down
but ask why they keep winning
and they'll label you the enemy
they'll label you the enemy
So you've got three kids and you're ******
because your salary's been cut
and you're burning up the furniture
you're burning up the furniture
Well they can trace their ****** blood generations
and their current lordly station
is their holy primogeniture
it's their holy primogeniture
You can sing and dance apologise and grovel
You can mark your x and **** off to the hovel
that you'll never own
the hovel that you'll never own
Meanwhile they will never leave the school
that tells them they are born to rule
till we vote the buggers on the throne
we vote the buggers on the throne
This land ain't your land
this land ain't my land
not the Glasgow dockyard
nor the empty Highland
this land is their land
it's bleed you dry land
and you'll be laid to rest here
beneath the wonder why land.
Nov 2, 2012
Nov 2, 2012 at 2:47 PM UTC
I sit on my **** by the fireside chair
and talk the mill talk to the calender man
but he doesn't care
he just watches his gauges and pressures
how precious he is
to the factory owner who allows him to live
on a pittance each week.
And while he clothes the World
in his mind he would seek
a botany bay
where his ancestors lay
and put roots in that ground.
The sound of the press, blocks the sound from the bell
just as well
because that ringing in his ears is not the bite from the future
but the teeth in the fears of his past
and another bolt of cloth has been passed by the foreman
and ticked off the list that he keeps in a book
to read to the crook who works in accounting
and pushed to the double entry
in another book amounting to
daylight robbery
but the snobbery of the age is another page set
in the mill town you get
****** all.
The fine hall's for the Master and all you survey
are the ruins that lie in the ruins of another day.
Get away
to get away and walk through a gateway into a better day
but the Devil you know is the Devil you pay and what would he say
if you jacked in the mill
and worked down the mines
better times indeed?
Jun 17, 2013
Jun 17, 2013 at 4:12 AM UTC
A tiger at the zoo.
Violent, impulsive, and insatiably ferocious;
To be feared, surely dangerous?
Aging in captivity, he watches the people walk by; who mostly are thankful at him safely set apart from others.
A woman pauses in front of his predicament, and thinks," What folly is this? For I do not fear the untamed, I will test him and encroach upon his pride."
Her reasoning unclear, she approaches that cage;
Not caring whether for her safety, or his-
To **** into action, something that may or may not be safe.
I watched this from some distance, and thought,
"Will she push too far and his animalistic savagery will overcome, to fatally satiate her curiosity?
Or, will he give it no thought at all and soon expect his scheduled pittance of flesh to devour?"
After all, I reasoned, he is still a tiger.
I watched intently. And waited...
Mar 5, 2013
Mar 5, 2013 at 3:17 AM UTC
wax runs slowly from his candle
as ink flows freely from his pen
daydreams stretched out on his anvil
where each word he hammers into rhythm
with skill he’s tooling an ode of mourning
beside his fire lies a sonnet undone
paintings of prose around him are scattered
and unframed verses his walls adorn
a haiku sweet graces his table
a ballad long covers his floor
his home already filled to overflowing
one wonders if there is room for more
he’s unable to sell them, try as he might
though each skillfully crafted is a work of art
still driven he labors long into the night
his blood turns to ink as he pours out his heart
down at the market where men sell their wares
poems fetch only a penny a line
he’s chosen a craft that a pittance pays
he’ll have to settle for a book of rhymes
his inkwell low he walks down to the store
where he refills his stock of whiskey and wine
exchanging his farthings for bread and butter
and a chance at a glance of a fair lass fine
she, his inspiration, and fuel to his fire
yet she’ll ne'er know, she’s his psalm to be sung
so on marches time and their verse can't be written
for his words flow on page, just not from his tongue
so the wax keeps running from his candle dim
the ink from this wordsmith continues to flow
his daydreams he hammers over his anvil
but prose they might have written we’ll never know
Oct 6, 2013
Oct 6, 2013 at 2:29 PM UTC
By faced tenderness
so had the brooks let you ride
between the shores that you did miss
to landscapes of night
by faced tenderness
Still wandering and unseen
you had been caught by the lands
sunk near the hidden scene
in flooding of dark, in the flood without ends
still wandering and unseen
A lover is left at the railing
we don't know there no tender face
for she broke tenderness once by stealing
the poor mortal ladies' waves of their grace
But I had heard someone said
you spread out your legs and made them sold
to the water sprites who felt too cold
A small pittance of love not so bad
was helping you until your death.
Oct 28, 2015
Oct 28, 2015 at 2:41 AM UTC
Age is impending.
The hobbit hole is gloomy.
The pittance in the pocket is not enough for tea.
The bus is curling down the street,
a slow worm on wheels.
So this is how it feels.
Out of work.
Out of pay.
Another day the pockets, they will be lined with wealth.
The daily pleasantries of helping fellows back to health.
A heart, a soul as thus united.
A world of work for the excited.
(c) Livvi
Oct 7, 2014
Oct 7, 2014 at 5:01 AM UTC
Poverty,
food in the reclamation yard.
Life's tough,
it's hard to be full of energy when
the meter is empty and all you see
are the toffs who scoff at society.
Poverty,
cardboard caskets in the cemetery.
There's a niche between the have and the have nots,
the place they throw away food and it rots,
bread, bread but not for the dead and the mould
we can give to the weary and old,
it's share and share and **** them, they don't count
and we don't care.
Circumstance gives a fat chance and the fat cats get the fat other than that all is well for the poor and the needy who dwell in the dark because the meter is empty.
Poverty,
in the park, on the bench, what a stench,
why don't they bathe, why don't they shave, why don't they save the pittance they get or better yet why give them a pittance, give them ****** all?
Poverty,
call for ticket number forty three, your benefits have changed please come to booth B.
We are being outsourced to be the dampcourse in some old Etonian duck pond, all expenses paid by another raid on the 'workshy' who in any case will get by
because we're all in this together dontya know.
Poverty
is just a name they use to defuse the ticking bomb,
castigate the poor, exonerate the rich,
build another workhouse and life's not such a *****
We know differently, we who live poverty, we who see inequality but we still and will
**** for a dime.
Jul 2, 2015
Jul 2, 2015 at 7:14 AM UTC
the crude graffito bites
and my mind's eye ;
to bonsai the Venus trap -
becomes the fly
on the gall... where cinder blocks
crop my stroll with an odd
wall.
and i stare at the industrial
pittance of delinquent scrawl
punk spittal blistering
the bland strip mall.
i ponder the grit
and the feral **** of the blue nymph
with no bra. her two left hands
harassing her cannon *****
a can of spray
where paint had been
now at my feet
faint and spent. just seen
as i stepped back...
i verify it's emptiness
by the tenor
of it's
clack.
i walk away
savoring the irony
of just
that.
Jun 5, 2013
Jun 5, 2013 at 8:05 AM UTC
I played and was betrayed for a pittance
Stayed in the parade out of persistence
Gave up all charades of any resistance
This is how I earned my own existence
By selling myself by shelling my soul
One inch of survival a day for no self determination
One loaf of bread to let them make me hollow
One stream of **** to shovel from this hovel
I prayed for redemption stayed in this place
Strayed from my potential to maintain my space
Let them flay me alive till my empathy was displaced
And I became a clone of their perfect human race
Just a shadow self of everyone else with no voice
And no real face
Dec 6, 2014
Dec 6, 2014 at 10:13 AM UTC
6 more cigarettes, she counts,
rationing her existence.
Finding something to need other than sleep is refreshing.
She can hear his voice
through the walls
and she inhales deeply.
She needs the smoke to blacken her lungs
as a small pittance of retribution, reflecting the blackness she holds in her heart.
And, as she exhales,
she lets the smoke burn
her eye
as she watches watches it coil
and curl away.
Someday
she will display her wounds
proudly
as battle scars.
Bur first she must survive, and heal.
5 more to go.
Feb 19, 2013
Feb 19, 2013 at 8:19 PM UTC
Tears tear upon my ears and ring with distance resounding now
Two years.
5 days hence your 36, and I've done much to move on.
Burned the bridge with greek fire, slashed tires and bombs. The blaze I burned a pittance compared to the fire raging an inscription upon my soul.
Oh how I've learned my capacity for destruction, exhausting my ambition to scupt my sephiroth by the injustice of it all.
The pain. Would never leave. Couldn't. Shouldn't. Would not. Yet waned with each severed thread held in place by that pact. Trickling like a trickster.
I feel as If the widower now, black against even abysmal shadows, drowned out by thoughts of quicker deaths than one sought out by my shallow cuts & hours drunk to numb this, my greatest loss. Lost for words I stumbled deeper in the mines of hades, time changing by months or days.
What kills a man can be any overabundance, but you killed my spirit. It was I who offered the sacrifice. stupidly, but you I name liar. The deal was not kept, could never be, yet after dying deaths daily, my weeping heart wept, hated and forgot hailing new depths forsaken each breath taken away from me vying to make this make sense.
I'm done.
I want it back.
I want the fuel to live life unkempt and uncertain, laughing at the impossibilities lorded over those too weak to withstand the pressure and my rebelious will to keep fighting fate.
It's not too late, still I feel I've aged a decade in 2 years
Only now, waking to see the sweet nap given to me as punishment for lying under the timeless tree.
haunted no longer
By the visions of a
Wraith.
Dec 7, 2022
Dec 7, 2022 at 5:08 AM UTC
Pawns of a game, a guessing game, a game
Where chance rules supreme.
Dice roll with stardust, driven by cosmic winds,
with whim at the bow and wheel is its own entity.
Everyone seeking cheap tricks, but to no avail, only
To walk a common road, traversed by paupers and kings.
How to win the game? Well, winners and losers are
Indistinguishable, like grains of sand to the naked eye.
Deceiving shadows loom about the playground.
What can be a rabid monster shredding flesh
Might as well be a mouse nibbling on stray kernels.
There are no rules, despite the libraries of doctrine
And laws of man which change with the season,
Reflecting the customs of various regions.
Players argue at the round table as to what the
Objective may be.
Perhaps survival of the fittest?
To harbor joy while making a pittance?
To love wholeheartedly, for good riddance?
One thing’s for certain.
The game will end, some way or another.
Let’s have the thrill of our lives, while it lasts.
Let’s entertain the impossible before we pass.
Jun 4, 2016
Jun 4, 2016 at 11:46 PM UTC