Money poems
/ page 33 of 64 /
Sexsmith the Dentist
© Edgar Lee Masters
Do you think that odes and sermons,
And the ringing of church bells,
Foreign Parts
© James Schuyler
the dirty photographs apostrophize mon-
soons. Swimming snakes shake the lake.
The Bridge of Change
© John Logan
The bridge barely curved that connects the terrible with the tender.
—Rilke
Seventh Street
© Jean Toomer
Money burns the pocket, pocket hurts,
Bootleggers in silken shirts,
Ballooned, zooming Cadillacs,
Whizzing, whizzing down the street-car tracks.
Wild With All Regrets
© Wilfred Owen
Which I shan't manage now. Unless it's yours.
I shall stay in you, friend, for some few hours.
You'll feel my heavy spirit chill your chest,
And climb your throat on sobs, until it's chased
On sighs, and wiped from off your lips by wind.
Greatness
© Edgar Albert Guest
We can be great by helping one another;
We can be loved for very simple deeds;
Who has the grateful mention of a brother
Has really all the honor that he needs.
Golden State
© Frank Bidart
I
To see my father
lying in pink velvet, a rosary
twined around his hands, rouged,
An Excelente Balade of Charitie
© Thomas Chatterton
In Virgynë the sweltrie sun gan sheene,
And hotte upon the mees did caste his raie;
Empty Pitchforks
© Thomas Lux
“There was poverty before money.”
There was debtors’ prison before inmates,
there was hunger prefossil,
Magna Charta
© Marriott Edgar
I'll tell of the Magna Charter
As were signed at the Barons' command
On Runningmead Island in t' middle of t' Thames
By King John, as were known as "Lack Land."
Banking Coal
© Jean Toomer
Whoever it was who brought the first wood and coal
To start the Fire, did his part well;
1941
© Ruth Stone
I wore a large brim hat
like the women in the ads.
How thin I was: such skin.
Yes. It was Indianapolis;
a taste of sin.
The Song of a Prison
© Henry Lawson
Tis a song of the weary warders, whom prisoners call the screws
A class of men who I fancy would cleave to the Evening News.
They look after their treasures sadly. By the screw of their keys they are known,
And they screw them many times daily before they draw their own.
Killing Him: A Radio Play
© John Wesley
LISTEN TO THE RADIO PLAY
JOE, a doctoral candidate in literature
RACHEL, his fiancée
POET/CRITIC
Captain Von Muller
© Jessie Pope
A Skipper of mark was Von Muller,
The humorous naval leg-puller.
With ubiquitous ease
He raided the seas
And his bag became fuller and fuller.
L'INNUSTRIA (Striving)
© Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli
Un giorno che arrestai propio a la fetta,
Senz'avé manco l'arma d'un quadrino,
Senti che cosa fo: curro ar camino
E roppo in quattro pezzi la paletta.
