Broke girl

They say

When you break 

A big bill,

Into smaller ones

It spends faster...

Change is always 

due

When offering more

Than-

what it's worth.

True

Enough-as a theory.

Change is more 

Of a fundamental

Proof.

What you see

Is what you get-

Exchanged

For small pieces

Worth saving. 

Painting by George Elgar Hicks, 'Gypsy girl' c. 1899 in Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Nickel Linings

When counting blessings

like spare

Change

keeps

Adding up to

Less sense

than we thought we had,

stashed In crevices

it is the

Change

Saved

For a rainy day

That makes its way

Toward

Something found...

Even green

wears off

Leaves

and becomes something

More

In time, interesting...

The zinc sky reflects

Itself

empty

but unbroken. 

Painting by Matthias Stom, 'Woman counting coins by candlelight' (Allegory of Avarice), c. 1635 in Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

No Vacancy

I can no longer afford to submit-
this is why I Quit.
Does that mean I've given up?
I could not stop if I tried-
ok, I lied...
You see, these fees have broken
my wishbone.
I suppose I could try to borrow-
until tomorrow,
but I'd still be short the change
in dignity
Please do no take pity, I plead-
I have none left...
So, I have forsaken all
charitable contributions to self
I am finished offering solutions
of contentment
and reason-
there are more than enough
poetic substitutions and literary institutions
with closed doors to open minds and empty pockets-
except(ing) donations.



1st Pub.d 9/2/16.

Painting by By Anna Lea Merritt (1844‑1930) (Art Renewal Center) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Financials

After receiving the report
twenty-five years after writ-
there is quite a bit to process.

I guess it is accurate. It says
sixteen years ago, in two-thousand
we will live up to eighty
making more than seven hundred-
thousand hours to work
Total

Amounting to
forty hours in five days
some spend one hundred
and fifty thousand of these pleasing others-
rather-even-just-seventy five thousand hours
making money, a must
making
Nothing but Money
-for else-making
temporality more tolerable,
comfortable in
Cash

Not all agree on the bottom line,
which is what you take home
necessitating a (safety) net worth
under your trap-ease
to catch you when the bottom
drops.

From the way I read
this P and L, I can tell
accrued assets don't carry over
as easy as debts-
By the numbers I'd bet
(all) on yourself,
working on
building value,
oddly that is how interest accrues
even broke(n).



Image By Internet Archive Book Images [No restrictions], via Wikimedia Commons, "Brains and how to get them," 1913.

Toilet paper tree

In the 80's everyone was wearing a Swatch watch
and rockin' a Sony Sports Walkman.
I didn't obey schedules then.
I carried a poetry journal instead.
Nobody could hear my music either,
but it wasn't shock proof like the Sony.

In high school my English teacher
was also the football coach.
Mr. Morris would recite poetry
like he was doing drills, his veins
protruding on his tomato Red-neck-
"I am the Captain of my Soul!"

My first boyfriend was gay,
peers used to say I turned him that way.
We made a deal in the forest.
His parents wanted us to get married someday.
He lived in San Francisco,
before he died that May.

One afternoon cutting school I was
hitch-hiking to the beach, I got a ride
from a perverted old man who was also
drunk, but the roads wind-
so you couldn't tell he was swerving...
He took my journal and wallet.

I was broke without a journal.

Those poems were so young
they didn't have time to matter.
I found paper scraps with my words-
swimming, rivers, tears, bleeding
hanging on branches like toilet paper-
where the bus stops.

The leaves whispered, reciting them,
nobody heard but me.




Image of painting by Zygmunt Waliszewski (1897-1936), "The Toilet of Venus"[Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.