Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Money (for World Savings/Thrift Day)

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World Savings Day was created and is still organized by banks.  Why save at home when you could establish a bank to"put your money to work"?

International Saving Day Austria

Midweek Motif ~  Money  

(for World Savings/Thrift Day)

In the USA, World Savings and Halloween share the same date.  This year, we're "talking money."

Money.  How did it become so important? Little coins and paper bills, numbers in websites, global economies, lotteries, "haves and have nots," etc. 

Here are a few quotes to consider:  

     “Don't tell me what you value, show me your budget,

 and I'll tell you what you value.” ― Joe Biden

     “Why people take drugs baffles me to no end. Especially when  they can't afford them.” ― Terry McMillan

     "A penny saved is a penny earned." ― Benjamin Franklin

     "There are two major modes for dealing with money in life: circulation and congestion. Circulation is paying bills, tithing, giving to charity. Congestion is hoarding, saving for a rainy day, being stingy. It's no coincidence that one word for money is currency; it comes from the word current, which means flow."  ― Beliefnet, "10 Spiritual Ways to think About Money"

     “I learn over and over again, that we can't spend, save, or budget money when we have too little money to begin with.” ― Susan Chast

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Your Challenge: Write a new poem with money as its focus.  Dwell on what money is and does, reveal it.

Comme Sisyphe - Honoré Daumier

Velocity of Money
by Allen Ginsberg

I’m delighted by the velocity of money as it whistles through the windows of Lower East Side
Delighted by skyscrapers rising the old grungy apartments falling on 84th Street
Delighted by inflation that drives me out on the street
After all what good’s the family farm, why eat turkey by thousands every Thanksgiving?
Why not have Star Wars? Why have the same old America?!?
George Washington wasn’t good enough! Tom Paine pain in the neck,
Whitman what a jerk!
I’m delighted by double digit interest rates in the Capitalist world
I always was a communist, now we’ll win an usury makes the walls thinner, books thicker & dumber
Usury makes my poetry more valuable
my manuscripts worth their weight in useless gold -
Now everybody’s atheist like me, nothing’s sacred
buy and sell your grandmother, eat up old age homes,
Peddle babies on the street, pretty boys for sale on Times Square -
You can shoot heroin, I can sniff cocaine,
macho men can fite on the Nicaraguan border and get paid with paper!
The velocity’s what counts as the National Debt gets higher
Everybody running after the rising dollar
Crowds of joggers down broadway past City Hall on the way to the Fed
Nobody reads Dostoyevsky books so they’ll have to give a passing ear
to my fragmented ravings in between President’s speeches
Nothing’s happening but the collapse of the Economy
so I can go back to sleep till the landlord wins his eviction suit in court.

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An Escape

BY HA JIN 

We sat in the neon light
on a cool evening of a summer day
drinking beer and eating salad.
You told me your story
similar to those of many others:

All your savings are gone,

the managers, the secretaries, the supervisors,

the police in charge of passports

all having received a handsome share.
Now you have nothing left there,
your color TV and refrigerator were sold
to get the cash for the plane ticket.
“But I was lucky,” you assured me.
“Many people have spent fortunes
and still cannot leave the country.”

. . . .

(Read the rest HERE.)

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source
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The Money Tree (Children)
by C.J. Heck

I dreamed I grew a money tree
outside in my yard.
My job was to care for it
and I worked very hard.

I saw that it was watered.
It grew so straight and tall
and when the money ripened
I picked it in the fall.

The flowers were green dollar bills, 

the seeds inside were coins, 

and others grew and glittered

where all the branches joined.

On windy days I stood below

and held a great big bucket.

Other days I climbed right up

to find one ripe and pluck it.

People say that money

doesn't really grow on trees.

I know. I only wish it did
just like in my dreams.

                         💰

Money Makes The Mirth

by Robert Herrick

When all birds else do of their music fail,

Money's the still-sweet-singing nightingale! 
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Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community.  

   (Next week Susan’s Midweek Motif will be ~ Reading Fiction.)