Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Money

Cabaret ~ Money

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“There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor.” ― Oscar Wilde

“Money is like manure; it's not worth a thing unless it's spread around encouraging young things to grow.”  ― Thornton Wilder

“Money does not change the sickness, only the symptoms.” 

― John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

Fiddler on the Roof ~ If I Were a Rich Man

Midweek Motif ~ Money

It's Women's History Month, so feel free to link women's history and money in your poem if you wish.  I think poets of all genders would do  marvelous and beautiful things with money.

What do you think?   

Your Challenge:  Wend ideas of money throughout your new poem. What does money do? What did it do? What can it do?  

ABBA  ~ Money Money Money 

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Riches 

by Sara Teasdale

I have no riches but my thoughts,

Yet these are wealth enough for me;

My thoughts of you are golden coins

Stamped in the mint of memory;

And I must spend them all in song,
For thoughts, as well as gold, must be
Left on the hither side of death
To gain their immortality. 

YOU NEVER GIVE ME YOUR MONEY ~ BEATLES COLLABORATION

Alone

by Maya Angelou

Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone
I came up with one thing
And I don't believe I'm wrong
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

There are some millionaires
With money they can't use
Their wives run round like banshees
Their children sing the blues
They've got expensive doctors
To cure their hearts of stone.

But nobody
No, nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Now if you listen closely
I'll tell you what I know
Storm clouds are gathering
The wind is gonna blow
The race of man is suffering
And I can hear the moan,
'Cause nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Prince & The New Power Generation ~ Money Don't Matter 2 Night ..







From Sonnets Uncorseted




BY MAXINE KUMIN




. . . . 



 9



We didn’t merely saunter decade by
decade.

We swept on past de Beauvoir and
Friedan,

and took courage from Carolyn Kizer’s
knife-blade

Pro Femina: I will speak about
women

of letters for I’m in the racket, urging,

Stand up and be hated, and swear not
to sleep with editors.



If a woman is to write, Virginia Woolf

has Mary Beton declare, she has to have

five hundred a year and a room with a
lock on the door,

a sacred space where Shakespeare’s
sister Judith

might have equaled his prodigious gift

or not. She might have simply floated
there,

set loose in the privilege of privacy,
her self

unwritten, under no one else’s eyes…

 . . . . 


                           (Read the rest HERE.)

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                (Next week Sumana’s Midweek Motif will be ~ Scream)

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Reunions

 Mother is overcome with emotion when reunited
with her daughter after three years apart
Tuesday, Aug 29th 2017  DailyMail on Facebook

"I see myself as having three families: my birth family, the family that raised me, and my Cree family, who I was reunited with in my late teens, 
so I consider myself to be lucky. "

~Buffy Sainte-Marie

God's dream is that you and I and all of us will realize that we are family, that we are made for togetherness, for goodness, and for compassion.

~Desmond Tutu

You and I will meet again, 

When we're least expecting it, 

One day in some far off place, 

I will recognize your face, 

I won't say goodbye my friend, 

For you and I will meet again. 

~Tom Petty

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Midweek Motif ~ Reunions

Family reunions, class reunions, long-lost-friend reunions, soldier-on-leave reunions, forgiveness-induced reunions, after-the-disaster reunions: 

• What is the same and what has changed since the last time together?  
• What's the occasion and what is the feast? 
• Is it sweet?

Your Challenge:  In a new poem, paint a word picture of a reunion you've had (or know of) ~ or one you can imagine occurring.

Family Reunion

BY MAXINE W. KUMIN

The week in August you come home, 

adult, professional, aloof, 

we roast and carve the fatted calf 

—in our case home-grown pig, the chine 

garlicked and crisped, the applesauce 

hand-pressed. Hand-pressed the greengage wine. 

Nothing is cost-effective here. 

The peas, the beets, the lettuces 

hand sown, are raised to stand apart. 

The electric fence ticks like the slow heart 

of something we fed and bedded for a year, 

then killed with kindness’s one bullet 

and paid Jake Mott to do the butchering. 

. . . . 

(Read the rest of this AMAZING poem HERE.)

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Reunited

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Let us begin, dear love, where we left off; 

Tie up the broken threads of that old dream; 

And go on happy as before; and seem

Lovers again, though all the world may scoff.

Let us forget the graves, which lie between

Our parting and our meeting, and the tears

That rusted out the goldwork of the years; 

The frosts that fell upon our gardens green.

Let us forget the cold malicious Fate

Who made our loving hearts her idle toys, 

And once more revel in the old sweet joys

Of happy love. Nay, it is not too late! 

Forget the deep-ploughed furrows in my brow; 

Forget the silver gleaming in my hair; 

Look only in my eyes! Oh! darling, there

The old love shone no warmer then than now.

Down in the tender depths of thy dear eyes, 

I find the lost sweet memory of my youth, 

Bright with the holy radiance of thy truth, 

And hallowed with the blue of summer skies.

Tie up the broken threads, and let us go, 

Like reunited lovers, hand in hand, 

Back, and yet onward, to the sunny land

Of our To Be, which was our Long Ago. 

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I Don't Know If History Repeats Itself

by Yehuda Amichai

 I don't Know if history repeats itself
But I do know that you don't.

I remember that city was divided 
Not only between Jews and Arabs,
But Between me and you,
When we were there together.

We made ourselves a womb of dangers
We built ourselves a house of deadening wars
Like men of far north 
Who build themselves a safe warm house of deadening ice.

The city has been reunited
But we haven't been there together.

By now I know
That History doesn't repeat itself, 
As I always knew that you wouldn't.

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visit others in the spirit of the community—



Next week Susan's Midweek Motif will be "Peace."

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Parents, Guardians, Significant Adults in the Lives of Children

Children give carnations to parents on Parents' Day in South Korea

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, 
my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. 
You will always find people who are helping.” 
― Fred Rogers

“Children need to be raised in loving environments. Whenever domination is present love is lacking. Loving parents, be they single or coupled, gay or straight, headed by females or males, are more likely to raise 
healthy, happy children with sound self-esteem. ” 
― bell hooks, Feminism is for Everybody

“I'm inspired by the love people have for their children. And I'm inspired by my own children, how full they make my heart. They make me want to work to make the world a little bit better. And they make me want to be a better man.” 
― Barack Obama

The International Day for Protection of Children, Children's Day,
is celebrated in many countries on June 1st, though the date varies.

Midweek Motif ~ Parenthood

Parents, Guardians, Significant Adults 

According to Wikipedia:  

Parents' Day is a holiday combining the concepts of a Fathers' Day and Mothers' Day.  The United Nations proclaimed June 1 to be the Global Day of Parents "to appreciate all parents in all parts of the world for their selfless commitment to children and their lifelong sacrifice towards nurturing this relationship.".^[1] It is the same day as International Children's Day.

When I taught high school English, it was easy to tell which students suffered from a lack of nurturing adult presence in their lives.  At times these children needed my attention more than they needed an English lesson. I wondered if spending an hour a day with children in classes of more than 30 students was anything like parenting.  Could parents see 170 children a day, even if only for an hour?  My own parents struggled financially early on and were too angry and scared to be consistently loving until I was a pre-teen.  I feel love and gratitude for them now. 

Your Challenge:  Write a new poem, in which you take on the voice of a child with real or ideal adults parenting them.  

I Go Back to May 1937

Related Poem Content Details

BY SHARON OLDS

I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges, 

I see my father strolling out 

under the ochre sandstone arch, the   

red tiles glinting like bent 

plates of blood behind his head, I 

see my mother with a few light books at her hip 

standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks, 

the wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its 

sword-tips aglow in the May air, 

they are about to graduate, they are about to get married,   

they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are   

innocent, they would never hurt anybody.   

. . . . 

Read the rest HERE.

Lullaby in Fracktown

Related Poem Content Details

BY LILACE MELLIN GUIGNARD

Child, when you’re sad put on your blue shoes.

You know that Mama loves you lollipops

and Daddy still has a job to lose.

So put on a party hat. We’ll play the kazoos

loud and louder from the mountaintop.

Child, when you’re sad put on your blue shoes

and dance the polka with pink kangaroos,

dolphin choirs singing “flip-flop, flip-flop.”

Hey, Daddy still has a job to lose — 

. . . . 

Read the Rest HERE.

Driving My Parents Home at  Christmas

BY ROBERT BLY

As I drive my parents home through the snow

their frailty hesitates on the edge of a mountainside.

I call over the cliff

only snow answers.

They talk quietly

of hauling water of eating an orange

of a grandchild's photograph left behind last night.

When they open the door of their house they disappear.

And the oak when it falls in the forest who hears it 

through miles and miles of silence?

They sit so close to each other; ­

as if pressed together by the snow.

***

Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and 

visit others in the spirit of the community.

                       

 (Next week Sumana's Midweek Motif will be - Commitment)