"Money is a kind of poetry" --Wallace Stevens

This quote was a poetry prompt during National Poetry Writing Month and my first reaction was, noooooo ...... but then I thought, hmmm, IF money WERE a kind of poetry, what would it be? And this is the poem that arrived:

Light verse loose change
jingles in your favorite uncle’s pocket
as he tosses quarters for ice cream
and pulls a silver dollar
out of your ear.

Working man’s ballad of company scrip,
slow beat heartbreak never get ahead
a nickel and a dime and another loaf of bread
foreman says work, union says strike
babies crying through the night

Pieces of eight for a pirate’s shout
storm shanties, drinking songs,
girls in each port, whalers and
sailors and Davy Jones’ deep,
weevils, and gunwales, and topsails.

A few new bills for a smart new verse,
something to impress city slickers,
those literary types in New Yawk,
up on the latest trends, the clubs,
martinis, Broadway bright lights.

The odd tip and free coffee at the slam,
the chance to step up and speak, say my
words, loud, straight, where people hear me
all the way to the back, and onto the street
where they come from, those words, mine.

Plastic for the postmodern,
the not quite real for the not
quite there, what it means to me
and to you and to them, who can say?
Words and balances constructed.

by Mary Pat Lynch