Time is a Toy: The Selected Poems of Michael Benedikt

Money

57 money Funny money. It giggles as it goes. Whenever we are about to spend some, just as we reach into our pockets, it goes “Ho Ho!” Inklings may come to us that it is attempting to soothe us at the expense of the truth, for after all, even to money that giggles there is an end. But we go along with its masquerade, since we want to do what makes it happiest. Yes!—we want bills of large and small denominations both to flutter with laughter in our hands We want dimples on the face of all currencies, coins to be smiling as they are slipped into slots Every vending machine to be regarded as a cornucopia of jokes and mirth, mankind receiving a smile with every gumball, candy bar, soft drink, seat cover, pocket comb, cigarette, foot vibration, etc. Gaiety residing in change purses and pockets, Piggy banks should squeal to be broken. When we walk into a bank, we want to hear tittering from the tellers’ cages Muffled chuckles from safe deposit vaults High hilarity from the halls And the whole littered with packets of newly mined bills and rolls of pennies and silver throwing themselves around on the floor, guffawing. But see how the ungracious bank guards seem indifferent to our ambition. Ever they face the doors, front and rear, regular or revolving, with guns at the ready. Ever the shopkeeper will throw his body without hilarity over the cash register as we enter with our fame, And vending-machine franchisers are taking special care to affix locks tightly to their product, and its goods, While stockbrokers chew on pencils eternally, with sad looks. Tears every night create the river of our true hope and faith Upon which borne along gravely is the contemporary barque of utter financial solvency ...