Poets Don’t Carry Cash

Poets don’t carry cash,
Instead they carry words.

Words stuffed into pockets, mixed with fluff.
Words forced into wallets, alongside old receipts.
Words withdrawn from dusty old accounts.
Words gathered from faded ashtrays on windowsills.

Poets should be rich,
But they can be careless.

Because as they fumble for the right word,
They spill out like so much loose change.
Which rolls around the floor, unwilling to be caught,
Lost,  until found and read by puzzled strangers.

Ask a poet and they will swear they have words on them,
But when they check they find nothing.
The words have tumbled into sofa like cracks of their minds,
There to gather dust along with other lost ideas.

A poet’s words start promisingly sharp and crisp,
Until they are nibbled by literary moths.
So they become tatty and unrecognisable,
Unaccepted and unusable.

Anyway as I said,
Poets don’t carry cash.
Instead they carry words.
Which inspite of all the trouble they have with them,
They love to spend freely.