"Money, it's a gas..."

In honor (no, honor is not the right word. Horror, perhaps?) of the fall of Washington Mutual and the fiscal free for all that is our economy, here's a poem by Cornelius Eady about money. Kind of. There are some other money related poems I have in mind but have to dig up. But at the rate things are going, this money poem thing could easily become a regular thing here.

Money Won’t Change It (but time will take you on)

You’re rich, lady, hissed the young woman at
My mother as she bent in her garden.
Look at what you’ve got, and it was
Too much, the collards and tomatoes,
A man, however lousy, taking care
of the bills.

This was the reason for the early deaths
My mother was to find from that point on,
Turned dirt and the mock of roots,
Until finally, she gave her garden up.
You can’t have nothing, she tells us,
Is the motto of our neighborhood,
These modest houses
That won’t give an inch.

(Cornelius Eady, from Autobiography of a Jukebox, 1997 Carnegie Mellon University Press.)