poems for money and no kicks for free
Poems for Money, and No Kicks for Free
Verse 1
The air smells of printer’s ink and cold coffee,
and the page stares back like a shopfront window
where the mannequins wear my metaphors,
price tags swinging from their wrists.
I used to think the words were a kind of weather —
blowing in from nowhere,
soaking me through for the sheer joy of it.
Now they arrive in invoices,
in neat little deadlines,
in the voice of an editor who says love the piece,
can you make it more clickable?
Chorus 1
Poems for money, no kicks for free,
pay up for the rhythm, pay up for the key.
Every verse on the table, every rhyme on display —
you want the words, you’ve got to pay.
Verse 2
Out there, the buskers still play for coins and kisses,
but in here it’s all contracts and clauses,
the slow bleed of the soul into a spreadsheet.
The kicks aren’t free anymore —
they’re itemised, taxed,
and filed under miscellaneous inspiration.
Chorus 2
Ain’t no freebies in this poetry game,
each line’s got a price, each stanza a name.
Coins in the jar if you want that fire —
art costs sweat, and sweat ain’t hire‑by‑the‑hour.
Verse 3
Still, I keep at it.
Because sometimes, between the brief and the bill,
a line will slip the leash —
a wild‑eyed thing that doesn’t care who’s paying,
that runs straight for the horizon,
dragging me with it,
reminding me why I ever opened my mouth
in the first place.
Chorus 3
No kicks for free, no muse on loan,
these words are minted, stamped in stone.
If you want the song, you cover the fee —
poems for money, for the world to see.
Outro – Loop & Fade
Poems for money, no kicks for free,
pay up for the rhythm, pay up for the key.
Ain’t no freebies in this poetry game,
each line’s got a price, each stanza a name.
No kicks for free, no muse on loan,
these words are minted, stamped in stone.
Poems for money, for the world to see —
say it with me now, no kicks for free.
.
Red Brick Keshner
Fri 19th Sep 2025 02:32
"Croesus in the Comment Box"
(a companion to “Poems for Money…”)
Croesus, old coin‑king,
you sit in my comment box
polishing your metaphors in gold leaf,
telling me the platform fee is “just the cost of doing art.”
But I’ve seen the gates,
how they swing only for those
with a credit card in the lock.
I’ve heard the hallow of poems
that never make it past the paywall,
their syllables still warm in the mouths
of poets who can’t afford
to spit them into the feed.
You say, “What’s a few coins for immortality?”
I say, “What’s immortality to the unheard?”
In Lagos, in La Paz, in Lahore,
there are verses that could split the sky,
but the sky here takes payment in advance.
Croesus, you measure worth in minted weight;
I measure it in the tremor of a line
that makes a stranger’s chest ache.
Your treasury is full,
but my currency is breath —
and breath should not be billed.
Still, I post what I can,
slipping lines through the cracks
between your gold‑plated rules,
hoping one will land in a reader’s hands
like contraband joy.
And if you ask me again
why I won’t pay to be heard,
I’ll tell you this:
because the richest poem I know
was written in the dust,
read aloud to the wind,
and carried farther than your coins could ever reach.
.