UNDERGROUND VOICES MAGAZINE/KEN POYNER


	UNDERGROUND VOICES: POETRY - 08/2012

KEN POYNER

Demand First

I have a bit of excess money,
So maybe I will casually pick up
A piece of vacant land,
Appropriately pay property tax,
Clean up what has been until now a local blight:
Take out insurance, and make improvements.
Since I will have extra funds, still,
I can build a factory, inject my
Cash into the building trades, put
Laid off concrete and steel professionals
Back to work. In my new factory
I can manufacture through three shifts
Left foot socks, or maybe
Unelastic sweat bands, or perhaps six finger
Winter gloves. It does not matter.
I have the capital to create comfort products.
To make all of them I can hire
Hundreds of the chronically unemployed,
Find a way to co-exist with, or bust,
The unions, maybe establish a training program,
With credits and subsidies,
To plant the skills that I need
In homeless street people. And, if I have
Money left, I can build warehouses
To hold the product until the public
Comes around to buy. I will also
Invest capital in advertising
And marketing, and those salaried jobs
Will be salt on the carbohydrate
My wealth and head for business
Has pumped into the public gullet,
The torrid energy I have supplied to fuel
The rise of each and every subject citizen.

Or not.
There is a yacht
I have had my eye on since the last recession.

Ken Poyner had been knocking about the small press world for forty years, with latest appearances in “Corium”, “Menacing Hedge”, “Poet Lore”, “Subliminal Interiors”, “The Adirondack Review”, “Full of Crow” and several dozen other places. He lives with his power lifter wife and five rescue cats in the lower right hand corner of Virginia.