User:Genelutz/Poems for the Penniless

The Poor Poet is a pen-name used by the author of a book entitled Poems for the Penniless.

Poems for the Penniless is a collection of over a hundred poems and some prose, with the majority of the book being poetry. Most of the poems are short rhyming verse in a very traditional style. All of the poems have titles, and many of them have by-lines with different pen-names appropriate to each poem.

Types of poems in the book include lightheated verse, humor, political satire, philosophy, and the latest fad in poetry, ultrasound poems.

The book is divided into chapters according to the major poets, including The Poor Poet, Sigmund Annoyed, The Dangerous Anti-War Protestor, The Pundit, Useless Poetry (written by the Useless Poet and his useless friends), The Wrong Poet, Poet on the Road, The Wise Old Poet, and The Dravidian Poet.

The Poor Poet understands what life is like on the bottom in a world obsessed with money. Sigmund Annoyed has good reason to be. The Dangerous Anti-War Protestor is dangerous only to the war profiteers. The Pundit’s claim to fame, two poems about the stolen presidential election of 2000, was stolen by a poetry speculator. The Useless Poet wrote The Useless Poem, which is the only useful thing he’s done in his life—his poem is useful in the sense that it warns the world in a subtle way of a conspiracy among poets to promote anti-materialism, which could become a threat to consumerism everywhere and crash the stock market.

The Useless Poet frequently loiters with the likes of The Third World Turd Hurler who, of course, hurls turds at the Third World, The Philandering Philosopher, a sadder-but-wiser cynic, The Creationist, who gives us an alternate myth about the creation of our planet, Dr. Do-little, The Messed-up Poet, John F. Finicky, The Nature Hater, The Mad Poet, The Geometrical Poet, The Coffeehouse Poet, Le Poet Miserable, Chris Chen, Dawnatelli, and the Rockin’ Sonographer.

The Wrong Poet’s attitude toward the world is…well, you don’t want to know. Poet on the Road’s poems were written in and around the world, and could have been symptoms of jet lag or something worse. The Wise Old Poet gives good philosophical advice, as always. The Dravidian Poet wrote most of his poems while in India.

Gene Vents His Spleen is a collection of quips, ironic realizations, daffy definitions, sarcastic rants, wise sayings, and general good advice for humanity.

The chapter Sex, Drugs, and…Sorry, No Rock’n’Roll provides entertainment for all, not only those of us who are old enough to remember what “rock and roll” was.

At the end of the book are some other short sections, including The Truth About War, which is an essay about how the war profiteers have duped the American public and the world into wasting trillions of dollars and countless human lives on wars and the stockpiling of tens of thousands of nuclear weapons that could never be used in any rational way. Men and Women in Love—Fact or Fallacy? Is a satire about scientific materialism’s attitudes toward sex and emotion. The Mad Cow Disaster is a short story written in a mud hut in India which is a satire on Western ethnocentrism, and is prophetic of the an actual event years later (see Mad Cow Disease on Wikipedia). If Money Grew on Trees is a satire on the illusions and superstitions people in general have about money. I