Paper Money

it came to mind

All the fortunes left to rot

All the paper gone to waste

After all we’ve been through it was really all for nothing

Because a select few people lost their faith

They do not trust the bigwigs, the ones who pay for what we see

Who say that paper money is worth as much as what they tell us

 

All the dollars in the dirt

All the bills left in the streets

Swept up like common litter, trash gets treated all the same

Could have been a treasure or a tissue, now it’s tossed

It isn’t worth the cotton and the ink they wasted on it

Just get rid of it and cut your losses

Stop living in the past, what will you buy

With all that paper money that you’re saving?

 

All the portraits in the gutter

All their faces to the floor

A graveyard of the great ones who came and went before

They’re wet and tearing in the rain, dead presidents

Don’t mind their treatment but it’s sad to me

And others who look out at that graveyard

And wonder how’ll we’ll treat a linecook

Once he’s gone when we rub Lincoln in the earth

 

All the worthless paper money

All the wasted days and nights

Where did all of the time go?

I didn’t think to watch the clock that counted down the time until

You said my money was just trash because you said so

Now it’s scattered in the streets, so don’t expect me to repeat myself

Another day you’ll wake and send me running out the door

To catch all the thrashing paper as it dances in the wind before

It all blows too far to gather and I’m just as poor as yesterday