Poetry Hallway - Having A Trip To The Bank

Any change, guv'nor? At Poetry Hallway we are skint. Strapped. Scooped out. Brassic. We're borrowing a neighbour's internet, hand-cranking a tiny solar torch for light, and coming up with recipes incorporating whatever remains in the cupboard. Pasta, rice and noodle surprise, whoopee! - the surprise being whatever tiny sauce sachets we've filched on our travels along the high street earlier. Hunter-gatherers. Apply here. Please.

Things are so bad we're even thinking of renting out one end of the Hallway to amorous swingers in need of a quick bunk-up. So long as they don't mind sharing with a team of starving poets, and using a pile of old towels and junk manuscripts as a mattress, it could be a winner!

Sadly we're not the only ones with holes in our socks and our guts due to the holes in our funds (especially as we were counting on our latest promised payment from git-faced Limpit, that is until we actually read his latest poem):

Having A Trip To The Bank - by Limpit Smike

They turned me down, those naughty clowns,

They turned me down again;

My fine request for extra funds -

Allow me to explain.

My poet’s life has wheres and whys,

And often just “how much?!”;

But lavishness becomes me, so

I strive to keep in touch.

My bank has clean facilities,

And clean advances too;

But when I can advance no more,

They leave me in the stew.

They have no wit, those naughty twits;

They have no poet’s ear;

What squirt of life flows through their loins?

Quite none at all I fear.

How will I make to penetrate

Those hard, unyielding men?

Am I the Smike forever cursed

To rant and swear and moan?

Insinuate, or sit and wait

Until my verse takes flight?

Or use my lover’s deepness

And thrust with all my might?

A love that swells in all my parts

Would take them by surprise;

And surely soon, my overdraft

Would be quite energised.

Their deepest vaults would sweat and strain

As I thrust strong and tough;

If they would only give me some

I’d give back quite a stuff!