Money Poem by Prabhakar Subramaniam

Green backs, saffron-tinted
Blue-tinged, mint-fresh
Blood-stained, sweat-soaked
Soiled, crumpled, cello-taped
Sometimes bearing a lover's name
A phone number, even a doodle
Faithfully carrying images of national leaders
Whose ideals are no more in currency
Sometimes it is never seen
But as a row of tidy figures
Leaping from machine to machine
And wiping you out with a swipe
Sometimes the fake is never found
Move about like illegal aliens
Keeping to the byways and alleys
The black cousins prefer offshore havens
From where they run parallel universes
These days the notes disappear
From the wallet faster
Than they appear
And everyone from the bus conductor
To the landlord look like extortionists.