LesleyScoble.com

My poem Have You Got A Penny? is a poem of just 14 lines. I wrote it in response to this weeks’s W3 Weekly Poetry Prompt #36. Murisopsis’ is Poet of the Week. Click below to read the prompt’s guidelines.

Click here to read the prompt’s guidelines

Write a poem:
1. Of exactly 14 lines;
2. In any form or style; 
3. On the topic of poverty (moral, financial, romantic, etc.)

The challenge is to write a poem of 14 lines on the theme of poverty. I considered a sonnet, since it offers a strict 14‑line frame — but sonnets lean toward love. Poverty doesn’t feel like a natural fit for love poetry, unless it’s the love of someone lost, or the yearning love for money that never arrives.

I suppose one could write a sonnet about a homeless person’s love for a dog, or for the warmth of a sleeping bag, or for any small mercy that keeps the night bearable. It could work, in theory.

But no. A sonnet isn’t the form I want for this subject today.

My poem’s got an urban street style. I was rapping it in my head (I love Hip‑hop) and wrote it down in one go. The only tweak was swapping ‘isn’t’ for ‘ain’t’. And I’ve just changed ‘you’ to ‘yer’ for a touch of the colloquial.

Have you got a penny?

Have you got a penny?
Have you got a dime?
Have you got any thing
for my waste of time?

Can you bring me sunshine?
Have you got a line?
Can you bring me rain?
Can you give me anything
for my druggy pain?

I haven’t got a bean
My livelihood is mean
My cardboard box is clean
but it ain’t waterproof.
Yer know what I mean?

For the luv of Mike!
Guv, if you’ve got any
Can I have a penny?


_{Lesley Scoble January 2023}

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Audio – Have You Got A Penny? – Urban Rap 🎶

(song created 2026)

Homelessness

A man lies on the street. Every passer‑by moves past as though he isn’t there. He’s stretched on the pavement, unaware of them, wearing only one sock. His worn boots rest a yard away. In his hand — resting on the cold stone — he holds a pen, as if caught mid‑sentence. Why? Was he a poet met with hard times. Was he trying to write a sonnet.

This image breaks my heart. Any of us could find ourselves at that edge. Destitution isn’t a distant world; it’s a door that can open without warning. Eviction, mental illness, addiction, domestic abuse, loss, bereavement — life’s blows can fall on anyone.

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I know I’d already discarded the idea of writing a sonnet on the prompt’s poverty theme, but the thought of a sonnet to a homeless person’s dog keeps circling back. I wonder. A Shakespearean sonnet for a street dog — why not?

I’ll say cheerio for now — I’m off to find a quill.

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I wrote Have You Got A Penny? in response to this weeks’s W3 Weekly Poetry Prompt #36.

My thanks to Murisopsis, the Poet-of-the-Week, for the prompt that inspired this poem.
My thanks to David of the Skeptics Kaddish.
And my thanks to you, the reader, for your visit.

Take care of yourselves and be happy.