Best Unemployment Poems
The Tragedy of Unemployment
By Elton Camp
Jerry had been employed all of his life
And had two children and a loving wife
He had ability, experience and good pay
It was unexpected what the boss did say
“Due to the economy, changes are slated.
Your job is one that’s to be eliminated.”
“I am under intense pressure from on high
To find something else you have to try.”
“A good recommendation I’ll gladly supply.
You have two weeks and then it’s goodbye.”
To go home and tell his family Jerry hated
How could such news possibly be related
The house mortgage wasn’t paid off yet
The oldest soon to start college was set
The chance of finding a job was very slim
Few would consider a man the age of him
UNEMPLOYMENT....
All we hear about is unemployment,
Appears to be a global torment,
Couldn't we think of creative solutions,
New inventions, using less pollution?
New ideas, concepts for the plebs to need,
What can we invent today? Yes indeed!
We could start by teaching global literacy,
Imagine how many books we'd need!
What about one holistic food capsule,
Made in Australia, daily and healthful?
Then we could grow forests and sell trees,
The world does need oxygen to breathe!
We could sell the world books and food pills,
Get your own ideas, we're not such dills,
Let's hear this motto in our schools,
What can we invent today? Beautiful!
It's my fifth day of unemployment
and I'm going a little bit crazy.
I'd expected to sit around and relax
and in general behave quite lazy.
Day one, I made a scrapbook
and rearranged all my craft totes.
Day two I cleaned out bird cages
and started writing pre-Christmas notes.
Shopping is done and put away.
Outside Christmas lights are shining.
I fear I'm running out of projects
and for my job I am pining.
A second scrapbook has been started,
a nine hundred page book's nearly read.
I've not even made it through week one
so the next five weeks I now dread.
I vowed I'd wait 'til the new year
before looking for another career.
Six weeks off seemed reasonable, at the time,
but my resolve is failing I fear.
These little projects keep me busy.
They keep my mind occupied for awhile.
If I tell you I'm enjoying this holiday,
well now you know , I'm just in denial.
Working days are hell
Holidays are hard to pass
For the unemployed
Go out and get it we told them
And I have seen mothers wringing leaves for tears of tea
I have seen fathers striking stone
And cursing the prophecy of water from the rock
And I have seen them day after day like sheep
Staffed and rodded into an obedient flock
Defering Saturday matinees and Sunday evening games
Taking solace only at the edge of flesh
The new pilgrimage of the driven age of youth
But it did not deter the goal we set
The balloon of dream in their head
That their new skill and competency will us richer
And that for that we will sit as family laugh
Like days too old now to remember
And after the strain
For balm the fractured cohesion falls apart
Family like glass splinters in the heart
I read about, know about it, felt it like the hammer at my grave
But we cannot deny that despite all
They went out to get it
But cannot come again.
In libraries whispering smothered discontent
On facebook drinking the anesthtettic of spurious arguments
The heart tweets, and tweets
The disparaging malajustment of the world
No vacancy sign littering our babel trembling
Where are they to work
What shall we do with all this genius
Stagering from place to place?
I went out with them until I was old
I am returned again to build
With them, but instead collapsed into a discourse with our eyes
We meet the wasteland face to face.
How dare this notion
Bury with green the last roots
And piss off a rose!
Of Unemployment….
It’s somewhat strange that the very thing
That provides a life resource takes my life away.
Gives me money to buy presentations of life
While keeping the progression of my mind at bay.
I can feel the neurons of my brain beginning
To communicate like long lost friends,
Calling from distant ends of the same community,
Engaging in song on a march of progression
Like enemies that have come together
As one to make amends.
I now find myself investigating everything
That I don’t know and questions I can’t answer.
Book-facts, places visited and making plans
For future advancement.
It’s like going back to school
But in the old skool way.
I’m at liberty to investigate ideas and avenues,
Removed from mechanics and procedure of 9 – 5 days.
But, Alas!
It’s ironic that the thing that has given me life
Is temporary just as this life is.
I have responsibilities and I’m not a believer
In stealing another man’s taxes.
It’s somewhat daunting that, having had my fingers
Fly across my keyboard, in purposeful array,
To put thoughts of my own, this night, out into the ‘Cloud’,
Unemployment is drawing to a close just like the day.
The hunt continues for that papery substance,
That replaces the worth of grey matter,
Presenting itself as digits on an ATM screen.
Light contained behind thick, scratched glass.
Defaced beauty?
Oh, the irony of Unemployment!….
Iam the one completed my graduation
Joined in unemployment youth
Now staying alone
Day and day everyday..!
Now and still searching for a job
Pass and faill return test’s
Facing face to face interviews
Day and everyday fighting with me
For the mission
After the graduation I think I will live like free bird
It’s wrong and wrong and purely wrong
Every imagination not become real
Empty pockets not have value
The real value have only one thing
Money and money and money
Yet somehow I will be crazy
Hopeful on brain full to win something...!
Folks lose their job
Now some sob for
No job- no cash!
Dorian Petersen Potter
Aka ladydp2000
Copyright@2014
10.16.14
The soul aches
numbs the brain
images float away of women
crying, laughing, ironing sheets
thinking about jobs and sex
finding work
cooking cheap spaghetti
Playing with malnourished children
recovering from trauma, turmoil
turbulence, schizophrenia
from wombing life
g
i
V
i
N
g
garlands with O P E N hands
Good MORNING CITIZENS
Welcome to the employment lounge
Have a pleasant day.
Step up state your claim
Please speak clearly
Move to the side
Step up state your claim
WHAT'S YOUR FAME?
Step up state your claim
What's your FLAME?
CHECK YOUR FLICKER?
YOU'RE in the GAME.
GOod morning Ms. Let me
Have your slip.
What's Your VARIATION
Difference in OCCUPATION?
Off to the right against the
Wall, we have COFFEE
and other refreshments
For Your enjoyment.
Now, let's be PEACEFUL
and continue on.
Number 77
Hello state your CLAIM
What's your NAME?
How's Your pain?
Please be patient.
At the end of the middle aisle
There'll be a woman there with a smile.
She has pain meds for you.
The CLERK tells security she's
COOL let her through.
ATTENTION. ATTENTION.
THE UNEMPLOYMENT LOUNGE Will
Be closing in 10 minutes.
For those who must return
TOMORROW please do so at
11a.m. NOW PLEASE BE
PEACEFUL and step to the EXIT.
YOUR COOPERATION IS GREATLY
APPRECIATED.
ENJOY YOUR DAY!
Im unable to diagnose, or come close
To why employment says adios
I cant keep a job, Only god knows why
My plans go awry, but I continue to apply
Each passing moment echos each passing day
Has it been 3 months since I've been paid
My parents look on with frustration in their faces
Getting ready To turn and draw at 10 paces
Depression, Aggression, 10 minutes left in our session
Saddle Up soldier, its time to go to war
But this is the job market not the marine corp
Some doubt that I can make it, but I will not quit
There is very little in this world that would make me submit
Paper dollars of money, Credit card distractions
The smell of money, and electronic transactions
My hard work has paid off, I have an interview at three
With all these late bills, Im just glad that its free
Out of the job, looking for work,
Will do whatever needs to be done,
Have been the words I’ve said every day,
Ever since my redundance begun,
But all of the work is applied for online,
With pages and pages of files,
Where every small detail of my meagre life,
Is somehow what the job here requires,
From my lifestyle, my likes, and the name of my dog,
To what sort of food do I eat,
To what sort of team do I follow in sport,
And what brand do I wear on my feet,
But the most frustrating data looked at the most,
Why my submission’s withdrawn,
Is the bit under my name for each online form,
That states the date I was born.
Beneath the cold glare of the desolate night,
And from a thousand miles away,
I heard her cries and felt the fathomless depths of suffering
Tearing her wounded soul and bruised emotions apart.
I collapsed into a dreary and hysterical depression,
'Cause the blood that runs in me,
Is the same that I ejaculated for her procreation.
She is my daughter!
And I love her more than life itself.
Her mother took her away and couldn’t stay with me any longer,
Because unemployment and hardship
Had dwarfed my dreams and aspirations,
Like a fiery exclamation of wrath and disdain,
Leaving me with a harassing anxiety of sorrow,
Destroying my propitious sky, marbled with pearly white.
Many letters were penned and sent to her enatic home.
As arbitrary as a cyclone and as killing as a pestilence,
Their replies were fatal,
Just as the fang of the most venomous snake.
Today again, I heard her cries at the wake of dawn,
Calling and asking “Dear father, when will you come for me?”
But I couldn’t answer in any way.
But deep down in me,
I know she wants a life in the hands of a real man,
And can no longer bear my ominous lull and silence,
As well as the inscription labeled on her by the society ‘Bastard,’
But the cruelty of my circumstance couldn’t let me offer to her,
That fatherly parenting and protection,
Indeed, I’m into a painful and disconcerting deformity.
I can’t find my daughter anymore,
But can hear her cries and feel all the pains she got to bear.
She is my snatched blood,
Even at that, I’m criticized with unsparing vigor,
In conditions of unspeakable humiliation.
Poetry Soup cleared the darkening clouds
Over the anxiety that
Embraced the plague of my thoughts.
Truly, thankful to have searched, found and
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09 August 2022
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