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Croesus in the Comment Box

(a companion to “Poems for Money…”)

Croesus, old coin‑king,
you sit in my comment box
polishing your metaphors in gold leaf,
telling me the platform fee is “just the cost of doing art.”

But I’ve seen the gates,
how they swing only for those
with a credit card in the lock.
I’ve heard the hallow of poems
that never make it past the paywall,
their syllables still warm in the mouths
of poets who can’t afford
to spit them into the feed.

You say, “What’s a few coins for immortality?”
I say, “What’s immortality to the unheard?”
In Lagos, in La Paz, in Lahore,
there are verses that could split the sky,
but the sky here takes payment in advance.

Croesus, you measure worth in minted weight;
I measure it in the tremor of a line
that makes a stranger’s chest ache.
Your treasury is full,
but my currency is breath —
and breath should not be billed.

Still, I post what I can,
slipping lines through the cracks
between your gold‑plated rules,
hoping one will land in a reader’s hands
like contraband joy.

And if you ask me again
why I won’t pay to be heard,
I’ll tell you this:
because the richest poem I know
was written in the dust,
read aloud to the wind,
and carried farther than your coins could ever reach.