day trade-off

The investor’s new lament:
“’Bye, low,” he’ll sigh.
The old rules
no longer apply.

talk is cheap

Let’s slap a ban
on that word
“bipartisan”—
it’s limp-wristed code for
“you get screwed.”

And as we’re in
the forbidding mood
eighty-six the tired, poor
“wall-street-main-street”
metaphor.

We’re all up the same
damned street don’t you see.
Here’s a deal: I leave policy to you,
You leave poetry to me.

monday morning pundit

Ol’ Jim Lehrer
he couldn’t be fairer:
He gives each man his say.

Still I wonder
if he didn’t blunder
in setting up the show that way.

A few minutes here
a few minutes there--
so little new light gets shed.

We’d get more use
--more political juice--
from an hour of air squeezed dead.

versus interruptus?

No, the flow
of thought
will not
cease--

(a notion
stands
still
for
no
one)

for we need words
without end
in the face
of the absurd:

This is democracy
not goddam pretend
and your instant poet
shall ne'er suspend...

here to there

The Electric Car:
they said it wouldn't go
far and what's more
would get there slow.....

....ly.
It's tiny and weak
and un-American.
A Communist plot,
to drive something so
small. Or to take a
bus or train
or walk anywhere at all.

Fear not,
bucket-seat-bronco,
no lesson you'll
learn: Humvee heaven
will return
when the price of fuel
is about what you earn.

when uppance comes

When the world smirks I told you so
where do you go?
Down down down.
The light bulb above your head
how is it screwed?
Up. Up.
The politics of class war
what do you get?
Out.

Babe wept

Tears on pinstripes
as a colosseum closes.
Buck up Bronx:
a new one will rise
next door, a temple built of
blood, sweat and taxes.

In Boston and Chicago
they cheer--as do I, from over here--
that New York's season is a bust.
It was ever thus:
Good folk everywhere
revel in rare
Yankee despair.

But there's no denying
a bittersweet fall.
We brook no bad will here;
baseball
is
like
dogs:
so full of good cheer,
so inherently sad.

The Greatest Depression

Fit yourself for a pickle barrel
and learn how to crack nuts with your laptop
bro; those surfing skills won't do you much
good in the New Economy.

It's Road Warrior time, can you dig
the kerosene? Bottled water my ass.
You'll be clawing open cactus
and puking up the juice.

Cushy retiree, a Wal-Mart greeter?
Hah you wish, pal. That's a plum job
we won't like to see again
when the shit comes down.

Learn Mandarin, your nervous joke?
It won't save you, Gweilo--
Even the Chinese don't bother with it anymore;
they're too busy counting the minutes.

interest rate haiku

In a whisk of greed
whiter than the price of rice:
a scrambled nest egg.

black-and-blue monday

Ding-dong the opening bell
sends numbers skidding
across your screen
in a left-to-right slide.
Above them flap gums—
scorecard the falling sky,
never mind the why.
Sing-song voices ring
not so true, never so green
even more blue
than in between
the blank spots.

Captain Credit Crunch

Fannie and Freddie
sitting in a tree
F-A-I-L-I-N-G...
First comes the loan
then comes arrearage
then comes Uncle Sam
with a baby mortgage.

The moral of the story
is a simple, not compound:
Money that's lost
will soon be found.
Little borrowers
musn't fuss and pout:
Overload your boat and
we'll bail you out.