Here's my contribution to the Fortune "Business Poetry" contest:
(with apologies to Allen Ginsberg)
~~~~
A Supermarket on Wall Street
What thoughts I have of you tonight, Abby Cohen
for I walked down the sidestreets over the homeless
with a headache, self-absorbed,
thinking of my shattered port
In my depressed fatigue, and shopping for light,
I went into the Korean fruit supermarket,
dreaming of your prostications!
What publications, what razors!
Whole departments shopping cheap!
Traders in the turnips! Bond dudes in the broccoli! Secretaries in the spinach!
And you, Byron Wein,
what were you doing down by the fava beans?
I saw you, Abby Cohen, prolific, lonely old bull
poking among the kimchee and eyeing that slim cashier
And I heard you asking questions of each:
Do you pay your taxes?
What price garlic futures?
How much were you margined?
I wandered in out of the hangul-written packages,
following you, and followed, in my imagination,
by the skinny, suspicious wife
We strode down the teeny corridors
together in our mutual depression
tasting the bulgogi and possessing every dried fish delicacy
and never once passing another soul
Where are we going, Abby Cohen?
They'll chase us out in a few minutes.
Which way do your models point tonight?
Will we walk all night with the ghosts of the Street?
The crackheads add color to darkness,
lights out in the buildings, we'll both be poor.
We will stroll, dreaming of a lost bull market of avarice
past the in restaurants, home to our silent walk-ups?
Ah, dear mother, beaten down, lonely old bovine
What America did you have
when Mammon quit picking the trees
and you got out, right at the top,
on the smoking heap and stood watching
the masses disappear on the black ledgers of margin. |
