Here's my shot at poetry and finance:
*ARBITRAGE*
Chance took me to Brooklyn,
opportunity, to the third floor flat
of that Byelorussian girl who trades
erotic futures. She opened
with T-shirt and fuzzy slippers, pad
in hand, trailing actuals,
fungibles and derivatives, to her bedroom
office. Stuffed bears, nesting dolls. Dimples
on the screen of her laptop. /Time/
/ /
/to take short position/, she
muttered, nibbling her pony tail,
/Or maybe/ … Her bottom squirmed,
/No one considers now knock-out /
/option. We could ride /
/straddle…is irrational market,/
/ /
/volatile. Kama Sutra/
/is up on the Sensex,/
/down on the Nifty. /
I/nstruments are mispriced…we take /
/both positions, and ha! we are een/
/like Fleen./ I asked her,
/How much do you need?/
/ /
MC Ward wrote:
> Thanks a bunch, Tad! It occurred to me to use
> financial language when I read the Cohen quote that
> heads the poem. I also grew up near Bretton Woods,
> famous not only for its boys' choir but for the
> meeting of world leaders soon after the war when the
> IMF and the World Bank were hammered out--and,
> coincidentally, globalization was launched.
>
> Candice
>
>
>
> --- TheOldMole <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>
>> What a combination -- finance and Cohen. I love this
>> one.
>>
>> MC Ward wrote:
>>
>>> Here's my Leonard Cohen cento, if anyone's
>>>
>> interested
>>
>>> in reference-spotting amidst the language of
>>> international finance:
>>>
>>> Mise-en-tranche: A tribute song
>>>
>>> _I haven't been this happy
>>> Since the end of World War II_
>>> (Leonard Cohen, "Waiting for the Miracle")
>>>
>>> He loves the country but can't stand the trees
>>> on the same grounds--real yet not exactly
>>> _there_, like the World Bank--cypress sheer
>>> madness where the wind has no currency
>>> yet the sentimental willow goes on whining,
>>> meaner than mildew to sour his leisure,
>>> the pleasure of coming into his own
>>> silk lining. Such a stitch to be talking to
>>> his pockets at closing time. _Repent_, they said
>>> but now he knows what everybody knows
>>> they meant: the Sermon's on _account_,
>>>
>>> beyond the mind to credit, like fiat money.
>>> It's criminal, reversible as sonata or skin or
>>> this torn trenchcoat indebted to the blues,
>>> the rain a rhythm section tapping panic on
>>> his lids. Drum him in then at the Great Event
>>> along with that dove he bought and bought
>>> again. Stranger Music, those rivers going crazy
>>> over garbage in the harbor. He's a bodybag man
>>> that time will not okay, whose workers in song
>>> are still giving tongue just to get ahead of their
>>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>> class.
>>>
>>> So billet to the Left Bank when Manhattan's
>>> given as Japan's taken; your man's been driven
>>> from _Seven Pillars_ to postmodernism. What a
>>>
>>
>>
>>> relief
>>> to lie down at last with all he's lost, to kiss
>>>
>> off
>>
>>> Berlin and its cheap violins now that he holds
>>> every note torn from the sheets he never worked
>>> alone, by the sweat of the moon or a dead
>>> magazine. Let the limousine wait
>>> in the street for last year's man to comfort
>>> any widowed government. He used to live
>>> on loan himself, where Malibu verges on absurdity.
>>>
>>> The bonds he bears now he wears as bracelets,
>>> like a refugee entrenched in foreign issue. He's
>>> divested, optioned, rhapsodic with his treasury
>>> of merits, history's indulgence a dated unhappi-
>>> ness: Nancy's phone open since '61; Suzanne
>>> sold down the river in '67; Marianne, so long gone
>>> now with the famous raincoat. Will he ever get
>>>
>> clear
>>
>>> of their .45s and razor blades, their dresses,
>>> their asses? Love coldly slips from hyacinth to
>>> barbiturate, like verses for faces lined and
>>>
>> powdered
>>
>>> by the same bitter mirror; the river's
>>> answer, he guesses, to the cut of his coke and
>>> his times. If there's hell still to pay for all
>>>
>> that
>>
>>> croc
>>>
>>> DNA once the fiddler's stopped fundamentally,
>>> he says he can't complain. As beauty's his
>>> witness to the falling rate of prime, he's never
>>> been so postwar nor felt so good since
>>> his bird wired cash from Bretton Woods.
>>>
>>> (c) Candice Ward, 2006, and _Jacket Magazine_
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --- MC Ward <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> Barry,
>>>>
>>>> I use it, too, in a tribute to Cohen, a poem that
>>>> has
>>>> many references to titles and lyrics. Here's the
>>>> section where "Everybody Knows" occurs:
>>>>
>>>> ... Such a stitch to be talking to
>>>> his pockets at closing time. _Repent,_ they said
>>>> but now he knows what everybody knows
>>>> they meant: the Sermon's on _account_ ....
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> "Closing Time" is a song title, too. The Sermon
>>>>
>> on
>>
>>>> the
>>>> Mount/on account, he says he doesn't understand.
>>>>
>>>> Candice
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
> ____________________________________________________________________________________
>
>>>
>>>
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>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
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>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
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>
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>>>
>> --
>> Tad Richards
>> http://www.opus40.org/tadrichards/
>> http://opusforty.blogspot.com/
>>
>>
>
>
>
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--
Tad Richards
http://www.opus40.org/tadrichards/
http://opusforty.blogspot.com/
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