Bad for Bizness

I'm actually not fond of the following type of poem because it's more a stream of conciousness bit of prose broken down and made to appear a poem. Many people write poetry this way, taking long sentences and adding a lot of returns and getting published in big name journals and winning awards and such. So, I'm not fond of it, though prosaic language does occasionally fill my mind. When it does, I feel compelled to put it to paper. Which is what I did, early last Saturday, while sitting in the lobby of the Sheraton Hotel in Research Triangle Park (I was helping with the writers' network fall conference), while reading the Wall Street Journal.

As I say in the poem the writer makes barely an effort to hide his doubt that the new congress won't bring down Wall Street with regulatory legislation. There's a point to that, I guess. After all, if the poor and downtrodden start making or saving more money, that means someone else won't be posessing all that money any longer. Or, to paraphrase the economist on NPR's Marketplace: When someone gets a great deal, someone else gives it up.

So I present to you a little bit of proestry about how I was feeling after reading a very well written, and, truth-be-told, very informative indictment of the Big 'D' crowd taking the reins of our little 'd' republic for just a little while.


4 a.m. -- too hot to sleep.
Blendbuzz of a lobby waterfall/humming lights/Musak mixture
trickling into the top of my semi-consciousness.
Too tired to really read,
I slowly pore over the new day’s news.
An election.
A change of pace.
A nation has voiced a single word:
Democrats, Democrats, Democrats.

This is not an election story -- that’s three days past.
It’s a not-so-subtle lament; an ode to the old guard,
with its old crowd doing things the old way.
“Bad for Business,” the headline reads,
disguised in the language of the upper crust,
of moneyed men.

Mugs of newly guilted, “anti-trade” congressmen
line the news jump like police photos of murder suspects
topping the crime news.
The mention of “jobs” or “labor” seems an afterthought,
or a distasteful necessity,
first making mention halfway down the page.
“Views of a troubled economy”
(voiced by those who really work for a living,
or aren’t working, more to the point),
doesn’t poke its mole head out of the background
until well into the jump. Fifteen paragraphs in, to be precise.

But the writing -- oh the writing --
barely attempts to conceal
the contempt
that this new guard, this big ‘D’, will be
Bad for Bizness.
Specifically, their business, the business of getting richer
(initial richness a benchmark long since attained).

“Things are going to be bad,”
the editors and publishers of the bi-zness papers and pages
(who can’t find a layoff they can’t spin aright)
are afraid to say out loud.
So now, say it softly, if not so subtly,
pen a frustration-laden,
knock the new guys,
pouting piece
that claims, clear as this new day,
that steadfast belief that workers
-- perish the thought! --
ought have no say
in the decisions affecting
their American workplace.

Perhaps this week I’ll find a job.