Crash

Property speculators, insurers and bankers are not jumping out of the high windows despite the record 777 point fall on Wall Street yesterday and the fact that there are no more golden parachutes, perhaps the windows are double-glazed and sealed and it is no longer possible.
From all accounts it must have looked like a Buster Keaton movie during the famous Wall Street Crash of the 30's with all those certificates and shares only useful for a New York tickertape parade as cops blew their whistles and held back onlookers. These days the financial wizards are more likely to end up on the psychiatrists' couches or in retirement in Zurich.
Of course the red ink has been on the Wall Street ticker ever since Don 'Shock and Awe' Rumsfeld (remember him?) and George 'the Crusader' Bush sent the boys and girls into Iraq. The old WMD trick. But think back. It wasn't exactly a red letter day when Bill 'I've never had sex with that woman' Clinton pardoned America's most wanted swindler who was holed up with his friends, the dodgy gnomes of Zurich*, was it? This current Crash, like the tsunami that begins far under the surface, is now arriving and is breaking on the Wall Street shores.

Crash

they'll be selling
from the bell

the market's weak as hell

across the board

he splutters

through
blue arthritic lips

lumbering from the cooler
vid-phone cigar and poly-cup
in hand

the modern custer

betting

on the big picture
on the broad perspective

it was a labour of love
and damned percentages
he'll tell them later

lying on the couch

-----
from Genteel Messages by Gwilym Williams (pub. 2008)

*book tip - Dr. Fischer and the Bomb Party by Graham Greene