The Sweepstakes of Hunger [Today's News Poem, June 9, 2010]
The vermin that crawled from the mouth of the chairman:
The flies with the faces of humans—yes, insects
That fell to the pages of canon in shape of
A blueprint—a ledger of life! And he holds it
And reads the report to assembled committee:
“My father has many fine thrones in his kingdom,
Enough for a kingdom of kings—but our servants
Will serve in the next life as surely as present.”
The spiders on parchment are eaten. The offspring
Are hatched in an instant and leave through the nostrils
As flies made of promise, that leave from the palace
In briefcases, squirming in spreadsheets and margins.
And fluttering free from their cases, they frenzy
And chew through the kittens in boxes of cardboard—
And shit out a replica kitten in pieces.
But mostly they feed on the crust and the sunlight—
These monads of promise, these tools of interment—
Replacing the nothing of spirit with credit
And asset: a swap that we made for a ticket
Of lice in this sweepstakes of ravenous hunger.
“Mr. Bernanke’s comments, at a hearing of the House Budget Committee, reiterated his view that the economic recovery would most likely be slow and painful for many Americans. The Fed projects gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic activity, to rise about 3.5 percent this year — a pace barely above that needed to keep pace with the growth in the labor force.”
– Sewell Chan, The New York Times, June 9, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/10/business/economy/10fed.html?hpw
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