Two Poems
Janice D. Soderling
It Trickles Down​
​​​​​
It trickles down like rain through trees,
like jolly germs when bankers sneeze.
The machinations of the rich
control the Market’s bait-and-switch:
a con man’s move, a loser’s niche.
With snake oil in the press release,
fake pie charts and analyses,
payola flows without a hitch.
It trickles down.
Rubes shiver in their BVDs,
foreclosed by Mephistopheles,
who promised cash but gave them kitsch,
who grins and growls, “Life is a bitch.
My friend, there’s been a little glitch.”
Corruption in a den of thieves;
it trickles down
​​​​
- - -
A Diminishing Verse on Diminishing Returns
​​​
My banker said, “We’ve millions we can spare,
And you should buy, and sell, and hedge a pair.
To back your CDOs, you just list air.”
“Why work?” he said, “Invest and watch them grow,
Those fattish figures on the bottom row.
Just buy, buy, buy. It’s stupid not to owe.”
He spoke of seed costs and returns to scale
And how a clever girl could harvest kale
And drink champagne instead of common ale.
He oozed experience and boyish charm.
I thought a little debt would do no harm.
A little fling, then came the law’s long arm.
My eyes grew glazed; my visage, wan and bleak.
I thought my jugular had sprung a leak.
The loans fell due, I stammered Urk and Eek.
Nothing helped, although I damned and prayed.
Cruel debt collectors swooped down in a raid.
No angel fluttered nimbly to my aid.
Oh, empty purse! Oh, empty glass and plate!
Oh, afterthought, too little and too late.
The ball I stand behind is number eight.
The sweetest talk comes from a sly loan shark.
Share not my fate, oh sister, list and hark:
Flooded markets float no saving ark.
Don’t fall for talk of funds and multi-blend
From oily bankers desperate to lend.
That’s how a poor girl comes to a bad end.
​​
- - -
Janice’s notes: ​​“Although Gaggle, ever alert to the winks and blinks of officialdom, has removed Women’s History Month from its Calendar, we of egg money economics, patched bodices, and pinched pennies continue to celebrate our hard-earned feminist history of two steps up and one step down on the slippery stairs of promises made, maybe.
“What more fitting for March than poems about money?
“‘It Trickles Down,’ a rondeau, was first published at Light Poetry Magazine, a favored venue for lighthearted poetry with a razor blade hidden in the folds of its apron.
“‘A Diminishing Verse on Diminishing Returns’ appeared in 2009 when the finance world was (again) falling apart. It was published at long-running New Verse News.
“As poet friends know, a diminishing verse can be of any length. It is composed of rhyming triplets where the second line loses a sound from the first line and the third line loses a sound from the second line, as in ‘spare, pair, air’ and ‘grow, row, owe,’ etc. It is sometimes called a pruning poem.”
​​​​
- - -
Janice D. Soderling has work in a variety of international journals, some defunct, others, like her, still chugging away. She is represented in anthologies wth prose and poetry. Her most recent collections are The Women Come and Go, Talking (poems), and Our Lives Were Supposed to Be Different (short fiction and flash), both under the imprint of Kultivera Productions.
​​
- - -​​​
Hop to…
Barb | Claudia | David | Janet | John | Mark | Martin | Melissa | Mike | Paul | Steven | Susan | Word-Bird
​​​