War Markets

  

War Markets
by Finn Harvor

Where were you born?
In what city
was the future written
on the hard,
cakey walls
of destiny’s
blind alleys?

Well, don’t worry —
International markets,
dizzylingly high
on their abstract
mountains
of profit
and gas —
have been teetering lately;
their great volumes —
stacked high as peaks —
are due for a crash.

Experts
all bitcoined (till last spring)
take to media,
and reassure, reassure —
while stocking secret fridges
in faraway
cottage-bunkers
with veggies, dried meat
and fruit ...
food, in the near future,
will be the new loot.

And as the
concussion bursts echo
from one oblast
to the next,
and cheap,
green kamikaze drones
fill the autumn sky,
policy experts discuss
what will happen next:
will the war go nuclear,
will Vlad lob a bomb?
Will we have to respond to
a tactical burst,
without uncontrolled
exchanges
and strategic mega
doom?

Then the experts draw
deep breaths,
and tell us not to fret,
for even in the almost-next-worse-case
scenarios,
the worst that can happen
will just be a Crash;
all those savings in bank accounts —
tinkling ...
piggy banks smashed.
And the resulting Depression ...
trillion-strengthened
by a billion plastic debts
will temporarily-
permanently
last.

And on this patchwork
planet —
battered, tattered globe —
from faraway battlefields,
their earth newly soaked,
to the stock markets
and bourses,
where the day traders
toke,
the future’s just a mirage,
and we, common people,
its fodder,
its joke.

Originally published in Mudlark