Bloomberg Ballet in the Russian Airport
Pungent haggard stocks await the bell.
Emotions low?
What will spike the graph today?
Thinly traded Fear in Kyrgyzstan,
Suspicions arid in the Pamir hills or
Uzbek Securities?
Listened to, but for the moment,
yield unknown?
Savvy investors know, or think they know,
the Sorrow frost hollow
has no currency in the Turkmen fire
pits because, if they don’t know,
no-one knows.
Nothing sells without a price.
The Turkmen ballet dancer
is leaving Domodedovo
now that Muscovites have
the remaindered brutish Guilt
of Dostoyevsky,
but not the Grace.
She bids higher than her mother,
her moving average
Sentiment over Survival.
Smoke regales her pert Resignation
in the smoking cube, ‘I have to keep
moving.’ Thin, elegant
cigarettes and dancing feet
indicate she’s open to offers
and, with Fertility stock rising
since the tax year end,
she’ll likely reap more, though,
in such emerging markets, she is quizzical
– an eyebrow arabesque, ‘Blue chip Love?
This IPO is not yet launched!
This I cannot trade!’
Spindles spiral down the chart of Feeling
Foolish risk. The screens are black.
The veins shine red, blue, yellow, green,
night rainbows in the dark Indifference
of cash emotions. Keep trading!
Tick, tick, tick, keep the tabs aglow!
The market opens to a sudden
dip in Bangladesh. They’ve been awake
for hours and clothing soaked and sunken
homes and children, yes, the children,
cause a rush on Grief. Buy, buy, buy!
Let’s cling to it like a raft
in this opportune flood of Losing!
The knock-ons, add-ons, benefits:
Disease and Hunger and Distress,
Destitution receivables, a frisson
in futures as Devastation in a peony
pink sari fills the crystal sheet,
raises the ask, so forecasts jitter
and then begin to soar
for Misery and Hopelessness,
which have been bearish
for almost a hundred days
but now positively leap the chart.
We’d almost forgotten
the Dispossessed in Ingushetia,
had thought returns too poor
for our interest, but a shadow
on the glass, there, a flicker about the eyes
of the pink girl clinging to the tree
as she pleads for rescue
from the news helicopter
reminds us of the look we saw
on that bleary woman
stooped praying by the Winter tanks,
honour-stripped and desperate back then.
We watch Oppression and Misfortune,
Have them designed by foreign brands,
graph-line emotions running out and low,
drained and dwarfed, the everywhere
locked behind the screen, not receivable,
no profit there or here.
By coffee time we are shedding
stocks of Pain and Injury,
barrel bombs producing puzzles
of babies’ body parts, the banks
of Fear tuned in to forecast that
the emotional stock-market
is taking a dive again.
Exports of Frustration and Anxiety
unexpectedly decline,
though phones are ringing in
with Agonies in Georgia,
trenchant tear-stained Fruitlessness
in Egypt and Ukraine.
There’s nothing left to sell in Libya,
and Israel and Palestine
have patents pending seemingly
eternally on Pain and Gain,
Psychological Torment and Despair.
Through a glass starkly into the dark
heart of media exploitation reserves,
the banks of Fear topple shares
of Death ash energies until
the Turkmen ballet dancer’s flight
is called and as the early moon
swings high, she waves farewell,
and still we cry, ‘Sell, sell, sell
before the clanging of the bell!’
Bloomberg Ballet in the Russian Airport was first published in 2021 by ASPZ Lines in Shanghai.