Let us pray for merchants and bankers -
 World leaders.

For outproduction
 And economic potential.

A prayer
   Where greed is good:
      A dream of domination.

Now there's the rub.

Where did it go wrong,

My adventurous song?

Our wings outspread like some financial Milton.

With rates at zero and losses infinity

I could have done with help earlier.

I ask, is this the prayer to prick my conscience?
As all around I see an eternal question.

One of nonsense, nought.

Cancelling these beloved mortgages.

Gone my Rock, Northern,

And happy Prince Bingley.

Where shall I turn, O Jerusalem?

Perhaps to back a different humour
The one with monetary tumour –
Boys and girls who bet the invisibles
A smile on their face without demurring,

Let us praise them.

Who stamp their feet
Staggering between alpha and beta
Giving a two minute warning
Before extinction.

   In a vision, looking beyond the curtain

The price of oil doubling

While falling

A long way and back again.

What is this?

Nothing.

The stump of a tree rotting.

Inflation merry,

Iceland? Sold for a penny.

Print and be damned,

How sweet -it's 'bail out'!

For cars we do not need

Or care for.

Now there's a man with vision –

The US President,

So heads were spinning
Nobody (anybody) queried the query.

Knew whether we were running,
Shooting, firing

lobbying or…

Out in rigs, steamers, living.
And everything moving –

'Gated and booted,

    You rough-riding, son of a vigilante.'

And horses with the feet of centaurs,
Salesman out west along highways

In patterns of spending obvious

Even the rich normally clever

Looking stupid.

Enter Bernie to get

His leg-over.

Il Duce. Vittoria!

Are you on the list?

The rest laughing at a distance.

A bad day at the races, let's face it.

Out there, even St Patricks' boys are stealing.

So many friends, so many places

Who said the're Our Pillars?

Finally, the screens stand watching themselves
    a view is fixed, a trance,
suddenly no, not Goldmans!

We trusted you,

Although the mask has fallen
   A finger points

Accusingly

To

'My Word, my Bondy.'

But with whom, Israel?

Truth being somewhat of a victim

These lies dominated by further cluster
And all prominent –
    Telling of Tokyo,
The Footsie or Paris falling –
    Beneath
Running powerfully from Bank to

      Chancery

The system failing.

A stop at Lehman intoxicating.
    Sounds of drums and shields.

inhabitants

Walk out in a crash of symbols

Despite the sulphurous smelling/still exclaiming

    "isn't it wonderful the killing."

Our data correlated
   To voice and nervous sinew
As starred-crossed models.
   The new swimmers,

despite their death 'brothers',
All names inter-twinned – winners.

   Pure velocity, surges/rallies.
Suddenly damaged,

Mayfair empty,

Was sure we'd go forever.

Not what Hank envisaged

Instead

Fannie and Freddie miserable,

We tried again to cancel September

In the Forbidden City.

It's off the wedding but shotgun ready

Heavies appear, the quiet men

Scot to English

Adam Smith furious

But even Edinburgh

Wasn't immune from greediness.

So my breath became prayer

And my prayer dear life -

Was glad as I walked into this house
Could not divide one mouth from another
Nor tell who was on my side

Felt only the warmth of the sun on my back
   And the fires of hell around me.

To god I go –

A mispriced fool in a world of wonder.

     Yes,

I shall walk in the valley of the shadow of debt

  Every seed planted.

A million Armageddions flowering.

Thought I was man's best friend
But now the lakes are burning,

All of us, no longer filled with thoughts of lust
Are wretched in state moneyless

Where dreams are turned to dust.

Let us return to Paradise, Archangel,
You and I walking under an evening sky -

What a bargain! Credit unlimited.

But, despite a discount,

Despite a god,

This sucker's going down alright.

                                             B H Fraser

For engagement
To see nobody:
A moment invisible,
Travelling in shadow
   With message ready
To unleash
     The chaos of hell, of battlefield.
A word alien,
Each sound a miracle of atom and particle
As bodies tremble.
A second, a sign, an allegory
Until a switch to voices of
           "Incoming!"
How friendly.
           With noise intimate,

  As butcher bird appears
         With something
Much more personal.

Execution perfect
In the high altitude of killing.

Ready to avenge himself
   How do you describe me?
As Bringer of War?
Or Peace?
   By Jupiter,
                   All these things –
A regular corpse-maker.
      Trained well
To see the best of all possible scenarios,
Though now it's done
A land I neither know nor believe in.
To make sense giving thanks:
"Gloria tibi domine"
    A repeated prayer, a repeated failure,
Something my orders didn't mention.

So
   I
      Began to walk.
            To go beyond
   "Going to the limit"
With no understanding
Except myself as limit.
  What is today limit? Nothing.
No music
     Just shadows,
A stump.
Reflections.
To dance the dance macabre.
The comedy finished.
I shall not wake from this magic sleep
Either as Roland or Darius,
or The Lion himself, David.

Put down instead
like the dog I followed and believed in.
I’m going up the line tonight.
Looking neither left nor right

   All contracts filled
By this rotten earth
   All places extinguished,
   As the darkness folds

Around these words.
I vanish mocking each syllable,
My jaw fixed,
Unable to move –
   The sound still,
                   Incomprehensible.

                                             B H Fraser

Dream me.
I am neither asleep nor awake.
I am in parenthesis.
Watching
   With love and remembrance,
I am your heated vision.
This sense beyond the furthest limit
      A new language –
               The stuff
   Waking sleep is made of.
It makes no movement.
An unsaid moment.
Did you call me?
There is laughter in your calling.
The refrain though is mine remembered.
      Notes capturing a shadowless beauty
Beside a shaded meadow,
      Around the blunder/break of sleeping.
Now only the sleep/lightning
   Has my echo.
What can be said? Look around.
I am alive and you must remember.
Although I stumble,
   Listen –
I hear the music of the water
   And dream for it to take me.
Where is this place?
   It is between each birth
     In a timeless tense
Injecting each repeated second.
     Told in whispers before you wake.
   Neither here nor there
     But in reflection.
Waking, no mirror, nothing –

                                             B H Fraser

And did those words in City speak
    tell us much about what was said?
And was this secret place still England
    now it's owned by global inc?

And did the governor (himself divine)
    Judge like Mercury upon a whim?
And was mammon raised here
    amidst these bright, intelligent things?

Bring me my bonus of burning zeros!
    Bring me a nod from my manager!
Bring a decent appraisal, o career unfold!
    Bring me a car with two steering wheels!

I shall not rest from making millions,
    nor shall power sleep in my wallet,
until we have built a new Jerusalem
    where money is without limit.

Shall I compare an option to a future?
The thought of all that money is lovely.
Markets are volatile - alleluia.
Wow, the contract has a month longer
And the market's gone loco.
Hey, it could be an opportunity (in such confusion).
As once in a while you get this kind of thing -
To go away in May and come back in September,
Overpowering us happy few with a price
Nobody can remember.
I guess we couldn’t believe it -
The vanity of the forbidden City.
For as long as someone’s able and willing,
There’s always a chance to make a killing.