Black Market: Spectrum of the Greenback
What do you need?
Tell me.
Your wants are needs in disguise:
Things unimagi-
nable,
Things you despise.
Whatever you want, we can procure,
But still it’s your needs that hold the allure.
Practical needs for wants:
Unfettered, raw,
A world outside of time and law.
Something old,
Something new,
Something borrowed,
Something blue . . .
All wedded to the spectrum,
Who among us is not?
Some more than others when goods are too hot.
Perhaps a dirty bomb that’s clean?
Or a clean one that’s dirty?
A rare icon to comfort?
Something of Krishnamurti?
A first edition?
An artifact from a tomb without a curse?
Someone in particular put in a hearse?
Something more basic:
Jeans?
Lingerie?
Designer or bale?
Cigarettes?
Baguettes? Edible but stale.
A good rum at Castro’s expense?
A data base to make even hackers wince?
Perhaps something more involved:
A war chest?
A bribe?
A pay-off in sable?
Some intimidation prior a conference table?
Diplomatic relations to preserve?
Assertions from the Federal Reserve?
A grand plan – or a plan to foil?
Stocks?
Bonds?
Futures in oil?
A revolution?
A campaign?
A new influence in culture?
A corporate maneuver like descent of a vulture?
A great painting, famous, your choice:
“borrowed” or copied from the Louvre?
Something else, perhaps – some other chef d’ouvre?
A bronze figure, flesh or metal – your choice:
Gypsy passion for an evening,
Wine, a sympathetic voice.
An exotic delicacy perhaps?
Something fine for the palate?
Predigested votes?
A prix fixe ballot?
Caviar, cheap,
Even blood from a stone,
Even the Holy Grail may not be impossible to own.
Women and children for labor or vice?
Refugees?
Too many but not enough to suffice.
A Kalashnikov?
A Barishnikov – a new personage for your stage?
Narcotics of every kind – always the rage!
Cars, jets, boats?
An island of your own?
A mansion?
Servants to clone?
Contraband from old wars,
Nazi investments?
Liberated wares from Jewish contestments?
Jewels, gemstones – pride of the czars?
Multifaceted, twinkling like dark eyes and stars.
Better yet, pearls, the Tahitian kind, large as fruit;
Still easily carried in the pockets of a suit.
A creature of land or sea?
A hide or scarce corals?
Something as endangered as a human with morals?
Organs – for Bach or body?
Fast delivery is assured.
Experimental serums so all can be cured?
No procurement too great,
None too small;
The currency determines it all.
A network like veins takes blood to every part;
Every capillary is vital when no one has a heart – no center of operations –
The world is all the field,
And no honor among thieves who work obviously concealed.
Never questions asked, definitely no names;
Guaranteed avoidance of bureaucratic games.
Romans worth their salt;
Tribes trading beads;
Jews still using diamonds;
Agrarians sewing seeds;
Euros,
Yen,
The dinar of tomorrow;
The greenback of today has any destiny to borrow –
Its own included,
Too well overspent,
Spread around the world like a landlord paying rent.
In science the spectrum lies in white, there’s every color there;
Here the purity lies in green corruptly trading fair.
Green, like envy, blackens the lucre more,
Well banked on every continent as well as well offshore.
But how weary this market and the dollar too,
The standard growing poor with money growing new.
The economic shadow,
Always mint but old,
Heatedly perpetuating cash that’s always cold.
When justice seems to fail,
When needs are met with lack,
Always then we turn to commodities in black.
So what do you need?
Tell me.
– Mary Jo Magar –