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.

N.B. Hear Finn Harvor’s spoken word version of War Markets here.

Finn Harvor is a writer, artist, musician, filmmaker, and global citizen who lives with his wife in South Korea. His work has been published in lit mags, presented at academic conferences, and screened at film festivals all around the world: in the UK, Ireland, Australia, the US, Canada, Mexico, Korea, China (Hong Kong), Japan, Portugal, Germany, Greece, Serbia, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, and India..

Harvor has this to say about his own work: “I am particularly interested in the following themes: nature and the anthropocene, addiction and family dynamics (my late brother’s story), technology and contemporary war, and the nature of love. I usually make poetry films that I term authorial movies, movies in which one person creates—authors—all elements of the movie.”

Here are links to some of Harvor’s recent work: The Baram Series, an ebook in which all the poems exist as both textual works and movies; The Human Volcano, a short video screened at a festival in Greece; and Three Tragedies, Four Seasons, a feature-length authorial movie.

Copyright © Mudlark 2022
Mudlark Flashes | Home Page