[Newspoetry] Econo-Word Capitalist Memo

[Donald L Emerick]

Econo-Word Capitalist Memo

PBS recently had a special,
touching sensitive relations
for communities of affinity --
see affine transformations
if you work as a math major,
for less colorful descriptions,
worked out quite bloodlessly.

During the show they sang
a Billie Holiday newspoem,
I liked it so I copy it to you,
sharing what's news to me.

***Start Copy
STRANGE FRUIT
Southern trees bear a strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black body swinging in the Southern breeze
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees

Pastoral scene of the gallant South
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth
Scent of magnolia, sweet and fresh
And the sudden smell of burning flesh

Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck
For the sun to rot, for a tree to drop
Here is a strange and bitter crop
***End Copy

Well, you have to supply music,
but neither major nor minor there,
I find certain folksy rhythm in it,
that I hear differently as I imagine
each and every singing different,
by different voices carrying tunes,
high and low, or messo-soprano,
and by different choruses, too.

I don't recall this old song from
Lawrence Welk or an Ed Sullivan,
Dick Clark's American BandStand,
seeing it on weekly Top 40 charts,
or ever having heard it sung before.

It beats Dixie and Swannee River,
tops CampTown ladies singing
(though I imagine such ladies
to be for rent, hire, ala Bordello,
and thus have but strange ideas
of what songs they might sing),
even edges out Ol' Man River,
that Robeson sang long ago,
even in Urbana, he sang for me,
though he never has met me,
and never will, now, so I guess.

I'd like to have a haunting voice,
words that would nigh haunt me,
be haunted by me, in-chanting,
enchantment but not sorcery:
eternal magic :: numin beauty.
When the last vestige of man
vanishes in the traces of time,
the last to die will be beauty,
for she alone is strong enough
to outlive the death of all of us,
and then there'll be darkness,
undisturbed ennui, silent nihil.

I am a page torn apart, divided
between the moment unspoken
and the momentum speaking,
hastily written as purposed use,
unpaused, unmediated, almost,
by any checks on express-ness,
expression unsprings to impress,
to transfer this sensory stimuli,
from my endings out to yours.

Some silly little rhymes run on,
for ever and ever, saying no more
than ever it did, or nothing much:
"Row, row, row your boat..."
The boat is not even painted,
not even aged, not even made
to be any special kind of boat,
but a plain row-boat for rowing,
which implies unnamed oars,
fancy paddles, or barge-poles,
excludes all kinds of motors,
electric or steam, oil or gas.
Is the song action-descriptive
or is it imperative in its voice?
Is it telling us we must row boats,
or that we do naturally row boats,
as this itty-ditty just reminds us?

Who cares about any silliness,
which could be no beauty, now,
now that we have grown up,
out-grown what we grew into?
When you become haunted,
ghosts visit when they please:
we learn to haunt them back.
When we stop fearing them,
when we stop prose repressing,
we may take literal possession
of rightful shares of ourselves,
neither iotas more nor any less,
than what we deserve to have.

One stops runs on word banks
by discounting word economies,
according to the verbal velocity:
the faster the words are flowing,
the higher a discount rate rises,
offsetting inflationary spiraling.
Yet, when interest rates are low,
it means words lack motivation,
words have no power to inspire,
and require even more of them,
to be dumped into the morass
of swamp, bogs, fens or mires.

According to late Lord Keynes,
massive government mouthings
may offset cyclic public fatigue,
so that steady-state economies
may be achieved, progressively,
minimizing harming variances,
that hurt much when amplitudes
swing from extreme to extreme,
or stick at uncomfortable spots.
When verbal economies overheat,
then silent Cal is welcome here,
welcome to say and do nothing,
or even to say, depressingly,
something that lessons hype,
lessens hyperbole, unflattery.

(See AdMinisters of Hyperbole,
for Lesson I in this, my Series,
on economy in word-inflations.
(Resolutely, I have determined
to spout sense sans beauty,
cursing grapes out of reach,
teaching in sweet and sour,
blessing bottled vineyards.))

Thanks for listening,
Donald L Emerick
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