This ancient manuscript was found floating in an empty (but expensive) wine bottle in the East River near Battery Park in NYC. We know it is old, because it was a French wine bottle, and as we all know, Wall Street no longer drinks French wine since the war on Iraq. Perhaps it drifted up the Gulf Stream from some offshore haven.
The Rubaiyat of Alfred J Prufock, MBA
Awake! For moaning in the bowl of night
Has drop’t the tip that put the stocks to flight
And Lo! The punter of the East has caught
The Nikkei’s index in a noose of blight
Dreaming Murdoch’s TV was in the sky
I heard a voice within the exchange cry,
‘Awake, oh my suckers, and buy the stock
before all these IPO bargains fly.’
And, as CNN crews, who stood before
The exchange shouted, ‘Open then the door!
You know how little cash you have to buy,
And, once departed, may return no more.’
Come, buy the shares, and in the fire of spring
The net proceeds of your investments fling
The bird of time has but a little way
To fly – and Lo! The bird is on the wing
‘How sweet are yearly dividends!’ think some
While others say, ‘How blest the stock options that come!’
Ah, take the cash in hand and waive the rest
Oh, the brave music of a distant drum!
Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Broker and an’lyst, and heard great arguments
About puts and sells but evermore
Left broke by the same door as in I went
The sharp broker’s pen writes; and, having writ
Moves on: nor all thy Street savvy nor wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a buy
Nor all thy tears wash out a cent of it
Lo! Some we bought, of the hottest and best
That time and fate of all their picks imprest
Have peaked and troughed oft times before
But one by one, disastrously gone West
Ah Love! Could thou and I with fate conspire
To grasp this Enron scheme of things entire
Would not we cash in our options and run
To spend our net worth on our heart’s desire!
Ah, Moon of my delight who know’st no wane
The SEC are after us again
How oft hereafter rising shall they look
Through this same office after me – in vain!
Now the bull mart reviving old desires
The thoughtful soul to Bermuda retires
Where the penny stocks flutter on the bough
And the splashing of cash offshore inspires
Here with a stock report beneath the bough
A flask of wine, a new laptop, and thou
Beside me singing on the sandy beaches
And bankruptcy is paradise now
Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend
Before we too into the dock descend
Bust after bust, and in disguise, to flee
Sans wine, sans PC, and sans dividend
The Speculator
