Economics poem

Economics Poem

My Great Depression"

This is how I think it happened, sir. How I lost

Everything. it's hard to remember, even though it should be Easy to remember how everything is lost. Coins. Company.

Country. First quickly, then slowly, then suddenly again. Dust bowl.

Crash. It won't happen to me. More crashing. Dollars, gold.

Dust. I think it was when people stopped buying, it happened.

Loss, losses. So I stopped selling. So much.

So I let people go. So they lost their jobs. So?

Then the lost jobs stopped buying.

More. So more was lost. I cut. I still lost. Lost my business.

The bank said, no, no more loans. Then all closed.

All businesses. All the doors. Creditors. Banks. My family.

Their hearts, their minds, their purses closed. And gone.

Who can love a man who can't keep a family,

Can't keep what he owns, only owe?

No, maybe it was the other way around.

Who stopped buying? Who stopped selling? First?

It's hard to remember. What I do remember

Is cutting, cutting away. The people. The faces

At the doors. Then my own face at the door.

No work, man. The pavement beneath my feet.

I can feel the cardboard in my shoes and once Only the finest of leather would do. From living

It up putting on the Ritz in the Big Apple

To selling Apples and eating Ritz crumbled

In charity stews. FDR says

Big government will provide big jobs

And once again I will spend, and America

Will spend, and all will be well again.

But it's hard to believe,

What you read,

On paper, in the papers