The Financial Lives of the Poets (5 page)

M-Tronic Reports Strong Q3

I know it sounds stupid in hindsight, and perhaps in foresight too, but my idea was that someone needed to start a website that gave financial news and advice…in verse.

Actually, it’s not
quite
as stupid as that. My idea was that the site would not just feature poetry, but a higher level of financial writing—think of it as money-lit. People spend so much time thinking about business and finance, about their mortgages, about investing, about their retirement and college funds; hell, after 7/11, it was all anyone talked about, as if we’d had a collective midlife crisis. But the writing about those things has always seemed so dry. My site was supposed to remedy that, by featuring all sorts of
literary
writing about the financial world—creative essays, profiles of brokers, short fiction about business, and what I called “investment memoirs”—first-person chronicles by investors and professionals (for instance, a commissioned broker piece:
My Season in Purgatory: How an Otherwise Savvy Trader Fell for the Convertible Bond Lie).
The hook, though, was poetry—not because I felt there was some great demand for a quatrain about consumer confidence, but because I thought people would simply be drawn to the anachronism of it—like the European TV channel where the news is read by topless anchors. Investment poetry would draw in the curious, get newspapers and TV stations to do bemused features about us, and this, then, would open the door for a literary discussion of the thing that most of us spent so many days thinking about: our money.

And so:
poetfolio.com
—conceived in overheated-but-honest passion, its home page still pinned to my laptop like the refrigerator-taped ultrasound of a stillborn baby. I can close my eyes and still see that beautiful beta page: a humor piece about the return of tech stocks written like a horror story
(Night of the Living Tech);
a frankly mediocre investment memoir from a woman who funded only socially progressive companies
(Redefining a GOOD Investment),
a handful of smart, short rhymed business shorts down the right side, and my favorite—a rollicking heroic poem about the first step in saving for your kids’ college
(The Ballad of a 529 Plan).

Even with that perfectly reasonable explanation, and perfectly realized home page, I still feel the need to defend my idea, by tracing the synaptic misfires that went into creating it. My thoughts went something like this: A. people don’t read poetry much anymore. B. I
like
poetry, or at least I did in college. C. I’m not sure I understand the poetry I read in journals now; it seems like another language, disconnected from my undergrad Keats, Stevens and Neruda. D. This new poetry seems rooted in abstract language and has little to do with the real world. E. I have spent most of my life covering the real world as a journalist, first for a small business publication and then for the local newspaper. F. In that time, I’ve noticed that business writing is the driest, boringest, least imaginative writing in the world. G. At one time, I wanted to be a poet. H. It’s really too bad people don’t read poetry; they should. I. Early middle age is such a creepy time, and I constantly find myself wishing I were more like the younger me. J. Perhaps fiscal poetry is the perfect union of my overworked, analytical, continuous-list-making left-brain and my seemingly ignored creative right.

Conclusion: I shall now quit my job and endanger my family’s future to follow my youthful dream of writing stock news and tips in pedestrian, amateurish verse.

The thing that finally tipped me over the edge was when I read a story about the heiress to this big fortune leaving a huge pot of money for the advancement of poetry. I wrote a grant proposal and a business plan, and shocked myself by getting some actual funding (though far less than I ended up needing). Whenever I described the idea, people smiled and I suppose I mistook their bemusement for enthusiasm. I bought two new computers, hired a tech/ad specialist to help create the website and to sell advertising, rented a little office, and, hell, when you get a grant and people are smiling and the start-up costs are minimal, you kind of have to go through with it. I quit my job, built my site, quickly burned through the tiny grant, emptied our savings, went in debt, stalled, spent six months fretting, and then got ice-cold feet, realizing at the last minute, days before we were supposed to go live, that no way in hell was anyone ever going to use the Internet to read poems about—

“Dan Fouts,” my father says as we watch football highlights on SportsCenter, as we always do after dinner. “He threw the prettiest ball. He had a beard you know.”

“Yep,” I say. My dad always brings up the old bearded quarterback, Dan Fouts.

“I don’t know how he played in that beard.” My father pinches his face when he watches TV, like a trial judge unhappy with the lawyers in his courtroom.

“Hmm.”

“Had to be itchy.”

“You think?”

“Sure. You know who else threw a nice ball?”

I can hear typing coming from upstairs, the rackety tap-tap of plastic keys, Lisa on the computer again, no doubt telling Chuck how she dreams of caressing his—

“Joe Willie Namath. Before his knees went to shit.” Dad shakes his head. “He could sling it. Maynard and Sauer and Boozer and Snell. Great team. Last of the great ones.”

The last great football team was in 1968…I just say, “Yeah.”

I hear footsteps on the stairs and look over my shoulder. Lisa has changed into yoga pants and is clutching the grim stack of monthly bills and bank statements from the top of my dresser.

So it’s time for our monthly descent into the finances…
agin
. I stand and follow her to the kitchen, where we lay out the bills and bank statements, and I give her the basic outline of our trouble (while sparing her the grisliest details). I can see by her face that she suspects it’s even worse than I’m letting on; in my defense, the only thing I hold back is the
immediacy
of some of our troubles. For instance, Lisa knows we’re way behind on our mortgage payment; what I don’t feel the need to show her is the letter in my messenger bag threatening eviction if we don’t come up with the $31,200 forebearance payment
next week.

I tell myself that I’m like the kindly oncologist who lays out the severe treatment the patient faces without depressing her with the long-odds prognosis. And even without the scariest details, Lisa agrees with most of the draconian steps Richard and I discussed: cashing in our retirement and my pension, seeking another grace period on the house (during which time I will find a job, I swear), selling my car to get out from under the payment, combining the rest of our debt into one loan, which we’ll then chip away at, buying health insurance only for the kids, and cutting back on all extravagances (cell phones, restaurants, vacations, Christmas presents). But there’s one obvious measure that she simply can’t seem to get her mind around.

“Public school?” She frowns again at our bank statement. “Are we there already?”

“I know,” I say. And I do know. We’d just moved into this neighborhood four years ago—finally getting the big old house we wanted—when I drove past the neighborhood elementary, smiling as I always do whenever I pass a school. I watched as four boys, eight, maybe nine years old, walked away from the recess pack toward the tree-lined fence; I thought, that school doesn’t look as bad as the realtor made it sound (ninety-two percent free-and-reduced lunch, he’d said, the liberal in me bristling at the disturbing equation he was proposing:
poverty=bad school).
That was when one of the walking boys pivoted and took up a sentry post while the other two began beating on the fourth at the edge of the playground. It was like watching a prison documentary. I was stunned at first, and kept driving, but finally stopped my car and jumped out. I ran back along the fence line, yelling something like, “Hey, stop that!” and one of the nine-year-olds yelled, “Fuck off, faggot,” and I was struck dumb. Thankfully, a playground aide heard the yelling and ran over and I hoped she was going to break up the fight, but the kid getting beaten (the kid I thought I’d saved) jumped up and told the playground aide that I was “a perv” who’d asked them to get in my car. It was ingenious, and I saw that I actually
had
saved the kid—not by yelling, but by giving him and his bullies a new, common enemy, so that he could be aligned with the thugs and show himself to not be a snitch, but a stand-up guy. I stood there as the playground aide gave me a sharp look and I thought: do I really want my kids to go here? Do I want to explain the politics of prison beatings and snitch avoidance
to my fucking six-year-old?
And I hurried off, Mr. Public School admitting to himself that I’d teach my kids at home before I’d send them to Alcatraz Elementary.

Parenthood makes such sweet hypocrites of us all.

“Public school,” Lisa says again. She sighs and stares at that bank statement like it’s in some code. “I just don’t know if I can do that, Matt.”—As if I’m suggesting we sell the children for medical experiments.

“We could try moving to a neighborhood with a better school,” I say lamely.

Lisa points out the obvious, that it would be insane to sell now, when “we owe thirty percent more than we could get” in this market. (Try fifty, I think.)

There is a scholarship program at the school, Lisa says, but she doubts we’d have much of a shot because we aren’t parish members…aren’t, in fact, even Catholic.

“I’ll join,” I say.

“I don’t think it’s that easy,” she says. “I think there are classes. Rituals.”

“I’ll take a blood oath. A spanking.”

But no matter what I say, I can’t seem to get her to look up at me. Those eyes move from bill to window to bank notice to bill, but won’t rise to meet mine. “It’s a religion, Matt, not a fraternity. You have to go to class, get baptized, that kind of thing.”

“I’ll get baptized,” I say. “I’ll get exorcised. Simonized.”

She smiles. A little. But still doesn’t look up.

“Euthanized?” Finally, I give up and my eyes follow hers to the bills and budget sheets between us, and I can’t help but think of the boxes of her eBay shit in our garage, as Lisa, no doubt, thinks of the money I wasted on
poetfolio.com.

Or maybe she isn’t thinking about my lame business at all, but fantasizing about Lumberland Chuck, about running off for some therapeutic skin-slapping teenage
humping
in the sturdy sex fort he’s no doubt building in some big phallic tree on his property. (Chuck being the sort of guy who would own property.)

That Lisa would be lost in such a fantasy seems even more likely when the back doorbell rings and she overdoes the surprise in greeting her happily divorced friend Dani—“What are you doing here?”—bottle-blond Dani, packed into her teenage-daughter’s jeans, with the forty-year-old single-gal wrist tattoo and gravity-be-damned implants that I get in trouble if I notice, Dani the friend Lisa always seeks out when she’s unhappiest with me.

She has come bearing two skirts roughly the size of headbands that she “tragically can’t fit into anymore,” but which will be perfect for Lisa—“with your hot little bod”—and this feels like a slap at me, somehow, as if I don’t deserve my wife’s bod, as if Dani is pointing out how Lisa would kill (like herself) out on the open market—what a team they would be! And even the skirts feel like a lie to me; it’s as if Lisa expected them, as if they were part of a cover story. Lisa says, “Want to come in for a glass of wine?” and of course Dani does.

“Hey Matt,” she says, and I say, “Hi Dani,” and that’s all we get as the women encamp at the kitchen table over fishbowls of Merlot, chattering (for my benefit, I think) about their kids, and waiting for me to leave the room so they can get down to the real talk. I slowly finish loading the dishwasher and drying the pans, scooping up the bills and bank notices until I can think of no other reason to stay in here and am forced to leave.

Dad’s watching TV, so I go upstairs to check on the kids, who are supposed to be getting ready for bed, but are engaged in futuristic cartoon battles on their Game Boys instead, Franklin pleading, “Can’t I just play until I die?” I know that he means until his little Game Boy character dies, but it chokes me up anyway (I’m so
weepy
these days), and I watch my boy’s digital avatar bounce around in what looks like a giant spit bubble until finally, it passes on. (No service; in lieu of flowers, go to bed.) In addition to his little speech problem, and his pooping problem, and his oversensitivity, Franklin is frailer than his big brother. Teddy would probably survive just fine at that tough public school. But lisping, tiny, day-dreamy, slow-to-read Franklin? He’ll be some yard-thug’s second-grade bitch.

“Can’t I stay up?”

“Wish I could let you, but I can’t.”

“Why?”

“Federal sleeping statutes.”

“Please.”

“Out of my hands.”

“Please?”

“You know if I could do anything at all, I would.”

“But I don’t want to go to bed.”

This reminds me that it’s been roughly forty hours since I’ve been in a bed. This is, of course, the great dream for a kid, staying up all night. Were I to tell Franklin that I didn’t go to bed at all last night, his eyes would get huge.
Wait. You’ve seen the undiscovered territory, the world after bedtime?