Bay Street Blues

The brokers and bankers on Bay Street drank Bear-Stearns’ illicit booze
And tried to abscond with the windfall without paying their dues
But drinking an unknown proof always leads to a drunken doze
Basin Street has nothing on Bay Street’s drunken snooze

From the resulting financial hangover nobody will have any clues
Senile investors will now have to wake up and soberly choose
Or their families will soon have to go without even a pair of shoes
Everybody and their mothers will soon be singing the Bay Street Blues

Some firms of brokers and bankers on Wall Street lit a fuse
Thinking they’d have some firecracker fun and not pay the dues
But Monday morning March 17 came the earth-shattering news
That those who trusted these brokers and bankers everything will lose

The SEC pretended to police the Wall by cooking Martha Stewart’s goose
But the real wolves were busy inflicting on the public a nasty ruse
That cooked goose was the Street’s smoke and mirror ruse
Their own crookedness and greed to hide and excuse

The Nation many more billions of greenbacks will lose
So the fat cats on Wall Street can have more of that expensive booze
Better to go to Vegas where you can dine, dance and your game choose
And come back home empty-handed, but with a satisfactory excuse

Since Katrina, Basin Street has lost its basins and has its own blues
Those basins could have stored the Street’s ill-gotten monetary refuse
But all that’s left in the Big Easy are some bowls with stale rice, alligator and moose
They can serve as begging bowls for brokers and bankers with their soul-less shoes

Soon Bay Street will be to nobody of any use
But instead will only serve as a jazz singers muse
And a symbol of those who their savings lose
All Canadians are now singing the Bay Street Blues



© 2008. Mahomed Ally Keshavjee. All Rights Reserved. Essay #362.