Photo by Viktor Forgacs on Unsplash
Michael writes: Both the title and tone of this poem are inspired by Michèle Lalonde’s famous 1974 macaronic poem ‘Speak White’ which expresses Francophone anger at English-language arrogance and dominance in Quebec Province. I first heard the poem performed by French-Canadian dramatist Robert LePage in the London staging of his play 887; but there is also a powerful reading by the author on YouTube here.
Speak Wealth
Speak Wealth! Hold forth on offshore holdings; rhapsodize on themed investments; make a song and dance about financial instruments. And don’t short sell yourself. You’re smart as Archimedes: leverage will lift you up the rich list. Speak Wealth so we can overhear you. Boast into your mobile phone or get the media to tell us of your newest acquisition or your latest self-indulgence. We get by on smaller change – the sort that fits in off-peak meters, slot machines or gaps in floorboards. We must juggle obligations, as we walk the fraying wire stretched between each pair of paydays; this makes us proficient in precarious arithmetic. We perform for pence outside the court for petty debtors. Elsewhere, in soft-leather-furnished chambers, lawyers speak forensic Wealth to demonstrate non-payment of your fiscal liabilities is not a fraudulent evasion but permissible avoidance.
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Speak Wealth and you’ll get listened to. Abundance and Authority both begin with A; and likewise there’s a valid link between Prosperity and Piety – remember that the Bible says To those who have shall more be given (but we have-nots aren’t exempt from losing even what we have). We’re confident this verse endorses your strong views on market forces; oddly though it fails to mention Trickle Down – that’s your invention... … since another scripture states You’ll always have the poor with you. So if you want to camouflage this status that’s routinely quo distract us with the parable where Dives spares a kindly word for Lazarus outside his gate: Watch out! Some poorer men might come and try to steal your begging bowl!
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Wealth speakers learn unwritten rules and only talk of speculating in the future perfect tense. Best not to use the verb to lose unless it’s in the past historic. You’ll soften your imperatives by putting on a passive voice – We really are to be believed but those who doubt us can’t be trusted – while a subtly placed subjunctive makes a no sound less oppressive: It would not be right for us to increase payments at this time. The plural form is much preferred for third- and second-person pronouns – not the first though: that’s employed as singular exclusively.
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Classic dialects of Wealth abandon too-direct commands in favour of oblique suggestion. Simply murmur It’s quite dark as if the words could conjure up a string of instant fairy lights and a working power source without a tiresome need to mention dynamos and armatures or cables, trenches, spades and sweat. We cannot match such eloquence and only manage pidgin forms of how you talk – which must offend an ear expecting standard Wealth the way it’s always been received. You may feel smug as you dismiss the notion of us having Wealth even as a second language; but, for all your fluency in affluence, we have our doubts that you would manage to afford the price you’d pay in self-esteem for learning how we’d hate to be mistaken for a native speaker.