BALLAD OF THE JOLLY BROKER

Nothing was surer amid all the furor

than watching a stock that I picked on a hunch

make rich men of paupers, and paupers of fools,

and all in the pinch that it took to eat lunch.

My betting and cheering took real engineering.

I guessed and I gauged and I bet and I prayed

from the dawn of the bull to the dusk of the bear

where fortunes were waiting and fortunes were made.

The world of percents is a world that resents

whenever its buyouts are less than a steal.

Its language is numbers, and numbers are lethal,

and all that makes sense is the luck of the deal.

You have to like poker to be a good broker.

You have to take chances and hope for the best.

Buy cheap and sell dear is the law of the market,

and woe unto those who forget or protest.

Like any good broker I loved to play poker,

but poker’s a gamble where all that you’ve got

is the lure of the cards and the stack of the chips

and the dice of the draw and the pay of the pot…

I took all my winnings that some called my sinnings,

and lived like a king where the snow never fell.

I drank all my juices and swallowed my pills,

and bet on the races, and down came hell…

It cost me my wife in the prime of my life.

It made me content with much less than the best.

I worked for the day when I never would work,

and the money was sure, and the honey was rest.

If you’d rather be healthy than feeble and wealthy…

If you’d rather be happy than wed to a bed,

then think of a man with a millionaire’s tan

who died half a lifetime before he was dead.

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