Psalm 119, An Expressive Transliteration

Hedge Fund Poem

My friend confessed to me she didn’t know
exactly what a hedge fund really is.
An explanation to my friend I owe —
a lawyer and a poet writing this.

Most people also say, funds, mutual,
the shares of which are traded publicly:
“I’m not exactly certain what THEY do?!”
Go search in Edgar — filings you will see!

Most only emphasize positions, long.
Buy low, sell high, the profits that ensue.
But most investors panic, get it wrong:
buy high, sell low, to their investment doom!

A hedge fund is a private entity,
a partnership or now, an LLC,
(more likely with its flexibility),
employs alternative philosophies.

Combines investments from high net worth types.
at first and then more institutional
investors, allocations grow in size.
That ETFs beat most, indub’table!

Offsetting longs with shorts, I must define:
that you can loan a share of stock to me
if I will give it back to you, some time,
a certain period that we agree.

The price declines, the share give back to you.
The notion is the share is fungible.
Then costs me less, the difference, profits hewn.
This concept actually original.

Was in the 1950s, he invented this,
his name was Alfred Jones — it made him rich.
The first hedge fund, when he was forty-six,
combining longs and shorts to manage risk!

Apollo’s Raven King, or Commentary on a Kiss

When you were young, you danced before the court.
Titania, her birth, you celebrate.
So pleasing to Apollo he exhorts:
“One half my kingdom for how you gyrate!”

The head of John is not what you desire.
The ravens, flash of red before your eyes.
You never cease to stoke undying fire,
both love and anger, what that hue belies.

You said you never let yourself be fed.
No fear of death, creation of your art.
Unflinching, you, by heaven’s graces lead.
Now at your end, exhaustion in your heart.

Intentional retreat, you isolate
into a lonely valley, by yourself.
Pursued and hated; too, ignored, betrayed.
Your fasting, now, by hunger, you o’erwhelmed.

From where you are, there lying on the ground,
just strength enough to turn your head to see
the ravens now approach with cawing sounds,
a gray-black cloud appears unnaturally.

The ravens, no one but those worthy souls,
their mercy, how they feed their newly-hatched.
The ravens’ council or their god controls,
Apollo’s gift, none other can this match.

You in extremis, water that you lack.
In beaks, by thimbles-full, each swallow, brings.
Until they’ve healed, your lips, their broken cracks,
then scraps of food, your body strengthening.

Near death myself, alone and in retreat,
I’ve fasted for enlightenment too long.
Now trapped; no strength, or water, food to eat.
Their cawing voices like a savior song!

Their king attends with water in his beak,
The lonely valley where I knew you were:
my lips just open wide enough to speak
coordinates. Unconscious . . . vision blurs.

Lost Love Lesson Learned, or The Only Remedy

My faith expands to satisfy demands
despite that evil I experience.
Lost her whom I had loved to selfishness.
The universe who made me understands.

In fact, it knew how selfish I would be.
Some lessons can’t be learned by other means.
A great injustice sometimes that it seems.
There was no other remedy for me.

Writer’s Block (T.H. Chalm, October 25, 1997)

It has to be a little every day.
I’m lazy, though. For inspiration wait.
When sun does shine, it’s time for making hay.
My hunger for expression, never sate.

Just write of anything inside my head.
Whatever is the first thought in my mind.
To poetry, my circumstances lead.
I go exploring, see what I can find.

I wander with my thoughts as on a leash.
I let them guide wherever they may go.
Like Gautier, might first consume hashish.
The pleasures from a plant, all that I know.

“Deducted from your share in Paradise
that portion that today with us consume.”
Would you equate this sticky tar with vice?
The wisdom of the world you must subsume.

That heaven would, a budget, closely keep?!
That God from ether has material.
The valley of dry bones, they upwards leap.
Encased with flesh and blood, as natural.

That portion that he gives as daily bread.
In truth, much more than what I need today.
For that, be thankful, what it is he said.
My faith in providence, all fears allayed.

Psalm 1

Blessed man avoids the path the wicked make.
No standing in the way that sinners take.
The Lord, his law, where he finds his delight.
Upon it, meditates both day and night.
No sitting in the mockers’ company.
The righteous man is likened to a tree.
By streams of water where he spreads his roots.
The righteous, in his season, growing fruit.
Not so the wicked, they, like chaff, are dry.
Away, into the wind, the wicked fly.
They, in the judgment, knowing only fear.
They will not stand, condemned, they disappear.
The Lord, the righteous, watches all their ways.
Destruction: there the wicked, all their days.

Dream of the Green Iguana

This verse I’m writing right at waking up.
The morning time, before my breakfast sup.
That I remember in my waking phase
a dream I had — unusual these days.

I kept a green iguana in a cage.
His size revealed advancement in his age.
No smaller than a dog that’s medium.
The cage, for him, a life of tedium.

But in my dream I opened up his door,
and like a bolt, four-legged on the floor,
around the corner, where it was he ran.
His urgency I didn’t understand.

I found him and two other greens as well.
To slake his thirst, went running to the smell.
They drank from water pooling on the ground.
The spigot leaked, supplied the water found.

The triune lizards drinking at the pool.
Not anything that I might learn at school.
The meaning of my dream to ascertain?
A reservoir by clogging of a drain.

And why this creature, neither dog nor cat?
The Cosmic Owl might give an answer pat.
No visits to the shaman recently.
A snake-dream makes me think much diff’rently.

So why do lizards populate my dreams?
A message to deliver, so it seems.
I saw iguanas when in Mexico.
The other day, a Reddit video,

but there, the ones recorded, small and black.
Not green and large, the memory I lack
of one like this; in waking life not seen.
What this persistent portent really means?

The Secret

Endured great hardship, travelled many years
and miles, while seeking for the truth. At last,
a wizened Buddha would assuage my fears.
Beneath a tree where often he would would fast.

Locked eyes with mine, I wandered to his glade.
He waived his arm to gesture his intent.
His invitation instantly obeyed.
His whispered voice, the meagre air he spent:

“Your thoughts create your own reality.”

The Parable of the Merciful Gardener (Luke 13.6-9)

The gardener who in the vineyard works,
one day the owner asked him to explain:
“The past three years, I come here seeking fruit.
This fig tree from production still abstains.

“Why should it waste the precious dirt this way?
I’m now suggesting that you cut it down.”

Instead, proposing this alternative,
the dresser of the vines described its ground:

“Sir, one more year, the soil around its roots.
Aeration, and manure I will apply.
If once again, no fruit appears next year,
I’ll cut it down, throw it into the fire.”

An Argument For Self-Regulation of Attorneys (a poem inspired by Comment [11] of the Preamble to the ABA Model Rules)

The state possesses great authority
at law, and power is abused sometimes.
Abuse is challenged most effectively
by that profession when it’s not the state
on which the right to practice law depends.

The Legal Profession Should Serve the Public Interest (a poem inspired by Comment [12] of the Preamble to the ABA Model Rules)

Profession, relative autonomy.
Self-governance, responsibility.
In regulation, public interest served.
No furtherance of those parochial,
self-interested concerns held by the bar.

“Lawyers play a vital role in the preservation of society” (a poem inspired by Comment [13] of the Preamble to the ABA Model Rules)

Lawyers must preserve society.
Their role is what this vital interest serves.
Fulfillment of this role requires this:
a thorough understanding of the Rules
that govern that relationship between
the lawyers and the system that they serve.