Editors Poem by gershon hepner

When, hard up, you're in a dreadful pickle
you hope that the economy will trickle
right down to your own level, but the rub
is that it’s only geared to trickle up.
Hard cheese for those who’re hard up, I must say,
for when you’ve got no money you must pay
what you’ve not got, you never pay with credit
like those who’ve no ideas, and merely edit,
which let’s them trickle up, surprise, surprise,
and seem as smart as those whom they revise,
although in fact they’re merely editors,
as pesky as a poor man’s crabby creditors.

Inspired by a cartoon in the WSJ, June 23,2006, by Pepper and Salt: two prosperous men walking out of an office, on saying to the other: I think I’d like the economy to trickle up. Originally this poem was about the manna, which established a trickle down economy in the wilderness, but my internal editor bowdlerized the best parts of the poem.



6/23/06