I can't help but think of

(react to)

a four-letter word

I associate with scatological banking

and bad behaviour

and bad loans and risk pools

and those who stacked the deck

in their own favour, with no regard

for the house-of-cards

that must eventually fail

once it reached the stratosphere

when the weight of all the crap

the flimsy cards themselves

would succumb to the jet stream

undercutting somewhere further down

or farther off in time

but now, ripened

into the stinkiest, nasty bitter-fruit

one bad, bespoke apple

of spoiling, consecutive harvests

around the world

whilst the doers

absently wiped the reeking sauce

like dog leavings

from their ostrich cap-toe Barker Blacks

slumming in ready-mades

and the secondary mortgage frauds

and forgers gave out

their plump who me? gazes

crowding the door

in braided tight, faintly martial uniforms

from the musical they all sang along in

tugging their forelocks

and swinging wide

for the insurance and ratings princelings

neither standard, nor poor

but well-fed, complacent and cruel

who sailed through

willing to overlook

the damage for some money

well, a lot of money

to sell their best marks

keeping the tottering going a bit longer

'til they could get out of the way of its falling

those empty towers

skyscrapers in Babylon

greedily sent skyward

whilst all the architects and builders

held their noses

excepting the ant-workers

way down on the ground

and climbing the trusses

strung out on empty dream calories

then buried in the inevitable rubble

it was fat while it lasted

and maybe they'll hit the stroll again

in another suit

cribbed from a different deck

with get-out-of-jail-free cards

and aces, peas and walnut shells

stuffed up their sleeves

at the ready