Notes About The Poem
Posted 10 August 2026
For This Or That, Vol. 40 Poetry Contest
Topic => Slow Sink
Sponsored by: Edward Ibeh
Listen to poem:
Slow Sink
He turned the pages, one by one, alone, stepping.
Watched every hope of solvency dethroned, ebbing.
His boot sunk deep in last year's debt, still squelching,
His ledger keeping its grief in ink, to blot its flinching.
"Just one more loan, please," the owner sighed.
"To keep us afloat, to turn the ebbing tide."
The accountant knew that tug all too well—
Each rescue simply paid the swamp another toll.
Sunk cost cared nothing for the past.
Yet no one wished it to be the last.
To walk away from money spent before,
Was to leave footprints asking for more.
Creative figures dressed the slime in gray.
Each borrowed sum still carried more debt to pay.
The swamp, it seemed, kept better books than most,
Yet every asset counted, twice, returned as a ghost.
He mused on how debt, like mud, compounds with time,
Each interest another footnote in the crime's rhyme,
To "amortize" a debt, in truth, was so unkind,
Being a mortise joint no carpenter would design to bind.
They praised new books as solvent, clean and clear,
Not knowing solvent means "to loosen," - my dear.
The firm dissolved in slow, respectable degrees,
While the client toasted his fees with: 'Yes please'!
To reconcile the books was not the same game,
As learning how to live inside its own shame.
The figures balanced, tidy, clean, and neat,
While something older was whispering beneath his feet.
"Write it off," the honest voice quickly advised,
Yet honesty, like boots in mud, was being compromised.
For every truth deferred, a new fee quietly accrued—
Was the client drowning, or his conscience being pursued?
For honesty said: 'Cut the losses, crisp and clean',
Dear profit whispered: stretch the in-between.
He knew which sane voice a wise man would heed—
Yet only heard which one, kept sowing reeds of greed.
"A Going Concern," he proclaimed; though doubt remained,
A phrase that kept the failing firm sustained.
Each quarter yet another swamp was set in place
To rehearse, fifty degrees of sinking in disgrace.
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