Best Academe Poems
I do not care making a living donning a dirty coverall
if it earns me more trips to the mall.
Whether it's newly minted or has changed hands many times,
a dime will still be worth a dime.
I am not impressed by people owning university degrees
because hey, I, not them, am the one making hay.
I do not mind if they get a thrill out of their academic rank
for I am the one laughing all the way to the bank!
Intellectual superiority? snobbery really and vastly overrated!
if it leads not to financial security it is all in their head.
Listen, I have met too many folks armed with some fancy PhD
who hold lousy, nine-to-five jobs that do not pay.
They find themselves regularly appearing on prime time TV
that, funny, does not make them any richer than me!
Like peacocks strutting as if life revolves around the academe,
they forget their monetary situation is shaky and dim.
What they see as power is nothing but worthless paper pushing,
no ifs and buts, one's worth is gauged through his earnings.
Eggheads, they sure know every answer to all kinds of crisis
except the true state of their sorry personal finances!
At the end of the day life is, yeah, truly all about money,
if you ain't got it, I am so sorry for you, baby.
Power lives in this hardworking, flesh-and-blood workingman,
not the head-in-the-clouds moron badly in need of a tan!
I do not care making a living donning a dirty coverall
if it earns me more trips to the mall.
In Homage to Edna St Vincent Millay
To gaze upon truth is to look upon beauty bare,
Though few have done so save those who walk
The halls of academe, and speak with nature in
Its nakedness. We, we such souls who wander in
The wilderness of life, lost, anxious, low in mood,
Beset with this concern, and that conflict,
We have our own truths. That distant footfall
Of sandal on stone is but an echo far away,
Lost within the clamour of our thoughts.
Truth is the silence that follows our plea
Thrown into the aether, or countless rejection
Of casual offers of close engagement. Truth
Is the cold realisation of life taking this rocky path,
Rather than that gold paved avenue to paradise.
Poetry turns from the common man,
Turns on its arrogant heel,
Stalking away toward the cloistered academe.
Nothing is duller or deader than
Poets unable to feel
Love—or compassion, or dream the lofty dream.
Thus poetry turns from you, from me,
And talks to itself, indulgently,
And nobody hears. Quite understandably.