Best Stanford Poems
They wouldn’t let me be White
Oh I wanted to be
Dreams of that Pulitzer haunted me
They said, Sir, you have ten minutes to play
I gave them Milton, Poe and Millay
I stood before that panel
Like I was auditioning for Jesus On judgment day
I belted out those rhymes like Sandburg
Gave them sweet elegant words
I gave them personification and anapest
Gave them Trochee with syllables unstressed
I played those Robert Frost Blues
Those Road less traveled Blues
Those Thomas Hardy
going down on the Titanic Blues-
And they said, Son, You could be the greatest
Since Langston Hughes!
And oh I was out of sight
Switched up / Got Fancy
Moved the stressed syllable
From the middle to the right
But still they wouldn’t let me be White
I had every judge popping their fingers
Moving their heads from left to right
So I took a bow
And smiled up at those lights
I gave them Dickinson, Browning and Keats
Oh I had those White judges on their feet
I played until they saw stars
A judge leaned over and said,
You remind me so much of- What’s his name?
Paul Lawrence Dunbar
I played Eliot I played Cummings
I played Stevens too
I had those White Poets out of their shoes
Oh I lifted them a hundred miles off the ground
But when they came down
They said, You could be the next Sterling Brown
I said, Come on! Get out of town!
I closed that audition with my best Haiku
They said, M.e. Don’t take this wrong we like you
I took a final bow I had performed to their delight
But still they wouldn’t let me be White
The plug was pulled on the prison experiment
While the state plugs away with apparent merriment
While absolute power corrupts absolutely
The people march during pandemic resolutely
***
(For six days in mid-August, 1971, at Stanford
University near San Francisco, a psychological
experiment was conducted in which students
took on the roles of prisoners and prison guards.
The experiment had to be cut short, because the
guards were indulging in unhealthily sadistic
behaviour.)
"Never again," we say.
Those things can't be repeated.
"We set our face against him,
and Hitler was defeated."
Are you sure?
If sweet-talking you
could make it come true,
I would hand you the world
right now on a silver platter ...
but what would it matter?
Life isn't always Garry Keillor.
It's Rwanda, too. Sabra, Shatila.
The key you're holding
won't fit my door.
And you're not welcome
any more.
Just picture this, my friend.
Almost in sight of the Alcatraz ferry,
that sunny August of seventy-one,
a couple miles from Haight-Ashbury
something funny has begun
- and we're not talking Tom and Jerry.
You used me and abused me
till I felt like I wanted to die.
You created a need in me
that only you can satisfy.
Well-heeled campus kids
don’t quibble at the pay rates
make fifteen bucks a day
playing guards-and-inmates
- but is it really play?
I wondered hard
'tween twelve and one:
I asked my God,
"What have I done?"
These guards love Cohen, Dylan,
Che Guevarra, Mao, Durruti -
but now they're volunteering
for unpaid extra duty.
He spits into my food tray
for nothing more than spite.
Hear him whip the women
just around midnight.
You'd be surprised
what humans do.
Hippies can be Nazis, too.
I have heard of a Stanford Warren,
Who chose to live in lands barren,
Self submitting to predicament;
It was simply not God’s Commandment.
Warren tags it Rich Self-Denial
And swears “Decision is final!”
By full choice “Rock of Gibraltar’
“You can’t me change from your altar!”
Was he after A Transformation:
Out testing some dropped information?
Former neighbor: multi-millionaire
Former best friend stinking billionaire
He’d tried a fact-finding questionnaire
The First had slept in a dust bin,
The Second long punished his skin…
And to Fifty-Year-Old Warren
His surest bet: lands badly barren!
Charles Villiers Stanford
a composer who struck a chord
Vey much akin tk Brahms
in opus& musical psalms
Stanford University
Greatness at the Helm
Alum has come and gone
Knowledge was their insurance
Philosophy at its best
Education a high mark
Principles with a concept
Resolutions with an idea
Dignity with self-respect
Assuring and fulfilling
Techniques with logic of its own
Theories to come by
No more doubt
Intellect is what education is all about
Picture yourself
Above all
Conqueror of one’s destiny
Standards aligned
Through pages of trials and errors
Education speaks
Believe in yourself and let it repeat
Educational now and well into tomorrow
Let your tomorrow start today
One step away
Let education become your triumph
Classified and Qualified
No one would deny
Follow your footsteps through the education portal
Open Door
Don’t ignore
Let education show your potential
Become the commodity of essential
Stanford spoke
Now enter