Tag Archives: 70s

FREEZE-DRIED

fudge soft
     was my brain at my
first philosophy class

Plato’s dialectic wholesome,
why should not the State be
good and strong
and solid and true?
why should I not be
thinking axiomatically
working my
way slowly
     towards great gnosis
at the cave’s entrance

why should this not all be,
even in a philosophy class,
some desert of
the real shadow show
programmed to
amuse
   this unspecified
superior intelligence?

But these are questions for
later
     not for poor white boy
at mountainside university
refugee from
all that Christian National
Education might teach
true
   to apartheid

and so, face-beaming, I
did drink it, savour
swallow
   every joyous scrap of
the fat one via
Professor Obi Wan’s
interpretation

the Jewish boy in the corner
(so slightly older
reading his way into
territory
     full-on genealogical, beyond
good and evii

scowling at my
naivete,

     having not
become my friend

Nietzsche not yet
my philosopher of choice

outside, of course, outside
the theatre down
the slopes
beyond the steps

something stirring
something
        at a different pace,
with a different
dialectic

about to explode
about
   to rock to the core

but this
down the line

from up in this high place
easy to calculate
work with
   established truths,
historical certainties, clear
percentages

down there
as bra Chris wrote

its all
in graffiti, still
yet in code

soon
   world going to
go full on punk, class-war
deconstructive

defeat in Vietnam

meaning
power
      of powers

determined to determine
we think how they say,
are
   so subtly, subtly
forced
to do as we are told

mind put on hold
fast-food fried down
to the last algorithm

brain
    freeze-dried, feel
free to liquify

fudge soft
back then

     but maybe
Plato was right