Tag Archives: academic

THUNK IT

THUNK IT

academics in the files?
who would
have thought it,
thunk it?

mirror me this
mirror to mirror
what is
the academy to
the narcissism
of ideas?

what reverse alchemy
at work here
turning gold
into base metal
turning base
metal into
something
far worse

turning billions of U. S.
into something unspeakable

turning
     the final dream of
community
into a confederacy of
Caligulas

and there as touchstones
sextants to
navigate such
progress

Professors of every
discipline and indiscipline
from triple X
to Zee

our Alphas, Betas
and outright Omegas

there on the island gowned
for the occasion
fiddling with
what bit they know of
intellectual apparatus

performing research
for the
    benefit of mankind on
the most unwilling of subjects

walking subtexts we
need to read
from below, behind
and between the lines

until, with
deadening “thunk”
the truth is right there

BACK TO

BACK TO

I was back to
the futured
to my
old university

one of those ribald
dreams where
the basic narrative comes
courtesy of
capitalist content creator

and there I was
both ancient alumnus
and yet feeling
the total freshman

all my higher degrees
revoked
    on grounds of
relevancy

struggling in the climate
contrasts to make
         my way both
upstream
and downstream

intellectually frigid, frozen
broken
       desperate to
if not remake
at least
reshape
    the wheel

whilst the Sun scorching brains
leering contemptuously
through
    the stratosphere

protoype for every
      god Emperor, every golden
King
    and, yes, indeed
I am afraid to add, every
trivial
    trivial Dean

as I made my way through
the panoply of departments
renamed
    where not structured entirety

every theory
  so local, limited, narrow
yet
    same same-same

not of the intellect
but of ideology

servile, appeasing, without
a mind
        to contemplate thought
of difference, thought
                    of resistance

triumph of appearance
      and death of shame

back futured, back dated
                 limbo lateral
shifted
what else should I say?

FLOW

FLOW I came because of cash flow problems, ended up on the river which must have had a sacred meaning once despite being the colour of stewed tea but we all had a nice lunch — correction, everyone had a sensational lunch but me taking a turn for the worse tottering off to the tiny aft toilet (adding to the discoloration of the waters no doubt) Oh life, against the current, can be a harshly blended mixture. And me here because of matters of terminally negative cash flow not so everwhere: here houses big as colleges whose manicured gardens sweep down in lush green to the river’s edge and here is one strikes my fancy as an African replica of the Palace at Versailles lost in wonder for a moment of breathtaking economic speculation (Marx on the Moselle) but then time to go home the boat turned around. Post-lunch the workshop am here to facilitate running softly downhill.