Education, they say—
Who are they? Who be they?—
Hush now, dear reader, and hear
what I say.
They say it’s sublime,
requisite in your climb
to the top, the one top,
of society’s vine.
They say you must be learnt
in order to earn
such a salary, lavishly,
to be considered ravishly.
But you know what I think?—
What is there to think, they are right!—
Oh what fright! Let me show you
your plight to
considerable nights of
wrong thoughts wished right.
Perhaps this is true-
perhaps I’ve no clue
what really drives through
to the youth, the brand new.
But this world is quite cruel-
right cruel, bites fools-
as it teaches you one thing
expecting the rules to display
that you must go forwards the
opposite way.
—What do you mean? who are you,
some fiend?—
No, dearly, sincerely, I’m naught but
a being
who has lived this wrought path,
lost, and with wrath
have teeth thoroughly gnashed from
education’s wily craft.
For you see, do you not?
That all is for naught if you
fall into thoughts—
What thoughts? How they be
fraught?—
Thoughts, reader mine,
of straight A’s every time,
of excelling every way,
of proving thyself
reducing thyself
rat-roosting thyself to
one professor’s tall fate,
one class’ “royalty,”
one small little brain deep pitted
in shame.
—Shame of what? What a muck!—
Well, shame of bad luck.
Shame that comes when you’re stuck
in a perpetuating flux of
inadequacy,
false-flattening,
milestones imaginary based on the
indifferent professor,
one class’ bad lecture,
your brain’s broke detector
scouting out lies and
buzzing out cries of debilitating fear
based on delinquent “here here’s”
“yessir’s” and “bless-her’s” and
spoilt moral navigeers.
—Woe be us then! Education? never again!—
Hey, stop there young friend,
this poem yet has an end;
for what education can reap,
when untangled from the reek
of political entities is
creations galore!
Door to door,
from the fore
of the world’s next great thinkers
not yet gone out to shore.
For if your eyes, they stay straight
your brains, they retaliate
against pressures that hate
constructive debate;
and if your souls never weary
of such endless inquiry of
“Next next next next?”
“How will you collect
such income to reject
poverty as your desk?”
If your heart never aches
at the world’s inclination to hate
all that stray
against society’s grain,
then my friends, you’re quite free
to learn, greedily
to achieve exceedingly
leave the tricksters grieving
at their foiled attempt of
folding youth’s bend from
independence to repentance for the
last generation’s transgressions.
Now you know, now you see,
now you can fight evenly
against the system rigged wrong
born of the innocent song
“let them learn and see truth,
see the tree that bears fruit,
see the seasons take root
and understand its route”
curdled year after year.
Aged like wood on a pier
old cheese on a beard
resentment in a career.
The fight’s stacked up high—
Oh how high? How am I
supposed to conquer this fight
borne past a million nights?—
Try, my dear souls.
It will take a great toll.
This fight unfairly rests bold
upon your shoulders, not old.
But if not you then to who
belongs this great Undo?
Not those that created it
not those who were babes in it
but those who’re betrayed by it
whose futures are stained with it
ready to be maimed by it,
yet are unwilling to idle
like some tall stony idol
biggest victim of all, waiting for
adulation and awe to
swoop away downfalls of
some “greater than’s” gall.
It is you, my most dears,
who must conquer this great leer
that shadows and cackles at
the future quite near.
I believe in you.
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