From kindergarten stickers, the calibration of eyes
starts with the glitter of stars stuck to school work,
years before pupils retract on news that all that
glitters isn’t gold, or re-dilate to find why
Tricky Dick scotched the gold standard.
Pupils are made to pledge allegiance to a flag,
but not told why it can be dragged wherever
partisans want it dragged – through bloody swamps
and oily sands in alien lands, where not only
liberty and life, but dignity, too, are banned.
Kindergarten bosses pass the torch all the way up
to Higher Ed, where we cosplay in sash-cinched gowns,
under gold tasseled mortarboards, where we keep
ancient Latin and calligraphy alive to mesmerize the
hoi polloi, who marvel with reverence at parchment
symbols of fealty to myriad disciplines, such as
microplastics, pharmacy, home ec, and lawn order.
Released at last, we matriculate to places where
school hallways transform into labyrinths lorded over
by bosses with brown noses, who sic boars on those who
smell roses, and who bore deep enough to splinter
and shatter the glittery facade, in order to
expose the string that runs straight down from
Tricky Dick’s embalmed brain to MAGA’s gilded tongue.
How rare the muse that kept John Paul Sartre from going blind
in dynamite’s light, his eyes the mirrors of an ennobled mind.
Dave Read