by Alex Haggis

Artwork, “Media” by Robert Pierce

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Today the kids are out in force

To drink their tea in sunny places,

Wearing psychedelic laces,

Excuse me if I never see

Any meaning in their faces.

 

You can tell them by their talk,

Their pointless, muttering aesthesis,

Their writer’s block,

Their fountain pens

Contain not one drop

Of, I don’t know, mimesis:

 

Instead, I want my night to end

Where all the schmucks are schtupping;

Not where they talk about

Freud, bands, consumers,

And accomplish the exact same end

Except in clothes they bought at “Rumors.”

 

Cause all the schmucks are drop-dead pretty

And have bank accounts to match,

And on their pastel polo shirts

Is nary a pin or iron-on patch.

 

I’ll join the voyeurs,

The vapers,

The B-school movers-and- shakers,

The ones whose tongues are all a-tangle

On our very own quadrangle,

 

And to those who are astonished

(Who’d admonish)

Remember: when compared to counterculture,

Counter-counterculture’s less dishonest.

 

Cause you can choose to be a schmuck,

But if you don’t it’s all the same,

Cause an identity formed in opposition

Is still schmuckery, just by another name.