Fragmentary Education

                                                            Fragmentary Education



                          My name is Bill T. Jones:
                          Give me my fame and money
                          I used to be a furniture-maker:
                          Now I am President of Jones University: I believe!

                          Constantinople, the cities of Greece heaped stone.
                          Florence: a decadent, sour wine. 

                           A police cruiser: slowly circling.
                           The wasted warehouses of white-slavery
                           Restored to pizza and boredom-bars
                           Where the southern-city slumps.
                         
                           Drive-in Banks crusted in leaves,
                           Magnolia-mansions in new paint,
                           Coca-Cola carved, fading-fast.
                           Nothing left, but the billboard of Bill Jones.

                           Come to me, you staggering sluggards:
                           Refugees from tobacco-heat
                           Doctors of Philosophy, platinum blondes
                           With out-dated-emotions: Choose your course of study

                           At Bill Jones University!
                           Accredited, reasonable rates, the best teachers
                           At the lowest wage, at our Ramada-Inn campus
                           Find your future now!

                           All day long the children write exams for the future
                           Until one calls the other a name, like, Moxie,
                           And all of a sudden there is no future,
                           Nor ever was.

                           Those who promise a future in the present always lie
                           For the future has just arrived, a train perpetually late
                           Come to overturn past education
                           As irrelevance.

                           So if you love only the future
                           You better go armed as in the past,
                           And count on no man's word
                           As bond in the bondage of money.

                           In the reveries of children they skip waterfalls,
                           Overcome canyons, and capture the castle.
                           But pupils dream without waking;
                           For no one mentions the forest. 

                           Omitting the forest makes the teachers rich,
                           Each generation enslaving the next for present-profit,
                           While mumbling sweet generalities
                           The witch warms her oven.

                            So teachers, missionaries, priests
                            ---Like the mesmerized cop on parade--
                            Each walks on your grave, and the bankers
                            Rub-out their cigars on your headstone!

                            Your misfortune is their fortune,
                            And this is the rule made of gold.
                            Each is in business for himself
                            And the slave that struggles

                            Is shackled to mine gold
                            For money-lack:
                            And flat-breathed restrained
                            From tilling the untilled soil!

                            Yet the piano-player needs money---
                            And the blues-belter has runs in her stockings---
                            From lack of honest coinage,
                            And the mad and hungry have thirst.

                            The teachers have failed to teach:
                            They have sanctioned heaps of debt
                            Calling it wisdom and benevolence
                            To enslave each generation!

                             Enough to bring black-clad Anarchists
                             Back in business---
                             Indicting Presidents and fallen starlets,
                             While actuaries scribble over our tombs.
                      
                              And the old man in Mexico, stark naked,
                              Shuffling his strapless sandals,
                              Struts like a wraith beneath the Cathedral.

                             The nine o'clock growls down the southern track,
                             Seeking the crazed-relief of the Gulf Stream.
                        
                           


                                                                                                                                 Will Morgan
                                                                                                                                 April 10, 2013