Paper Tigers

Lighting a candle

And camping out in front

Of the clean, safe student union

For one night in October

Doesn’t make you homeless

Any more than

Dressing up and riding about

Through a city’s polluted river

Makes you an 18th century missionary

Building a school in Africa

Can change the world

But casting a gold bathtub

To your exact measurements

Doesn’t make you thin

Paper tigers

You set out to be the Establishment

And the Establishment you’ve become

Hiding your crack pipe sins

Behind shiny veneers

Can your followers’ cheers

Drown out

The voice inside?

Does it even talk anymore,

Or do you only hear “I want”?

I knew a good man, now retired

Who worked at a good school

He made things safe and beautiful

And helped people with his hands

In a sewer on Christmas break

Or on the street on a Saturday night

At 2AM

He had a modest house

In what was a good suburb

He still lives in that house

Though the suburb is now “recovering”

He can afford to live elsewhere

But he celebrates modesty

He helps when he can

That same school

Now celebrates “value”

In a full-color glossy that

Follows me wherever I go

Like a bloodhound or the IRS

This glossy carefully positions images of

Jesuits and the historic chapel

Between stories of world outreach

And urban renewal

To bring in maximum dollars

From privileged alumni

The school knows history has value

Image has value

And the dollar has value

Buildings have value

Which is why a vacant move-in ready dorm

There aren’t enough students for

Can’t be used to shelter the homeless

Living in 50 tents under an overpass

3 blocks away.

Standards have no value

They just limit profitability

Thus, abandon standards to bring in the dollars.

The lesson was, and is:

“Come here, join the Establishment

And never stop paying us.”

Tuition today, donation tomorrow

Paper tiger, born in Ivy

You nurse your cubs on conceit

Teaching them uniformity and conformity

So even the most woke among them

Won’t realize they’ve been sedated

And their actions are nothing more

Are useless thrashing against the sheets.

John Gregory Dunne was taught

“Don’t rock the boat”

And like a true patrician

Only thought he did

Paper cubs

Don’t make waves

Even when you say you are

Pull on the cloak of conformity

And nestle inside

We’ll care for you

Abandon your dreams, lovers, and novels

Write about “Cognitive Narratology” instead

You’ll be safe here

The poetic canon denounced the one

They secretly called “The Polack”

With his roominghouse madrigals

And diet of cheap wine and candy bars

Despite the Black Sparrow he saw born

And “On the Road” was just typing on a toilet roll

Perhaps the dusty Brooks Memorial

Remembers the days when the school

Followed its mission

But it may take Brick Pollitt

To identify the waste

(7/19/19)