SPRING BREAK REVISITED  (for T. S. Eliot)

                                  I don't mind if I don't have a mind.
                                                        --Kurt Cobain
 

In the libraries the books don't
talk to you and shelves and
chairs and tables and doors
don't ever talk to you. To you.
Your eyes are shut.  Your ears
and your heart are also shut.
Here's the sign that says:
THIS IS YOUR QUIET PLACE TO STUDY.
But in your mind it's recess--
like your books it's shut,
shut permanently from ever
asking questions...like WHY?
Perhaps it's fear that
prevents you from standing up
and asking simply: "What is it
you are saying, O dark and
bearded Professor X? What is
the real purpose of it all?"
Perhaps you simply no longer
care.  Perhaps your teacher is
just another boring pompous ass.
For in the libraries the light
won't radiate from books and the
graffiti won't educate you very
much at all.  Where do you come from,
O modern student, O the disciple
of the empty string of words?
For words are meaningless
to those who no longer care
to ask questions.  And so your
paper is now finished and the
problem set is done and your
course is a joke and your degree
is a joke, and your life is the
biggest joke of all, and culture
and relevance and meaning are
all behind you now--you've
graduated from it all, and
the sweet perfume of pop and "subpop"
culture beckons you out of the
classroom, out of the silent study
time and pensive posture for
which you were never meant--
it beckons you back to the
drunken noise of the public
life, it beckons you back to
the crowd where you belong--
there I see you smiling once again,
O modern student, as you go
back to the Spring Break, to Daytona Beach,
wet T-shirts, loud parties and bikinis,
banana-eating contests, bong hits, beer,
sex, mushrooms, acid, groovy bands, and MTV...
There you go in the sea of ignorance,
Bud bottles and easy lays, where
there is no more silence, only
good times, only good times...
Hey, why ask why?  Get laid or just get loaded.

   This is the way all thought ends
This is the way all thought ends
This is the way all thought ends
Not with a poem but Coca-Cola.

                                                March 20, 1993
                                                        --Alexander Shaumyan