In accord with the spirit of the times
there was music and dancing in the streets,
the plaza filling up around sunset, an hour
propitious for love; but the road leads on
down to where the grade school stands,
cheerless penitentiary cum clubhouse,
repeat alphabet after me, two, three,
the smart ones plotting insurrection,
bomb components all over the internet,
can’t even tell the girlfriend it’s so secret,
and if your rocket crosses their radar screen
they whisk you off to an elite college stateside.
I learn romance from the German masters,
read prose by Mann, dictionary in hand,
tend Nietzsche at his most feverish,
depend upon nature to open my mind.
Credentialed as a controlled deviant,
I do not have permission to venture
inside the perimeter of the reactor; however,
I accelerate fast from boundless ignorance,
as if flung about in their off-limits cyclotron,
or, being broke, patronizing the roller derby,
On a banked track I race aligned horizontally,
the world about to slide under my wheels