“Philosophy Contemp’rary”
Or, “The Catalogue of Shits”
for Roland Theodore Smith III—
by Gavin McGown, CC’13
I’m the luckiest lad on the planet, you know,
Since I’m leaving the bar with a new boy in tow.
He’s a philosophy major! I managed to peek—
And some parts are the length of the First Critique.
And I think—as this twink starts to take me about—
Aristotle and I have to fight this fight out
For he says there’s one ultimate goal that you find
But tonight there are two ends that I have in mind.
[But, you see, there’s a problem: I aspire t’write poetry
And not to divine a concept’s circuitry.
But surely by now has not philosophy
Given up its polemics ‘gainst poets? We’ll see.]
When we get to my place and walk in the Adoorno
We talk: a pure mix of New Yorker and porno.
“But sovereignty—deconstruction—Obama”—
Yeah, just like that, baby. Talk dirty to Mama.
But really quite fast something starts to go wrong
And the Muse begins singing quite different a song
It was fine in the bar—and when we were walking—
But I want to fuck, and this boy won’t stop talking.
A gross fear of mine—on the damnedest occasion,
Have I seduced one of a postmodern persuasion?
Does he think that ‘desire’s a function of Law?’
But, surely, e’en then, sex just isn’t bourgeois.
But he keeps muttering to me about Sartre and Lacan
While I’m trying to head for the enjambment
Yes, his speech is so fine, but his lips are so chewy—
And it’s just on my John I’d like him to get Dewey.
And then—worst of all—he manages to thwart
My analytics of a posterior sort:
“It’s not about you—your ass drives me mental;
It’s just that my interests tend more cunt-inental.
“If I did it for you, then I’d do it for all!”
I bit on the pillow and choked on my gall.
You’d have thought that the gin would have managed to kill
Inhibitions—but, nude, he’s a Kantian still!
“Bullshit!” I swear. While I hope I’m not nosy,
The delay’s just philosophers’ bias ‘gainst poesy.
And like Platonists when, contra poets, they battle,
The twink won’t give in, so now I start to prattle:
“I can see that of bawdy relations you’re skeptical
Preferring to chat in ways pure dialectical.
And I do eschew the Symbolic; poetical
Works are my job. Now, let’s get exegetical.
“I promise you now I’m no bullish Aiacides
Nor Athens’ demise, that slut Alcibiades.
Plato says, twixt our fields, there must be a dyad; he’s
Wrong; if you like, we can make a hendiadys!
"And if you’re inventive and feel like chiasmus
As did, I am told, both Baudelaire and Erasmus
Let me use my skills, find some friends who will lay
Beside us, A-B-B-C-D-C-B-B-A!
“Metonymically speaking, I beg you allow me
To of you ask your hand (no, wait, shit, that’s synecdoche)—
Your bed then—or, come now, you big Morgenbesser,
If the bed’s too passé, there’s always the dresser!
"But do you deliberate still on the praxis?
Oh, babe, let me show you a fine ataraxis
And lay us both down in our joy’s parataxis
With one on his knees and then one on his backses!
"I’ll be servant, your queen, and your beast—metaphorically—
If you’ll only start binding me up—categorically!
Let’s change places: I’ll be Logico-Philosophicus
While you get philological down my esophagus—
"Or where’er. This proof of compatibilism
Is that, betwixt us, true, there need be no schism
While I scream aloud hordes of neologisms
And call out the flood of your sweet syllogisms
"Right to their conclusion—oh, what blissful poiesis
When you’ve made me your goal of considered prohairesis
And acted to me on the good of my guise
(Babe, ain’t nothing look bad when it’s between those thighs).
"And when we’ve gone at it, and you’ve got your rooster on
Turn around, and then we’ll be proteron hysteron!
But for my submission I insist that you bend
Just a bit, and, like Solon, I’ll 'look to the end.'
"So help me end the war: you, my erastês,
Eromenos, me, for the rest of our days,
Unite Philo and Poesy who’ve been locked in a fray
For so many millenia—so, what do you say?”
The circumlocuter stared at me dumbfounded
As if he were a mortar I’d just pestle-pounded;
Then went back to the door and turned the (John) Locke
And turned back to me, and got out his—
And how’d it turn out?
Well, I wake up in the morning feeling like Socratidion
Here actually should have listened to his … epipsychidion;
Next time I’ll find a good philosopher to waste my pity on;
Bright side: unlike Symposium, least I was no small kiddy-on.
