POEMS

College is made for asking questions,
Building knowledge, and learning lessons.
But what lessons have we to learn
When diversity we have spurned?

Need we now its saving grace:
We’re wasting time; we’re losing face.
We need to talk and intermingle
To give ourselves a healthy angle.

What a shame when our great nation
Loses faith in conversation.
Step aside, intellectualism;
Anger in its turn has risen!

Our talk is filled with bitter drivel:
“He’s a conservative!” “She’s a liberal!”
To keep one’s calm amidst the libel,
One might well need to read the Bible!

To avoid decay and cataclysm,
We need to heal and mend this schism.
No one is ever completely right –
Why, then, do we fuss and fight?

Let not frustration be your ruler;
A stable mind likes something cooler.
Don’t scream and shout; don’t push and shove,
But calm your mind and lead with love.

Diversity, step ye in here!
Remove us from myopic fear!
And help us better understand
The feelings of our fellow man.

Enter ye now into our school
To charm the callous, and wisen the fool.
Despite all ill we’ve done to date,
Let not our hearts be filled with hate.

To eat or not to eat—that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to consume
The grease and fat of the McDonald’s cheeseburger
Or to take arms against that delicious treat
And by throwing it away, make food for some delighted rat
In some far-off junkyard. To chew, to digest—
what was I thinking?—and by digest to say we commence
The stomach-ache and the thousand bowel movements
That accompany the quarter-pounder with cheese—’tis a feeling
Devoutly to be avoided. To chew, to digest—
To digest perchance to revel in ephemeral fatty glory. Ay, there’s the grub!
But in that food coma what pranksters may come
And stick our grease-laden hands in warm water,
Making us piss? There’s the disrespect
That makes calamity of such gluttonous life.
For who would bear the jibes and scorns of friends,
The bully’s verbal abuse, the thin man’s laughter,
The pangs of self-loathing, the bun’s sogginess,
The bloating of the heavy stomach, and the envy
Of those who eat fresh at Subway instead,
When he himself might his satisfaction make
Just as easily with a nutritious snack? Who would munch McNuggets,
To grunt and sweat under pain of constipation,
But that the sizzling temptation of the McGriddle,
The irreversible addiction from whose grasp
No patron untwines, shatters the will
And makes us rather gorge those burgers McDonald’s has
Than find real food on our own?
Thus McDonald’s does make weaklings of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied over with the thick aroma of chicken,
And diets of great caloric intake and balance
With this regard are completely ruined
And lose their effectiveness immediately.