A/K/A Teach Your Children Well ... Not To Eat Bullshit
RHETORICAL VERSE /
THREE (software-verifiable) SHAKESPEAREAN-FORM SONNETS
and ONE HAIKU

{ACS.025_01}  The Harvard Boylston Chair in Rhetoric
{ACS.025_02}  and Oratory's now a pigeon hole
{ACS.025_03}  for "flighty  poets" whose words do not stick
{ACS.025_04}  when tossed against "the real." Can't make the goal ...

{ACS.025_05} ... where its endowment grantor hung the net.
{ACS.025_06} Although I place these words in sonnets' shape,
{ACS.025_07} make no mistake, it's RHETORIC I let
{ACS.025_08} run down this page, not poetry I drape.

{ACS.025_09} At Harvard they no longer understand
{ACS.025_10} the meaning of the word that is the key.
{ACS.025_11} And though I'm sure that's not what Harvard planned
{ACS.025_12} that surely does explain what came to be.

{ACS.025_13} A land where BULLSHIT forms all common ground.
{ACS.025_14} "The People" swallow it without a sound.

 

{ACS.026_01} No wonder Cutler picked the ten he did 
{ACS.026_02} without consideration of a skill  
{ACS.026_03} his Harvard education from him hid.
{ACS.026_04} How could you climb when you don't see the hill? 

{ACS.026_05} Now ev'ry Harvard grad would scream "he's nuts."   
{ACS.026_06} But I've been in "big rooms" a thousand times
{ACS.026_07} and heard well-resuméd fall on their butts.
{ACS.026_08} I'm not complaining Harvard-heads lack rhymes ...

{ACS.026_09} ... but rather pure incompetence to speak.
{ACS.026_10} Which doesn't much surprise you in a room
{ACS.026_11} filled wall-to-wall with those who can't critique
{ACS.026_12} who cannot tell a piffle from a boom.

{ACS.026_13} How could they know what good is, they've not heard
{ACS.026_14} a speaker -- merely readers, word-for-word.



{ACS.027_01} I'd like to think the rich man who endowed
{ACS.027_02} the Harvard Boylston Chair foresaw them steal
{ACS.027_03} the presidency, someday. This land bowed.
{ACS.027_04} "The tyranny of bullshit" our fate seal.

{ACS.027_05} BUT THEN, he said, "We won't let that day come.
{ACS.027_06} Let's make an institution to remind
{ACS.027_07} the nation of the sticks for Freedom's drum --
{ACS.027_08} the Rhetoric  and Oratory kind.

{ACS.027_09} Now Harvard, being Harvard, nearly lost 
{ACS.027_10} the money, but then jumped to fill the chair  
{ACS.027_11} and asked John Quincy Adams  to accost
{ACS.027_12} the students with some lectures to prepare ...

{ACS.027_13} ... America to lead the world by light
{ACS.027_14} of its ideas rather than just fight.

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HAIKU CODA

"Rhetorically

Incompetent Babies" is

not an idle taunt.