M is for “Most Popular,” also “Best Dressed,” “Best Dancer,” “Cutest Couple,” and all of the rest. The sleek cheerleader, the lead in the class play—She’ll wind up fat; he’ll turn out gay. The boy who’s presently a football star, In a dozen years will sell used cars. The girl who’s now the Homecoming Queen, She’ll end her days divorced in Moline. Half of her court will be bottomless dancers. The class stud will die of testicular cancers. While the Student Council President Will be an Ashram resident. And for the sake of mercy there should be a UN
moratorium
On the kind of things that happen to the earnest
valedictorian.
Remember, the future visits every duress On the victims of adolescent success. Besides, so what if you aren’t a social lion? Neither was Zola nor Albert Einstein.
N is for Nike. It’s a missile not a shoe. Get yourself an oxford in cordovan, not blue.
O is for Offal, served in the cafeteria. Regard it as you would a vaccination for diphtheria. Lunchroom food is made in order to prepare you For the treatment you’ll receive from the girl who will
marry you,
And for military, business, and personal strife, And the rest of the shit you’ll eat later in life.
P is for Prom night, most important by far If you enjoy vomit and hand jobs in cars. It’s a night no sensible person would fail To forget, with exception of one small detail: The pictures your parents are sure to have took * Which they’ll frame and hang in the vestibule nook. This picture will publish in all the newspapers If you have a car wreck or become a child raper. So be sure your tuxedo is plain and fits right And looks as though owned and not hired that night, And be sure that your hair is properly plastered To your skull like a man’s, not a hippy disaster’s (Nor parted in the middle like a local sportscaster’s). This photo may get international play, Depending on what you do or you say. And you don’t want the world to think you a loon If you happen to die or shoot the President soon.
* There is absolutely no excusage For this past participle usage.
Q is for Questions of every kind, The sign of an unwell and feverish mind. Don’t succumb to the ill of curiosities. The cure is worse always than the disease. He’s only more worried, he who knows. For your peace of mind let me propose The motto immemorial of the Bengal Lancers: “Don’t ask questions. You’ll only get answers.’
R is for Rah-rah, rah-rah, rah-rah, Boom-a-lacka, boom-a-lacka, sis, boom, bah. Control yourself, remain demure. School spirit is fearfully immature. Your high school fight song will strike a false note When you’re older and pretending you went off to
Choate.
S is for Scholastic Aptitude Test. Be sure to do better than all of the rest. That way you’ll get into Harvard or Yale, And land a job in the government if you pass or you
fail.
And government is a lucrative field With loads of influence and power to wield. Plus a government job insures that eventually, When you’re caught, you’ll serve time in the best
penitentiary.
T is for Tender kind charity. Work hard at getting rich if you ever want to see Any of it. Since charity is most felicitous When its object is rich to the point of conspicuousness.
U is for the Unemployment rates, Still rather grim in most cities and states. There may be no jobs no matter what your knowledge, By the time that you matriculate from college. So work and study and practice night and day At something to give you social entrée. There may be no jobs, not for doctor nor dentist, But you’ll marry an heiress if you’re real good at tennis.
V is for Verse, all adolescents write, Mawkish, self-pitying, derivative, trite. But at least, today, all verse is free, So verse is easier than it used to be. For poems once were written in doggerel thus: A-scramble for rhyme lest the scan make a muss. But nowadays, due to the work of a pack ’o Modernist bards and poetical wackos, There aren’t any rules. You can do what you want. You don’t have to, e.g., end this line with “daunt.” Just to your emotions give long-winded venting,
And show it’s not prose by frequent indenting. Just one restriction you can’t throw out: Don’t give the poem to the girl it’s about.
W is for Women. They’re awful, mendacious, Nasty and selfish, cruel and salacious, As thievish as gypsies, more crazy than Celts. Be sure that you never fuck anything else.
X is for the attitude of eXistential anomie. The French mean nothing by it, and neither do we. So don’t go around acting like Jean Paul Belmondo. Aspire instead to three cars and a condo.
Y is for Your future, supposedly pared By nuclear-holocaust world-end nightmare. Don’t get disconcerted by apocalyptic jive. It’s been just about to happen since 1945. And no matter the MIRVs, ICBMs, and SAMs, It’s not going to happen before final exams.