What was commons
‘is now mine’.
What was bequeathed
Is now sold off:
Why ache for knowledge
When the power of property
Subsumes all prescience:
Only quarries shall be mined!
Now, academies and museums
Are ripe for ritual cleansing
(Defenestration by vacant minds)
The pattern of their holdings
Unlinked - scattered to the floor
Where random thoughts decay:
The curated is denied
(no longer in demand).
Teaching and research
Need no succour
When the sale of land is all that matters
And the pall of shoddy construction
Must be forever retrieved
So all those millionaires (self-made)
Can gorge upon the public purse
Babbling in mercantile relief.
Like ageing dowagers
With desperate, deep-creased smiles
Trustees and Vice-Chancellors
Tout their acreages
Thrilling to commodities games
Smearing their neoliberal patter
Upon a matrix of costly learning
(By governance without regret).
A stooge in his ill-fitting suit
“Barney Rubble”
Sits atop the pile of heritage-defeat
A triumph of moneyed neglect.
He is the ape of demand
Devoutly brutal
Squatting in his rotten nest.
July 2020
Gar Jones