Why I Stopped Reading

i had to stop reading
for fear that i was simply
restating
the wisdom prior to me.

you can’t discover anything
if you read about it all…
that’s why I’ve always hated
university students:
They’ve never contemplated
the humiliation of a lost bar fight,
though they’ve already read
100 times about it.
They can tell you about about power
without ever having gone on strike
in a bomb factory.
They say things about Foucault,
about “Macht”, about systems
without ever having run the gauntlet
of a prison arrival -
only having read about the Pan-Optikon,
they could not know
the scheming that happens
when you arrive for your first day of Prison.
They can’t know the power
that comes from Murder.
They can’t know the sadness
that comes from knowing
the power of murder.
Sure - people die,
but University Students rarely kill them;
They leave that to those of us
working in Bomb Factories.

So I stopped reading.
It’s only ever a reminder
of all that you have not done.