The slow, empty cadence of the Tutor’s drone
matched the delicious rumble of my taut belly,
as a dozen pints of union lager slowly settled,
and the gentle thrum of a distant isle,
folded me exquisitely into the land of Nod.
A jolt! A pointed elbow in the ribs,
promoted an ignominious belch to expire,
my eyes opened and all eyes were upon me…
and the questioning leer from behind the tutor’s steel-rimmed glasses,
brought me sharply back into the room.
A sociological principle was beyond my call,
the owner of the elbow pointed at her notes,
desperate to stave off my patent ignorance:
I chanced upon a vacuous answer:
“Oh yes I whole-heartedly agree… sir!
He looked disappointed with me, bless, as I had failed,
to spot the salient point of Marxist dogma,
the point at which I could usually be relied upon,
To thrust forward my working-class treatise…
but my mind was elsewhere!
In the bleary blast of the union not half-hour since,
I’d been promised such earthly delights
that no sensible working -class hero could hold fast,
to dreams of social emancipation,
when the lure of sexual expansion glittered ahead.
Dale M.
