Author Information
Epigram On My High School's Alumni Association
Never your virture was humility;
nor fellowship; nor common courtesy.
Homage and deference to the "popular"
was, every year, the sole barometer
of our school's social climate; and to be
different was treated as a perfidy.
For twelve years, some of you made mockery
of my name and my simian-like looks
(as I thought I looked then). My love for books
(and, of those books, foremost was poetry)
offended you to heated imprecation.
You called me "four-eyed geek," "fairy," and "fag,"
insults abounding, with no pause or lag.
One of you even hoped for my damnation.
Now some of you send me an invitation:
e-mailed, worded enthusiastically
(with terms like "dear friend," "previous memory,"
and "clothes and hair-styles that now look too funny").
For a small fee (really, just pocket money),
I may join the Alum's Association.
And no word of the far past's degradation.
If, in those days, you thought my company
was vile, why do you seek it presently?
What has inspired this sudden transformation?
No . . . I decline . . . even if it were free.
