a breakup letter to stanford university
you are eighteen — give or take a few
shots of espresso and one night stands —
and you are sandwiched in the backseat
of the car with the six suitcases you somehow convinced your mother
to let you pack for college — let’s call it,
being upfront to your roommate that you are
and you never were one for cliches, but you felt
part of something bigger than yourself,
your parents - called it “becoming an adult”
but you called it staying out past your bedtime dancing
called it holding his hand on the street,
called it safe, and sometimes even
your peers thought you were endearing
for holding onto the y’alls and fixin to’s —
the relics from your past that you
somehow managed to fit inside,
along with all of their new advice like:
do not eat with your hands, like
do not speak about things that interest you unless you are in a classroom,
that this was the way things were supposed to be:
sitting in lecture and mistaking your pulse for a sign of life
mistaking school as an education
now you are twenty one years old
and your grandparents cannot come to graduation
but they tell you that they are so proud of you
that they came to this country and worked here
for this moment — their dandelion seed somehow blown
across the ocean and blooming into a man,
receiving a degree from an elite university
untying his noose and re-tying it as a bow tie
this is how you disguise a skin with a suit
this is how you make brown beautiful
and you smile, the most marketable skill you have learned at stanford:
for they have not taught you to be fluent in the truth
that you have spent the past four years making caves in library basements,
trying to find more excuses not to drop out
that you have spent more time
running away from this campus then letting it teach you how to forget yourself
my university tells me that I have received a degree with distinction
but they will award the same diploma to the boy next to me: the one with one letter
and six figures away from me,
the one who invited a war criminal to speak at dinner sophomore year and called her
“an inspiration,” the one who just accepted a job offer with a business
that left hundreds of thousands of people starving, but at least hires gay people and liked the format of his resume —
the way that the blank parts are so beautiful like the silence
necessary to graduate from a university where we are assigned so much reading that
we forget how to speak, forget how to feel, graduate from a university
where we forget how to poor, forget how to brown, forget how to human
i received an email that our class has
selected mayor bloomberg to be our keynote speaker —
the man who encourages the police to stop and frisk our
brothers in new york and hide them in cages disguised as justice:
who needs papers when our bodies are already the evidence?
the man who tells the press that there are no homeless people in new york because he drowned them all in Sandy or paid them minimum wage to shine his shoes,
dick, and ego all at the same time (let’s call it, efficiency)
the way this university has taught us that our hearts are only
useful if we can sell each beat for a profit:
STOPS its public service with the Haas Center
and FRISKS the activists for more results
STOPS its education at the demonstrations
and FRISKS the keynotes for tips on how to steal the world
they tell me that i am surrounded by our future leaders
who will clap so hard when bloomberg finishes his speech
because maybe if they are loud enough
they will not hear the growing pains of
our dreams becoming dictators
beliefs becoming bloombergs
So at the ceremony when you see me crying I will pretend that you understand.
So when you post photos from your new office view, your five star restaurants, I will pretend that you understand why I am not there
And when you refuse to see me
And when you refuse to see us
Like Bloomberg and Condoleeza, and all the other bullies you
wanted to become in middle school
Like Hennessey, and Blair, and all the other white men who
designed your curriculum — I mean this empire — and disguised it as an education
We will be outside burning our degrees to keep warm,
But, we, we will finally be happy
andulkaphoto
yousharknotpass
2087
pixelskylines
dededos
prguitarman
