Thoughts on Prufrock

Haunted like I always am by Prufrock,
A vision... Loveless, unsentimental,
Obtuse--- Successful for a time
And waning into your elder days
You are no longer famous.
You are "Counselor to princes."
Looking like the fool...
Balding, thinning, deluded by magic.

I've seen it in many academics.
So caught up in knowledge,
So inured by philosophy that love is like Prufrock's lovesong.
In and out they go, talking of Michelangelo...
A subject high and mighty.
Yet, it does not seem to interest Prufrock.
Why doesn't Michelangelo interest him?
Inured to beauty---
Likely you stare at blank walls, and jagged lines.
Michelangelo no longer interests you.

Do you believe you're like Lazarus? 
Do you believe you're like John the Baptist?
Grasping for an answer...
A false prophet, giving divisive counsel to the king.
Balding, thinning...

I'd rather be impoverished,
And like a monk compiling my odes
Than become you.
I'd rather hold onto Eternal Life.
As Eliot said, "Let me never turn again."
You made a public denunciation of me and my faith...
You are he, that Prufrock.
Balding, deluded and inured by your countless studies.
Ensconced in the dullness of Academia.
Obtuse. Sometimes ridiculous.
I simultaneously see you as the most vile man I can imagine...
A loveless psychopath murdering,
"A time to murder; a time to create."
In the collegiate world, or whatever world you walk in,
Your insomnia, your meandering through crooked streets
Seeing the shadow cross your room.
The yellow smoke reminiscent of Agent Orange
Reminiscent of Mustard Gas.
Muzzles, mustard gas...

For some reason you think you're Lazarus.
For some reason you think you're John the Baptist.
Holier than thou, a martyr.
I have a mental image of you, in your rolled up khakis,
Yet walking on the beach searching for Mermaids.
You drown yourself.

Let me never be you.
I never want to be you.

Deluded, ensconced in study;
Unloving, uncharitable...
Maddened by philosophy,
Maddened by Aristotelian Ethics.

You dabble in poetry, 
Like you were Yeats or Tolkien.
You think you were the Oxford Don,
You teach your class,
Your sing your liturgy of "Breasts!"
Like you had just recited Southey;
Filling the Stadium at Coventry
With adoring fans.
Your erotic poetry,
Like Endymion,
Feigns a greatness, 
Yet falls on ears like a guttery does eyes.

At the very most,
You are a sub par poet
Who's enjoyed his brief time of fame...
Working in the hallowed halls of Academia---
Unkind, unmoved by any great sympathy.
No... like so many scholars
You are not enthralled by Michelangelo.
You cannot enter into the fray,
The ecstasy---
He is overrated. That is what you think.
Jubilant, triumphant shouts over what could be mankind's greatest artist,
And it does not excite you;
Unlike a child who sees it for the first time
Who speaks for days, upon days, upon days.
What's more honest is the child's curiosity.
But, you stifle it...
Show your class a Joan Miro
For he you find worthy.
Does that even excite you?
The guttural banality of stick figures
And geometric shapes?
I'd say like a prude, like a simpleton,
Like a pompous ass, you dote over it.
For it tantalizes your toddler like mind.