(Other) poets in New York*

When Bollinger stands with hair flapping
Your grandparents all will be napping
We’ll sit there in rows
And stare at our toes
When suddenly there will be clapping.

That’s the sound of your real life arriving
The culmination of undergrad striving
Throw your Red Bull away
Today is the day!
That no more all-nighters need your surviving.

No more tests, no more greeting the dawns
Feeling shunted like somebody’s pawns
This school can be taxing
Now there’ll be relaxing,
In the real world you can sit on the lawns!
Throw a party, no school to say “NO”
Someone might steal all your stuff though,
In full naiveté
You’ll call Public Safety
Sorry, but they’re not going to show.

No more will you snooze in your lecture
With a prof rambling ’bout his conjectures
Knowing full well
That the midterm as well
Requires only weak mental gestures.

But won’t you miss getting invited
To see leaders universally spited?
While protests insist
That we’re all communists
We all feel First Amendment enlightened.

Don’t forget all the fun that you’ve had
Spending money from Mommy and Dad
Someone’s theater debut
Sandwiches from 212
Maybe a fifth year would not be so bad...
Didn’t hear? Are you out of the loop?
Sorry kid, you’ve got to fly the coop
Four years they fawn
But then they want you gone
To make room for the next year’s group.

Perhaps you’ve gotten a job
YouTube taping the latest flash mob
It doesn’t pay well
But oh, what the hell
Who wants to be a desk-sitting blob?

Many here will teach English abroad
And frankly the rest are all awed
Now you make your bread
Just from something you said
To booze with the occasional maraud.

For those returning to parents’ free couches
Normally you’d be called louses
But with no new jobs coming
It seems not quite bumming
To slink back to suburbanite houses.

Or “onward to grad school!” you say
The life of the mind is your way
We hate to sound bitter
But these days, schools don’t tenure
And deep thoughts will be all you’re paid.

You’ll forget the old sacrilege
The one few dare acknowledge
Where everyone cared
Only I don’t, I swear
If you’re Barnard or Columbia College.

Don’t worry too much about May
It’ll come just like every day
Enough with nail biting
Finish your thesis writing
Or frolic, ’cause Spring’s on its way!

*with deepest apologies to Lorca

Sarah Leonard is a Columbia College senior majoring in history. Kate Redburn is a Columbia College senior majoring in history and African studies. Shock and Awe runs alternate Mondays.