The Incarcerated Word

What was created to expose,
now a fortress meant to hide

Bastions of higher learning,
masking havens safe for lies

Where discourse once was treasured,
the ivy droops and sighs

With comfort their true measure,
the dilettantes all cry

Plato is disgusted,
John Locke is more than riled

As a millennium of learning
is mocked in false denial

Students weak and wounded,
from those lessons never learned

Their tomorrow’s but a doomsday,
their futures sure to burn

Those words were there to save them,
both the hated and revered

All truth in dialectics
—left abandoned by their fear

(Villanova Pennsylvania: March, 2016)