Richard Devereux

Harry S. Totle

Protégé of Jimmy Plato

(CEO at ACADEMUS)

when the old man went,

Harry looked slam-dunk

but the nephew got it

so Harry moved on, 

took up the offer at Macedon Energies,

running Philip’s Alexander Project

on a three year fixx;

after that, he moved back south,

taking premises in Lykios Street

which is how

he came to call his start-up

WOLF –

nothing like it:

HQ without a desk or chair,

everything on the hoof

(or paw, if you prefer)

the original blue-skies-thinking

under blue skies!

market leaders in logic technology

      1=2 3=1 ∴ 3=2

an’ all that kinda stuff

which sorta left poor old ACADEMUS

sat in the shade

and, boy, did Harry max the fruit

outta his Alexander connections

but, when Al went under,

he saw where the wind was coming

from, zeroed out, tapped into Asia

moved his whole operation over

and went back to what he knew best –

the neo-science sector –

well in the end you could say

he left a whole lotta

questions unanswered,

but the guy sure did leave his mark.

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Commentary

This poem transports Aristotle to the world of contemporary tech where a parallel in terms of intellectual energy and originality is perhaps justified. The register is a Californian commentator on the scene. The poem is one long gush of a sentence.

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The historic events referenced include: Plato set up his Academy and was succeeded by his nephew Speusippus; Aristotle, his star pupil, was disappointed and returned to his native Macedonia to tutor the teenager who would become Alexander the Great; Aristotle returned to Athens and set up a rival philosophy hot-house – the Lyceum; he developed a peripatetic style of teaching which he often conducted walking out-of-doors.