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.
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.
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.
