The Academic Life

The advisor
wore the same shirt and pants
to work
for days on end
and kept spare packs of smokes
in drawers
by the ashtrays
throughout his house
to accommodate
the need for cigarettes,

and offered a spare room
to all the women
in his care,
especially the ones with big tits,
if they needed a place to live
while undertaking
the graduate study
of philosophy.

But now looking back
at his tortured facade
you can see,
without too much trouble,
that he was harmless
and pathetic,
living like he did
with his two brains
nicotined to the hilt.

Unless, of course,
like most
of my student colleagues,
you continued to believe
the presence
of other's demons
in your life
was an outrage
requiring something more
than mere smirking chatter
around the coffee pot
in the morning

All of which
serves to capture
in a simple portrait
the basic reason
why I ran
away
from the academic
life.