Hymn to Karl Marx

who are you to defy my authority?

that which cannot be measured does not exist

nothing can lie outside my analysis

the iron law of the empiricist

your vague impressions of beauty

are as elusive as an infant’s kiss

and your strange magic, the Eucharist:

beauty is the tyrant’s nemesis

I am the destroyer of symphonies

I will turn your Parnassus 

into a blighted wilderness 

so put your muse on out-of-office

of your fragile ghost I am the exorcist

that which cannot be measured does not exist

That which cannot be measured

That which cannot be measured does not exist:

your staring out of the window, your daydreaming

your jack in the box ‘imagination’ –  a will o' the 
wisp.

All are unproductive. Ergo, you have failed the test

There are no metaphors on a balance sheet.
Your ‘creativity’ is as elusive as the Eucharist.
It is, as best, a faded scroll, a mere palimpsest.
That which cannot be measured does not exist.

Unwind your spring, do not construct analogies

or let your restless mind concatenate.

Let this Excel spreadsheet record you

noting, merely, your presence, your absences.

All of that time, you could have been elsewhere

writing your poetry and your symphonies.

To the ghost in the machine, I am the exorcist.

That which cannot be measured does not exist.