'Ceteris Paribus'

My Economics teacher looks like Jason King.
The tilt of his moustache bestows a rakish slant
upon dull theories of demand and non-supply.

He wipes the blackboard and replaces Milton's verse
with Keynes. One set of words weighed against another
makes me wonder about choices I might yet make.

The accountant and the poet are both chalk dust
in the classroom air. I will call this my nineteen
seventy flaw: that all things are rendered equal

by metaphor. Wide lapels, flares and a tight perm
cannot make this lesson cool as Department S
or me into a writer with a loaded gun.