Editor’s note: The following is a satirical article for The DisreGuardian, a series of articles published annually for The Guardian’s April Fool’s issue. Features will resume publishing normal content next week.
UC San Diego Chancellor Pradeep Khosla is many things: administrator, computer scientist, electrical engineer, millionaire. It seems, however, that “poet” can now be added to the list. On Friday, March 29, an extensive collection of poems authored by Khosla was leaked by an anonymous informant within his entourage. Reportedly, wherever he goes, Khosla has his collection of hand-written poems carried around in a shoe box by an aide, so that he can add to the stack whenever inspiration strikes him — somewhat similarly to the way that the nuclear football accompanies the President of the United States, so that he can too can turn the world into an irradiated wasteland in a fit of momentary inspiration.
The poetry offers what professional psychiatrists are calling a “fascinating glimpse into the psyche of the world’s most mustachioed construction maniac.” Some of Khosla’s poems are meditations upon everyday or mundane topics, such as “Ode on a Faculty Club Dinner”:
On my plate the staff deploys
Lobster, prawns, and barracuda;
But nothing can match the simple joys
Of a Taco Bell chalupa.
Many of Khosla’s poetic works are interconnected in subtle ways which faculty from the literature department are only beginning to tease out, after countless hours of scholarly debate and in-depth analysis. For example, the above poem is followed by another one, titled “Ode on the Aftermath of a Taco Bell Chalupa”:
Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow!
Gurrrrrr AAGH make haste!
Barely made it to the RWAC restroom
And laid it all to waste.
One of Khosla’s favorite subjects is, of course, himself; in contrast to the usual assumption that poets are brooding and melancholic, Khosla approaches his own life with unbridled satisfaction. Khosla’s oeuvre is full of exuberant celebrations of la dolce vita.
(Note: for the crime of using two foreign expressions from two different European languages in the same sentence, the writer of this article has been found guilty of first degree pretension and sentenced to be shot. We apologize; it will not happen again.)
From “Verses Composed While Floating on My Pool Built on a Native American Burial Ground”:
Blue the sea, blue the skies
But none so blue or dear to me
As the bottle of Skyy that lies
Beside me on my pool floaty!
Khosla’s poem “I Have Too Much Money” continues along a similar line:
Got no ‘Rari in front of the crib
Got no kilos of snow Brazilian;
Maybe you will think it glib
But, really, how do I spend my millions?
Do I go to outer space
On Bezos’s penis rocket?
Do I get a brand new face
So people won’t want to sock it?
Maybe I’ll fill the pool with money
And swim around like Scrooge McDuck.
Maybe you losers think it’s funny
I really do not give a [f—-].
Not all of Khosla’s poetry has such a positive outlook on life, however. On top of the stack of handwritten poems, left in the shoebox in Geisel Library, is a little ditty titled, “List of Things I Hate”:
Striking TAs, living wages
Union complaints that run for pages
Cilantro in pho, Planet of the Apes
Rotisserie chicken, purple grapes,
Cheerful students, smiling faces
Peace and quiet, parking spaces,
God himself, your mother, the Swiss
And most of all, you, reading this <3.
When asked for comment on the revelation of his secret artistic career, Khosla likewise responded in poetic form:
All the witty verse I’ve rhymed–
I wish I hadn’t said it;
For it’s being unfairly maligned
By all those dorks on Reddit.
But if you want a real good read
It shouldn’t be too hard-ian
For no one’s got quite what you need
Like those bastards at The Guardian.
