Memoirs of a Lazy Academic

I carry my satchel around
A gift from a Conference I attended in Witswatersrand
I have the academic gait, the slight bent of a contemplative philosopher
In my satchel I carry the Oxford Law Dictionary, Legal Articles and Journals
Newspaper Cuttings from Law Reports, torn pieces of my random law thoughts

You see, an academic I am
A legal scholar
I have mastered APA, MLA, Turabian
I can tell a thesis from an abstract
I can tell works cited from reference list
I have read the finest legal texts legal eyes could read
I have pored through seminal rulings and judgments
I have torn through labyrinth of legal texts in search of law
I am the best gift to the scholar’s world
Something of a published legal scholar acclaimed

Let’s say I am not published
Just yet
But I am publishable

My problem is that those research textbooks have caught mould
And have this smell of a treated biological specimen
Every time I open them to read through legal lines
My nostrils prick and are choked

I have no issue with going electronic
After all the world has gone digital
Save for my eyes
I read a few lines but my eyes get teary, bleary
All online content get blurred

So I prefer to walk around with my satchel
Protruding my stubble of scholarly beard
Quoting John Locke and J.J. Rousseau and legal maxims
Tracing law to England and Rome
Regurgitating old notes of my dead professor
And serving them as if they are fresh legal gems of yesterday
I critique judgments even when I have not read them
I postulate how I can write to journals
After all I am the modern day academic
Yet to be published.

C) Lorot Salem 2010