! Even Green Bears Like Anecdotes About Them Poem by Michael Shepherd

! Even Green Bears Like Anecdotes About Them



Which college student would turn down even
a few dollars? A notice goes, up, Dr. Wegner
wants some volunteers for half-an-hour, most,
in the Cognitive Research lab…

so when it’s my turn in the queue,
I go in and he says, now go in there
for fifteen minutes, only one instruction,
don’t think about a green bear…

so, money for old rope, with bear attached,
I go in there, check every few minutes that
I haven’t thought about some idiotic green bear…

come out, he’s sitting there with all his smug
students and assistants, looking just as if
I were some green bear, about to amuse them hugely…

so to shut their silly faces up, I don’t wait, but say,
if you’re going to ask me did I think about
that green bear no I didn’t once I checked
every few minutes to see if I’d thought about it no…

and they all laughed…ticked the boxes, wrote
in their don’t- I- love-my-Prof little notebooks with
their smug little smiles to each other…
now I go to sleep
thinking of feeding them one by one
to that green bear, wow they taste good…

I mean, who in their right mind
ever thinks of some green bear…

COMMENTS OF THE POEM
Michael Shepherd 22 September 2007

[Dan Wegner, 'Ironic processes of mind control', Psychological Review 101,1994]

0 0 Reply
READ THIS POEM IN OTHER LANGUAGES
Michael Shepherd

Michael Shepherd

Marton, Lancashire
Close
Error Success