Cerebral Prostitution

The Poem:

My ideas are mine!

No - they belong to “us”!

What is my intellect to you?

Achievement of our bottom line

So what is my legacy?

A fulfilling career and gold watch!

Who has my career fulfilled?

Obese coffers of a grateful industrial complex

Where is the intellectual intercourse I sought as a fresher face?

Willingly traded for a pot of gold and regret!

I am indeed a cerebral prostitute!

There, my child, is the intercourse you seek.

The Muse:

In the engineering field the product provided to employers is intellectual in nature. Ideas, designs, papers, and etc. We toil with our minds and not our back for each idea that can be tuned into profit for the employer. we typically start out in engineering wanting to better mankind with our ideas and intellectual property. Later in our careers, many times we realize our toil has netted us nothing but a paycheck. I wrote this poem over a couple of weeks when I started thinking back over my engineering career and trying to determine my legacy. I determined there was no real legacy to the hours I worked, travel I did, and sacrifices I made in family life. I became rather disheartened. At that time a saw a documentary of a prostitute on YouTube (SoftUnderbelly series of interviews). It hit me that there was only a little difference in my career and hers. We sold ourselves for money. We both had pimps who took significant portions of our earnings (my charged labor rate was way higher than my salary). I sold my mind while she sold her body. The title and flow of this poem hit me then.