I will not be sad in this world In passing, this seemed to make sense. The trials of youth were abetting, we had foreseen the worst yet to come, The landslide was projected for another fall, another shore, another time
Yet, it gnawed at me Like a dog on a bone A thought of disclosure, of closure, of fright, of future
The thought needed a way of happening, a mouth, to permeate The negative will not bleed to the surface, not in this life The dire prediction will not manifest in the bosom of sanity The wandering thought will find no home here
I will live my days in peace Prosperity of spirit if not of circumstance Inflict upon others My endless litany of thoughts, none the wiser To the deep well of conflict that looms behind the bat of an eyelid And the sigh of early autumn
I will not be sad in this world For it won’t have me I scuttled it about, kicked it around, refused to call it friend, I only humored it for poetic subversion, for artistic purchase
I know beauty I know God And so, I can’t know sad. Not in this life.
Not with you.
My name is Michael Sean Gallagher. I am a Lecturer in Digital Education at the Centre for Research in Digital Education at the University of Edinburgh. I am Co-Founder and Director of Panoply Digital, a consultancy dedicated to ICT and mobile for development (M4D); we have worked with USAID, GSMA, UN Habitat, Cambridge University and more on education and development projects. I was a researcher on the Near Futures Teaching project, a project that explores how teaching at The University of Edinburgh unfold over the coming decades, as technology, social trends, patterns of mobility, new methods and new media continue to shift what it means to be at university. Previously, I was the Research Associate on the NERC, ESRC, and AHRC Global Challenges Research Fund sponsored GCRF Research for Emergency Aftershock Forecasting (REAR) project. I was an Assistant Professor at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (한국외국어대학교) in Seoul, Korea. I have also completed a doctorate at University College London (formerly the independent Institute of Education, University of London) on mobile learning in the humanities in Korea.
