Dies Irae

Found this gem while I was looking for a file I had just saved. Kind of crazy what sort of things a computer can just toss back into your life. I must have wrote this early in Fall Semester maybe? It's a fun little guy.

Would You Trade Your Brain?

I saw a boy

by the school

a textbook in his hand

a fire on the ground

I asked him why

he seemed so keen

to break the binding

rip the pages

sacrifice it to the flame.

He looked at me

with eyes so dull

and speech so sad

“I look to trade my brain

for a chance to be cool”

was not what was said

but what was heard

was what was understood

with pain.

I grabbed at his collar

and pulled him closer

sneered at his face,

he jeered at mine

silently, inwardly

but so notably.

“But your figure's so frail

inept to compete

with the trials of nature

around you.

And your perception so slim

as to pass by a being

inbound to harass you

attack you

dispatch you.

What would make you think

that your only advantage

keen mind

is something so cheap

to be burned in a pit

of paper, of glue, and of asphalt?”

The boy looked terrified

at the man in his face

as I glared back intently

desiring an answer

but none would come.

So I continued my progress

to turn this young boy.

“And would you trade

a kidney for a friend

maybe half of a liver

a lung on the side.”

The boy shook his head no

his eyes still intent

filled with life

and vitality

with no sense of the world

with no sense of regret.

“And I would guess your the sort

who is so self-involved

you'd be willing to trade

a thousand bad days

with lessons learned

for a single day

with no dilemma

no problems.

You would trade a thousand worlds

filled with creatures

so rare and beautiful

for a thousand companions

who will drift and sway

and stab your back.

But you don't know

you're just a child.”

I dropped the boy down

and stomped out his fire

left him cold and alone

in that desolate lot.

But I saw him again

a few years later

on a school day

tobacco in one hand

and a beer in the other.

So I asked him again

“Have you traded your brain

for a chance to be cool?”

A laugh was my answer

and all the I needed

for a final reprisal

a payback, an ending.

Some would say

before that day

he lacked a brain already.

I would say

I liberated a mind

imprisoned by day

confined.

The irony being

the great liberator

a book, a blunt hit to the head.