Learning freedom

"The day you stop learning is the day you start to die".

My teacher said this to me in school one time

& my young soul digested it like dinner.

I have seen myself go from an infant to an adult,

crawling, walking, chasing and staggering towards death

& I now know I don't stop learning to start to die;

I started learning to die from the day I was born.

Death is an end-paper in a textbook

& every day I flip pages approaching it.

Every day I learn something from this textbook.

I learn that I'm like a house,

I metamorphose from blueprints to an incomplete building

& briefly become complete before I end up

in rubbles. I learn that we all fight battles and as such

we are given tools & weapons to aid that cause.

Some are given silver spoons whilst others bring clay pots,

& I wonder if they had the option of choosing.

I learn about the weapons I was given;

the pen & these words creating imageries of hope,

stopping me from turning to the end page

just to take a peek at how it all ends.

The sound of my scribbling pen has become music to my ears

& my dreams dance as silhouettes in the shadows of its ink.

Moses will see a burning bush through my eyes,

but the fire burns me who carries it,

so I learn to save burnt victims by drowning them in bottles.

I learn that life hits you in different ways you cannot imagine,

as if to say "when you're old enough to cross the road,

you're old enough to get hit". My problems are put in a kettle

& my frustrations threaten to boil over;

then I learn about prison & freedom from the hissing sound

of grateful gas particles escaping my gas cylinder.

I learn that all I seek & am working towards is freedom:

financially, psychologically, death;

& I ponder on what freedom truly means.