by Jonah Sachs ’20

I cannot think

I cannot breathe or see or blink,

For now, tonight, I start to sink,

Down to a place beyond the brink.

Below where I have been before,

A new place with thoughts in store,

Moving on from door to door,

Breaking down within my core.

Where comes this sense of breakage from?

What kinds of problems form this sum?

I simply feel that I am dumb,

A puppet that must now succumb

To Greed’s forever love of sin:

Where you, college, is its kin.

My essays, belonging in the bin,

Make me feel like there’s a pin

Within my chest that’s pierced a hole:

Drained my essence and my soul.

Falling, dripping to a bowl,

Then thrown into a steaming coal

Labeled ‘application’…

For my declaration,

My heart’s precipitation,

Fuels your dehydration

For childrens’ blood, sweat and tears,

Like a leech, sucking on our fears,

Forcing machines to turn their gears,

Turning on their fellow peers,

To fight for that solo spot,

A war today that must be fought:

Child against child, bot against bot.

Yet nowadays, it can be bought,

But still I plow and push and cry

Thinking someday I can die

Peacefully, humanely, as a guy,

Not the machine that you can buy.

The tests, the scores, we cry some more;

We just can’t get those scores to soar.

You schools, you keep on craving more,

You tear us down, down to the core.

The greed, it has us shackled tight

you harvest money and our plight.

We simply can’t put up a fight

Sinking deep, no end in sight.

We’re auctioned to the highest bid,

Until, in four years, you can rid

The slaves you’ve made from little kids,

That once pushed on and barely slid

Into your lap, like dogs with tricks…

But we are not some mutt to fix,

We are people; you are ticks

That suck our blood, a group of pricks.

Stop draining me of my time and life,

You cause the children so much strife.

The stress, it pierces like a knife,

Until one day there is no life

To take.