Preparations

What a bright young boy,
He’s going places.
Uni maybe,
Not taking
The train
To the happiness interchange,
But somewhere colder.
But at least he’ll have Wi-Fi.
 
I wonder what he feels,
When he types up another essay,
Solves another equation;
How ironic, that he can find the roots of x squared minus four,
But not the roots of a boy with promise, now a shell, nothing more.
Is it not comical, that the boy fills his work
With words as large as the potential he once had,
Yet he remains a spilled chalice of hope.
 
He wishes to be a robot. 
 
Do your work on time. 
Do your work well. 
In accordance with a discordant
       system.
But don’t live your life
        The way your brain intended.
 
Feel nothing and fear nothing.
Sow what you can of the seed we give,
And we will reap twice as much.
But we do not forgive.
 
Pleasure is failure,
A smile, not worthwhile,
A laugh,
Please,
Finish plotting your graph. 
Remember that the limit of
The sine and cosine functions is one,
Whilst we forget that
People have limits too.
 
I hope you spend your precious time,
Breathing in the syllabus,
Breaking your wrist on the paper, getting it done.
And that will be all that breaks.
 
Retain your heart and your sanity,
Drink water,
Whilst we drain you of vitality,
And pretend to give a shit how you feel, 
When all you are is a statistic.
Someone who will achieve a grade A* to C,
A pawn in a sea of thousands which,
Individually,
Are but part of a percentage.
A fucking number on a scoreboard,
Keeping track of our place
In this game that we call
Preparations.