The Real Struggle

By Gabriela Anaya Valdepeña
Copied, cut, pasted and loved by Ol' Homeless with a Laptop, That is my Name

They say, when one is beheaded,
the brain, for a few seconds,
can perceive its loss.
The mind thinks, untroubled by its limbs.
Not like dreaming, when
you run, you skip, you fly, you lie
in your coffin and stare at yourself,
then wake, limbs innocent but fatigued.

Forget class and religion. The real struggle
is between those who dream and those
who would not be troubled by them;
between those who would go to the guillotine
before they would burn a book, and those
who love the smell of burning pages.

A dreamer’s bones grow brittle, like everyone else
but their minds never ossify.
Dreamers care for the sheep
Discarded after the sleepy count;
do those snoozers think
they vanish like unwanted pounds?
When someone thins,
the air grows fatter.
That is the law of things.