| Welcome to the Day I Died |
| Today I died. I stood before a firing squad and they brutally put pieces of lead into my heart. I remember it clearly, they had wanted to blindfold me but I wanted them to see my eyes. I wanted them to know what they killed. I looked behind their eyes before I died, each and every one. There was no fear, why should there be? There was only pity. No remorse. I stood tall that day, (though I knelt) and proud as well. Proud of myself I guess, of what I had done. It was nothing really, only a bit of writing. Writing which many seemed not to care for. Well, no one in authority anyways. It gave people ideas, and ideas are never good, are they? They had tried me before a judge in a white wig, and they had found me guilty. And that is why I died that day. Because they were afraid of thinking, of dreaming. I was in chains for days with nothing but water. I remember. I was alone in a cell for days and days (weeks?) in a cell, and this I minded. I thought a lot on the day that I died. About the last sunset I had seen. About the mentioned ominous supreme being. I thought about how angry they'd be if they found out about the secret school. A writer's craft if you will. I thought about my best student and how they would change the world. I knew there'd be sonnets and poems about the day I died. Many unnoticed by the authorities, many taken and burned. I remember looking up at the sky before they shot their angry ammuntion. It was clear, blue, and the breeze was warm. So I had smiled. And they had laughed at me. My writsts had been bound in silk. A little joke between them about royalty. This brings me to just before I was shot. I was knelt, staring at the sky, smiling. That's how I died: smiling, shot through the heart. If I remember that day now, it doesn't seem like much. It doesn't seem significant to me. I remember some cried, and many were killed for it. It was the birth of poetry, though not many would remember it that way. They had burned by body before a mob of angry people, and they laughed. Most people would tell you that that was the day they killed me. Some wouldn't. Some would say I'd never left at all, and I'd like to agree with them. They're the one's who said I live in writing; mine and the dreamer's. That's what it was like for me. There was no pain, and it was quick. It wasn't meaningless. And that's how I saw it. Welcome to the day I died. -end (March 28th 2000) |