Two Minds

by Joel Hirst (November 2018)

Moody Blue, Charles Cham, 1998

 

Our achievements have been thanks to your acumen, of genius I’d never been treated.

 

Sticker-stars ne’er shown, ‘top my tests were unknown, and I knew that my brain was not strong.

 

How was I to know disposition of said ugly girl was so terribly fickle.

 

But I of this task was delivered at last for a troll Peggy Sue’d never seen.

 

With me songs a’grunting and for trolls a’hunting for fully the length of the days.

 

Worse for brainless boy-man, alone with his boy-plans expected to act like a teen.

 

Instead I divined, with small brain I opined ‘haps my muscles could steal me the show.

 

Slowly, and with vigor I’d lift with such rigor, ev’ry weight I could find would I heft.

 

But alas as for me, at the age of sixteen twas the saddest of those who are dumb.

 

At the end of long journey, a task or a tourney I would finally have found my rest.

 

So to make a good private, and war to survive it was everything for which I strived.

 

I began to say, to myself anyway, that my choice of crusade had been brash.

 

“Stop your complaining, your wailing is draining! JUST GO!” and at last I was free.

 

To you man and maiden I dare you to trade-in, for the life of a vagrant’s not neat.

 

A mangy and scraggly exceedingly shaggy and smelly small dachshund I named Gog.

 

Thus I had to decide—absent logic—which side, in hot or in chill should I be.

 

But instead of solution I got more confusion for it settled upright in a furrow.

 

And that moment, my friend, I screamed “THIS IS THE END”, and resigned to becoming much thinner.

 

A real job would I seek, p’haps something quite meek and give up my fools quest for enjoyment.

 

Now where should I start, from where to depart for a dull lad who knew only scheming?

Then walked I door to door, to establishments score and ask for a job I did dare.

 

That was the beginning of my days of winning as the ice-cream world we stormed.

 

We started a’talkin as music was rockin and us swayin’ hard to the beat.

 

 

“We should open a store, sell ice-cream on the shore, for your opuses are quite delicious!”

 

We each have our talents, and when joined they balance, as we built a business quite slick.

 

And here they are, and I’m happier by far, as I’ve learned how to seize the day.

 

A moment will come when they’ll realize your dumb, and you will be left with no reason.

 

And you’ll find that the earth is in fact full of mirth and is really not that bad a place.

 

 

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I, Charles, From the Camps. He was a Fellow in Human Freedom at the George W. Bush Institute in Dallas and an International Affairs Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He has a Masters from Brandeis University. He tweets @joelhirst and his public facebook is @JoelDHirst

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