Broken System

I have this friend.

He’s the guy whose biggest goal today

 is to make you smile. Like a human sun,

his warmth and compassion have no end.

He tells you that you’re beautiful,

and you can’t help but believe the words.

But sometimes I catch the light

dimming behind his eyes,

And I am forced to witness the darkest night

That  I have ever known.

With a broken heart, I ask him what’s wrong,

 and I he turns to me and says in the same breath

that I amaze him, and he can’t stop feeling useless.

I stare blankly back at him,

Floundering for speech,

Wondering what went so catastrophically wrong in this world,

That my hero somehow looks up to me.

And the worst of it all is that to stand here and say that I was shocked,

would be nothing but a cruel lie.

Because as I much as I’d like to say that I don’t

The unfortunate truth is that I know why.

With SAT scores competitive enough for Ivy Leagues

And a GPA well over the standard 4.0,

I am told that I am going to go far.

Not because I love what I do,

or because I believe in hard work,

But because some black ink printed on a paper

Say so.

And my friend doesn’t know

That I hide behind a handful of numbers and calculations--

Selfishly, I work alone, by myself and for myself,

Enduring petty self-inflicted frustrations,

So that a committee of strangers in suits

 will let me into their private learning club.

And when that’s done, what do my numbers mean anymore?

After that, what the hell am I to do with my score?

Yet my friend,

Who just wants to change someone’s day for the better,

And who ends up transforming people’s lives forever,

Who can pick up a language the way that most of us pick up our groceries,

He looks at his numbers, and looks back at mine,

And can’t help but feel that he’s somehow less.

And I don’t know how to make him see,

What I see. That he could not be

Anymore wrong about himself.

My superior in every important way imaginable,

I see his worth that cannot be measured in test.

I see that, now more than ever the world needs him

and his giving heart that beats in his chest

He has a hard time believing me when I tell him,

 try as he might, thanks to the broken machine

known as our  education system. The one that

Reduces us down to our basest parts,

Turning us into numbers and calculations

Investigating our scores and our extra-curriculars,

All the while, ignoring what’s in our hearts.

We are not numbers on spreadsheets,

or an equation to be run through machine.

We are not a score sheet to be tallied,

And we are not data to be synthesized,

We are the future that has yet to come,

and there is so much more in us than just numbers to be prized.

And I need someone, somewhere,

To please wake up someday soon and realize

That this is not working.

That statisticalizing students for the benefit

Of efficiency is not smart, it’s dehumanizing.

Because I am tired of trying to explain to my friend,

That he is worth more than I will ever be.

When every single stupid set of numbers that he sees,

Keeps telling him differently.