‪Troll by Shane Koyczan (Lynn)

Once upon a time,

You and all your kind lived underneath bridges,

Had ridges for ribs that dropped off into empty chests as if your

Hearts were all stolen treasures,

As if an excavation crew were hired to dig up and remove the part

Of you that let you feel.

And while the world above you invented the wheel, you stayed put,

Knowing it would one day need to roll over top of you to get to

Where it's going.

You had an endlessly flowing supply line of food.

You began to brood over humanity and made meals of our hope,

As if crushing our spirits would make your mirrors cast better

Reflections than the ones they gave,

As if the only way you could save yourselves was to make the world

Ugly so no one would notice you hiding in it.

You learned to knit pain into a kind of camouflage,

Treated hope like a mirage that you could use to lure in your next meal.

You lived off of our fears, as if you could taste what we feel.

And every night, as the moon read bedtime stories to sunlight.

You took darkness as an invite to head out into the world,

You curled your hands into wrecking balls, your breath became

Squalls, you made rocks rumble, you made land shiver

You made boys and girls pray that someone would deliver them

From you

We told them you aren't real.

Then one day, the world changed, but you all stayed the same.

Just migrated from living underneath bridges to living underneath Information super-highways.

Days and nights became meaningless, each already deepened

Chest became an abyss that no one would ever find the bottom of.

Concepts like love fell into your gravity, we turned ourselves into

Live preservers hoping to save as many as we could,

But the fathers who stood guarding closet doors and the mothers

Who secured the floors underneath beds,

All shook their heads not knowing how to deal with you.

You, who crept into our lives with tongues like knives stabbing your

Words into our skin.

You began to begin uploading yourselves into our homes you had

Computer screens for eyes, and software for bones.

You turned your hate into stones and hurled them at beauty,

As if you couldn't bear to see anything other than ugly, anything Different.

You had fingernails like flint, and scraped them along decency hoping we would be the ones to all catch fire.

You all had smiles like one-way barbed wire not meant to keep us out,

Meant to keep us in

Voice like a firing pin, you spoke in explosions

It isn't cute. It isn't funny.

You've talked strangers into death, and laughed.

And as each family learns to graft skin over the wounds you gave them, you hem yourselves into the scar.

You have coaxed the sober back into bars,

Handed out cigars at memorials,

Offered nooses, cliffs, and pills to those who unfortunately found

You before they found help.

You have praised suffering,

Waltzed in between tragedies,

Gracefully dipping misery as if we would somehow be impressed

With the dexterity of your animosity.

You have cheered on rape, dashed through police tape as if it were

The finish line in a race of who can be awful first.

Even now,

You somehow see this as an invitation to turn your keyboards into Catapults,

Wondering which of you can be the first to hate this best.

Your loathing, already dressed in riot gear,

Ready to incite rage,

As if each message board is a stage,

Where you recite hostility,

Turning freedom of speech into freedom of cruelty.

We are stuck with you, the same way you are stuck with you.

Your mind is glue, and it keeps malice fastened there like cheap wallpaper.

We were once upon a time told that none of you exist, we

Dismissed you as make believe or myth.

Now armed only with resolve, we can no longer afford to tell

Ourselves that you aren't real.

We will not let you make your dinners out of the things we feel.



Level: Lower Secondary
Themes: Troll, cyber bullying
Stylistic Feature: Free verse, imagery, diction