Chopping Branches

Would you think me conceited if I told you
I used to be a genius
Who sacrificed half his brain
To the gods of pain
In exchange for wisdom, plunged my mind
To the depths of sorrow to make
The other limbs stronger, swam the delirium
Of drug-induced doldrum and madness, blew a hole
Through my aura and liver, lived through it
Then lived even longer-
Would you believe that heaven relies upon hell?
Would you consider the fleeting joy of this cell,
This body shackled to a mind thinking its soul
In these eyes: restless, fearful and burning with tears?
Do you know I sacrificed fifteen years to live
On fast forward for five? Do you know that
The highs and lows are more alive
Than a thousand blurred together in the middle?
If you consider the hours we piddle
Over television lives spent in the mind,
The psychodrama of thoughts spattering its soundtrack
To the tune of repetition,
If you think! and think of Odin's vacant eye,
His headless wisdom floating the well of knowledge,
If you think of the pain raining joyous sacrifice,
Of one eye seeing farther, casting aside
Sight to lead the blind,
If you think of the bridges burning behind
Lighting ways to fire in the head,
If you think of half a life as better than a whole dead,
An action performed in the passing twilight of now
Outshining the staleness of evergreen boredom,
Outburning the wish for perpetual sun,
If you compare ten same lives to a different one
It's not hard to see
Chopping branches
To heighten the tree.