Unearned

You fingers touched the keys on the piano, and in an instant

you could sight read any music.

You could play any piece after hearing it only once. 

You didn’t even have to hear the whole piece. 

You could improvise the ending,

and your improvisation was often better than the original. 

You play with such ease and yet so much emotion that audiences

Weep when they hear you play.

You played chess and the first time you picked up one of the pieces

You instantly intuited the movement of the pieces, the rules,

and you could see the pathways of your movement,

and your opponent’s movement effortlessly

You coordinated the attack of your pieces, gobbling up

your opponents pieces, sacrificing your own, and cornering

your opponent’s king in an inescapable mate  

Masters and grandmasters of the game

were helpless before you

You found yourself in a bar fight.

You were quite drunk

You had never really been in a fight before,

You horsed around as kid but nothing serious, ever

But this meathead and his two friends

Would not accept your apology when you bumped past him,

Coming out of the bathroom.

He swung at you and without thinking

you ducked the punch and countered with a right hook

To his body. 

You felt his ribs crack, before you heard it, and then

he was on the floor, groaning.

One of his friends lunged at you, arms outstretched,

trying to tackle you to the ground

You side-stepped, tripping him with one foot,

crashing him head first into the bathroom door.

The other friend grabbed a beer bottle off of a high top and came at you

You kicked him squarely in the nuts. 

You almost felt bad about the amount of force loaded into that kick. 

It hit with a percussive sound. 

He tumbled back into the high top and onto the ground, where,

after a beat he screamed in agony, silencing the bar. 

There you stood composed in the quiet,

three men crumpled on the floor around you.   

The eyes of the rest of the bar on you. 

You had never seen that look before: fear and adoration. 

You started day trading - out of the blue. 

You put a few hundred dollars into your online account.

You looked at one stock, the most boring thing you could think of

An industrial, mining concern.

You read the financials, the news, the analyst reports, the charts,

And the trades of insiders and politicians.

You started to see something

Between the lines, there was impending doom for the company,

But the market couldn’t see it.

You watched a quick video tutorial, and you shorted the stock.

It was your first trade and you made fifty-six thousand dollars. 

That’s where it started,

after countless similar trades with stair-casing returns, 

your success attracted capital, Lots of it.

And now money

for you

doesn’t equate to goods or services

Or things that you can buy,

It doesn’t have much to do with lifestyle,

Though you do enjoy a luxurious one,

For you

the money is about the influence

you can have over

Companies and the market,

to have them do what you want.