Memorization is not education.
Success is a fixed point,
Success is not happiness.
Fame is not acceptance.

Your destiny is not defined by any book,
Unless you allow it to be.
Books do not define your destiny,
Unless you allow them to.

What happens beyond death can not be known,
It can not be known what happens beyond death.

I am whoever I am,.
And you are whoever you are.

Originally written 7/26/11
Revised 10/20/14

(c) 2014 Brandon Antonio Smith

Solemn Surprises
In happy crevices
A revelation
A confrontation
Disbelief.
The good kind.
The bad kind?
Sweet disposition
I never want to leave.

Lidless wreath
Blind me with your teeth
Bone white, chalk lines; bitter retreat

I’ll sing through the embers
Of our charred reverie
A brick & mortar apartment
Holding three dead children
We flee.

Lay my mirth to rest
At the foot of my grave
I think it died the same day
I lost my face

Who the **** even knows me?
Who the **** even cares?

Heavy weighs the death
Of childlike ideals
Their hollow corpses rotted
With severed wrists

The media says “tell no one”
Sleepwalk through reality

I cannot want
I cannot lust
For faces
In a world of masks

Let's be children for a day (for a year)
And forget where the hell we came from
.
.
.
Forget where we're going.
We'll run and play and smile
And leave our nihilistic thoughts coughing in the dust.

Then we'll grow up all over again in a second
And files taxes while staring at a blank TV screen
Until we realize there's nothing more to do besides cry
Besides scream
Besides laying down and waiting for death to visit.

We'll clean the house until it's ***** and
We'll invite over a party of the entire world
And together we'll dance in a vertigo of color and light...
Until the last soul has gone home.
And we'll grow up all over again for the first time in a second.

We'll remember fear and send that country home.
We'll remember hate and send those people home.
We'll remember society and dress those people like us.
We'll remember money and haggle with that nation before we head to work.
We'll remember anger and fight and take that country's home for ourselves.

Now that we've grown up, we'll sneer at that dropout on the streets.
And that family who can't afford another bill.
And that mother without a husband.
And that husband with a husband.
And that wife with a wife.
And that child who's pursuing art.

See, now that we've grown up, we can't be seen with them.
We've grown too heavy for the clouds our heads used to live in.
Our heads are too dense for us to look up at old dreams.
But our hands are still light enough to tie a tie
And button our dress shirts.
Light enough to pay the train fare
And hand in a daily report to the boss.

I don't need a rhyme scheme to describe humanity.
There's nothing beautiful about it.
There's nothing that incites a beat.
I don't need a rhyme scheme for this.
I don't need to write a song without music
For something that never knew how to sing.