Liberate

The knowledge I seek can’t be bought

I can’t find it in a textbook or my scribbled notes

My professors read from their lecture outlines

Their words rest on my ears, but quickly fly away.

I can’t be confined to these four walls

Studying, reading literary anthologies, writing English papers.

I want the freedom to be wrong,

Make bad decisions,

Know the right answer but never internalize its solidarity.

I want to question everything,

Every truth, theory, and thesis.

I want to question my own existence,

Cut my skin open to see if I bleed poetry

And when words don’t fall out of my wrists,

I want to smear canvases with my blood

And sell them as artwork on the streets.

I want to escape classrooms and assignments,

Fuck everything up and make it right again

Rearrange the circumstances I have no control over.

I want to run away to the Big Apple

Lose myself in a maze of skyscrapers,

Live in a shitty closet-sized apartment

And carry pepper spray for fear of being mugged.

I want this pen to save me from a life of normalcy.

I want to wrap myself in disappointment

And wait to breathe until right before suffocation

To prove that I am stronger;

Failure is not a reality.

I want to build a rocket out of memories

Ignite them and fly to the sun,

Feel the burn on every inch of my body

So I know I’m still alive.

I want to find the comforts that lie in sin

And disrupt them with the pain of forgiveness.

I want to uncover redemption and throw it in the ocean.

I’m not broken and I don’t need saving.

I want to be more than a test score and a graded paper.

I want to make myself something, anything.

I want to be more than a college degree.