The way I see it

 my intelligence is not defined by a number, nor a letter.

nor should I be graded on a curve

by people

who don’t know me.

What does knowing the pythagorean theorem

have to do with me being a good person?

what will memorizing words on a page

help me with my rage

raging about how education has become

this conveyor belt

chewing up and spitting out

society’s warped up idea

of intelligence.

Throw me in a classroom with twenty-something students

just to tell me I’m better than him

but not as smart as her

teachers saturating our brains

with force fed textbook equations

telling us this is what we have to know to make it

“make it on time”, they say

“Passing it in late is not okay”

but when I am eventually thrown out

of this conveyor belt of education

the realization will be that life does not have

a set schedule.

my life will not change on time, as you ask

I cannot cram my creativity onto a five-paragraph

piece of paper.

I cannot crunch my knowledge

down onto six pages

about who I am

Don’t give me guidelines

my future does not have guidelines

you think you’re teaching us information

but in reality, you’re teaching us around the system

of how to get a passing grade

but not the exceeding knowledge

knowledge about what?

Our history?

what about our future?

We can’t learn about our future by staring at a blackboard

in a dim-lit room

with twenty-something other people

wondering what the hell we’re doing here

but being too scared to stand up

and ask.