Melodic Engineer

There's no money in music, I know,

that's a dead end career. 

I can see you as a wonderful biomedical engineer, dear, 

from every mother and teacher and father and neighbor. 

Stop making all that noise, they say,

it's unpleasant and I can't hear

the television. 

Give me your guitar sweetie, you havent finished your work. 

I'm taking this and keeping this 

and you won't touch it

until you've finished your work, sweetie. 

I wrote my first song when I was 6 years old. 

I was labeled as GT when I was 10 years old. 

Gifted and talented students use their gifts

to take tests of course. 

The untalented students make music, join bands, write poems.

They wish they could be as talented as the test-takers.

I am a test-taker.

I am good at taking tests. 

After my tests, at night, I write

and write about engineers

and their lofty jobs and lovely houses and 

oh, the luxury. 

Oh how I wish I wasn't gifted

and talented and test-taking.

Oh how I wish my burning guitar could light

the logarithms and lab reports

or maybe inspire someone to let me live my own life. 

I want to be a musician.

A musician.

A waste of advanced placement,

the rich parents worst attainment,

the last living soul to get payment.  

I want to sing and play and create and perform

and engineer each and every song

as precicely as a life or death procedure. 

Why can't music be my math?

Who says I can't write a mathmatecal melody? 

Who says I can't write a song that will change the world

far more than a biomedical engineer ever could?

Mothers, teachers, fathers, neighbors,

I regret to inform you that this child will be wasted.

For the rest of my life, I will be a musician.