Memoriam

Griffin Smith 

Distant classrooms  
and long passwords 
reside inside the tide  
of my mind.  

Thoughts on Saturn,  
Heads on backward. 
Thinking of patterns. 
Is it dead? 

Drive for success 
while I’m depressed. 
I must confess, 
I miss the dread. 

I miss the long lectures  
and wild conjectures  
about science and checkers.  
Now I feel sadness instead.  

I won’t let it die.  
That raging fire inside.  
A burning desire  
to be something else.  

They question my intellect  
and slight my return 
to the fiery pit of knowledge, 
where I know I belong.  

In memoriam 
to the ones who doubted me.