Prisonality

How do I know if I'm authentic.
Not something learned and automatic.
How do I know if my thoughts are mine.
Or something learned, like a rhyme.
Or something churned out by the collective.
How do I know if my thoughts are selective.

Do I say what people expect
Am i frightened to interject
Do I ever speak my mind
Or do I just repeat in kind
Like a parrot blithely repeating
Or a sheep constantly bleating
Those two lines there, unoriginal
Nestled in my brain, become subliminal
Am I always under the influence
Talking shit and thinking effluence

How do I break from the prison
Smash the paradigm, crack the prism
Have a thought approaching unique
Shed the fleece, lose the beak
How to do it when all the routes
Are well trodden and strewn with truths.

Should I strive or just give up
Go on thinking the usual stuff
Jump in the river, go with flow
Say all the things that I know
Will get a positive reaction
Giving me no satisfaction.

Should I behave the way they think
Feeling like I'm on the brink
Of blurting out something I shouldn't say
It's hard to make it through each day
To be true to them or true to myself
Whose opinions do I leave on the shelf?