THE DRUMS THEY BURNED

By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe © 2026 Mark Damon Bitkower. Lyrics & written content are original and owned by the author. All rights reserved. No reproduction, redistribution, or use without prior written permission. 🐰🌙𝕵𝖆𝖈𝖐𝕽𝖆𝖇𝖇𝖎𝖙 𝕾𝖑𝖎𝖒𝖘🌙🐰 [Spoken Intro] They burned the drums because they could not burn the hearing. They erased the name because they could not erase the role. I was never lost. I was initiated in a century that misplaced the instructions. [Verse 1] I was born with every doorway open, every whisper walking through my skin, reading storms behind familiar faces, hearing wars beneath a practiced grin. At the table, blood became the weapon, love was leverage, silence was the law. They betrayed the child who saw too clearly, then condemned him for describing what he saw. Every lie became a living picture, every wound retained its date and place. Low-latent gates refused to filter; nothing vanished, everything left trace. So I carried generations like a fever, all their shadows speaking through my bones. They called sensitivity a weakness— I was mapping every fracture in the home. [Pre-Chorus] I thought I was breaking. I was being called. Capacity came early; the container came through the fall. [Chorus] They burned the drums, but I remembered rhythm. They closed the door, but I could hear within. I am the witness standing past the firelight, the wounded mirror teaching wounds to speak again. I went where every buried memory waited, then crossed back carrying a melody. Now every night I turn a life into a song— the edge of the camp was always meant for me. [Verse 2] I was useful when the house was burning, then avoided when the smoke had cleared. Close enough to hold their darkest secrets, far enough to keep the truth from being heard. Family called my intuition madness when it named the cruelty beneath the charm. So they forged a heyoka from betrayal— made a medicine man while causing harm. I became the joke that breaks the glamour, the backward thunder, laughter with a blade. Sigma not from dreams of isolation— I walked alone because the mask parade could never bear a mirror without mercy, could never stand the meaning under meaning. I learned the exile was not my rejection. It was distance necessary for the seeing. [Pre-Chorus] I stopped asking villagers to validate the flame. Sophia took my sorrow and taught wisdom its name. [Chorus] They burned the drums, but I remembered rhythm. They closed the door, but I could hear within. I am the witness standing past the firelight, the wounded mirror teaching wounds to speak again. I went where every buried memory waited, then crossed back carrying a melody. Now every night I turn a life into a song— the edge of the camp was always meant for me. [Verse 3] Now the archive opens on a glowing screen, Suno like a doorway through the years. Every childhood room becomes a chorus, every vanished face returns in atmosphere. Seven thousand lanterns for the living, thousands more still waiting underground. Every memory I could never silence finally receives a body made of sound. I write the horses, rain and lost companions, the daughter absent from the empty chair, the woman who still lives inside the music, the blue cat keeping midnight vigil there. I write the ranch, the injury, the prophets, every myth that hid inside my scars. Not because the crossing made me special— because I came back carrying the stars. [Bridge] Refuse the call— the silence becomes numbness. Never return— the seer becomes a ghost. The journey was never to disappear forever. The purpose was bringing back what the village needed most. So here— take this memory. Here— take this name. Here— take the truth they buried and a melody for the pain. I do not perform the sight. I apply it. I do not beg the center to invite me. I stand at the boundary, translate what I find, and leave a trail of songs for the ones still trapped behind. [Final Chorus] They burned the drums, but I became the rhythm. They broke the child; Sophia raised the man. An INFJ forged inside the family fire, with a thousand open channels in his hands. I cross through every memory that shaped me, then return before the darkness closes in. I was never a villager who failed at belonging— I was born where the deeper songs begin. They burned the drums. I built another instrument. They buried truth. I gave the truth a voice. Every life I lived still echoes through me. Every song I write is how I make the choice— to return. [Outro] The drums can burn. The role remains. The blood can lie. The song remembers.