Started with gold-plated meals and religious heels
Felt like heaven was real
Then why I am in the mirror using conceal

Maldives By day
Belize when you say
In Madison Square
where you keep me boxed if I stray  
For freedom, I have to start with “May,”

Mother stretched her hand to not get met
Countless reports stopped
after the first check
Your life can’t be in danger if you commute on private jets
Burberry shades when he’s most scary
So my trauma doesn’t connect

As soon as I finally collect from my war wounds, it’s turned into show tunes
Like, “ Where are all these hiding bathrooms, when you are out taking pics in Cancun?”
No matter how viral, there will be an audience that says,” I never a ran mile until my lifestyle went down the Nile.”

The brightest lights tend to consume
Put in the spotlight so my character is assumed
Yet you won’t learn me til
I’m exhumed  
Cause my legacy is more important than a therapy room

Endorsed as I’m source for what stops your scroll
So my role is funded if I never break the code
Interact, react, or enact either way dollars rolling in
Not to the masses but to certified evil overseers who entrust it
to their next of kin

Thinking your pen game going to help others with their pain
But to maintain you have to insert the product name
Keep telling yourself that’s it only one more album, only one more line
Don’t worry your Grammy’s gone pile up over time
Refine your story, tell your side
but it’s hard to accept like a late Valentine

It started with good intentions even some honorable mentions about your conscience decisions
But what's an activist without comma sense?
Homeless begging for cents or at least that’s what  they present
So I only get to wear the suit if play Superman but never Clark Kent

Blades in your mouth but you're not chainsaw man
Any opportunity to be an opp
You take it by hand
Forever you swear we tight
Like a Shaolin clan
Yet I see a katana eveytime
You say “You understand”

We grew side by side
Edamame
Call each other family members
Uncle and aunty
So why anytime I trip
Over my family tree
You were there waiting
To catch and bury me

In Homeroom debating cartoons
To lying about taking shrooms
With the water girls to see
If they part vacuum
Thought our college days be
A different world
You saw it like who “the best man”
Now our friendships otherworld
Maybe in the next life, we can
give it A whirl
Until then where’s the knife
We have a lot to unfurl


Continuing to grow making room for
A family
Adding decimals to make their life more
Exceptional
It always seemed medicinal until the economy went critical
Now it's every man for themselves
Even if there’s enough on the shelves
You see me and mine as wanting
Yours to fail
At least that’s what it looks like
When I scroll on my cell

It started small, like can I ask you a favor? Too,
You want me in your mouth,
lifesaver
You promised I wasn’t
a new flavor
Yet I was minor to you
never major

Meetups after school,
drinking at your pool,
classmates thinking that I’m cool
not realizing I’m some pervert addiction nickname, Juul

Using my Maturity to get by the insecurity  
Ensuring me that I’m different for my age
Purity in your voice starts to disengage
When my clothes start to fade

Ready to tell peers about our late-night hobbies
The details I describe make them jealous like they want to rob me
Recall every instance where I lost innocence feeling less like Rocky
More like Paulie here comes impotence

Three therapy sessions a week
Two affirmations to keep me at my peak
One time for me to remember you and start to blame my physique

Green flowing in as long hate continues to win
A mix between misinformation and confrontation so my post makes you grin
Laughing cause I know you hiding the pain
Taking it on the chin

Women need to do this, men to exceed resist and If you not making millions does your life proceed to be dismissed
The commandments of discord
Feel like swords piercing through keyboards, I love that I’m never ignored

Truth be told I don’t care about my post
Or the latest billionaire living on a coast
It’s the attention I want most, podcasts and interviews increasing my views that trickle money down, who wants to toast?

Going viral for picking on someone’s spiral
Uplift the predator that’s my idol
Selling hot takes like hotcakes, where’s my rival?
None in sight? So I dominate no matter how late, just wait, did somebody die? Caption “Three reasons why they won’t touch the sky”

6:30 am
time to hit fifty
before I hit the door
Wash away yesterday’s grind
Hoping today has more sunshine
Thrown on clothes darker than my mind
Hit the App that controls my income
Unemployment still ain’t come
So I move somebody’s lunch like a ransom
Even Ranch and Dim Sum
Cause bills ain’t immune
Morning, night and afternoon
Even when my life has gone National Lampoon
By 1:00 pm 45 miles til empty
Stretching the gas past E
I don’t need Jesus grabbing the wheel unless he putting ten on pump three
Turn the clock back before 3/16
Back before covid19
was the fiend
That has me addicted to this gig economy scene
6:00 pm refill
before the dinner rush
Helping Susie make the home like Im the one who cut off the crust  
Disgust with my lack of opportunity piled higher
So I’m burning more woods than California wildfires
Since I’m constantly on the wire
Applying To be more despite the Ravens
Moving in Closer directed by Wes Craven
Scary combination for a brother just trying to get out with his family
11:00 pm taxi as a luxury to another essential needed for my daughter
Whose father fights his introductory
Instinct to be extinct maybe it’s depression,
“What do You think?”
I ask the Waffle House waitress
Whose facelifts to expel “ the bill
$19.86,” with straightness
No hiatus dropdown 30
With the hurry hoping for a better season
For us both Like curry
Too many Wiseman on my team  
so my future is blurry
So the star I seek I see only week to week
How unfortunate but no time for grieve
It’s 4:00 am only two hours to relieve
Swiftly I snore, snooze the alarm button
The real horrorcore

about
a year ago the doctors ordered me to return,
put down the tablet, cease driving, stay seated,
you a skinny hair from dying, the drop dead
unkindly kind, come back to the city, there’s
an operating table Resy~reserved just for you,
the menu we will decide, two or three courses,
but for
the summering on your sheltering isle, where the
lapping waves sounds of the sound, the greenery
calming befuddles your senses is ended, the congress
of animals too  have ordered your dispatch back to
the hubbub of pizza parlors, nail salons & bodegas,
and
we will slice and dice, drawn up plans to redirect
the arteries and veins that you’ve spent good money,
lazy years clogging & *******, sending you back after
you’re  in fighting trim, and and recommence dialogus
with
the sun, sky, animals, the water and the waves, and
write of peace of mind, knowing that your body, too,
is
at peace, but not at rest, and let the writing begin
again, with a refreshed perspective, and re-greet
old friends, Hafiz and Whitman, who were left
behind in a hasty departure, your retreat is ended
and now, a new re-treating of the soul, to match a
newly refreshed body


postscript:
where is shelter? why, within and without…both needed,
in happy juxtaposition…

when the wind stops blowing,
and the trees still,
and the birds pause their tunes...

when you can feel the sun's golden warmth on your skin,
and you notice the faint floral scented air that surrounds you,
when you notice that the eery beauty of the earth is deafening...

you are grateful for the small things