How could I ever forget?
I would never forget.
time is illmatic.
Thank you Nas for this classic.
Changed my life.

I remember when I was 6, I started to write.
Age 10 was like the halftime,
Took a break I had severe writers block, I couldn't focus to save my life.
Then I heard "NY state of mind", it changed my life.

Changed my life, And the way I write.
This album's the goat everyday for life. Taught me lessons momma couldn't teach me, bout being a man,
Cause my father wasn't round; though she did the best that she can so I ain't hating,
Never!
But your words were clever.
Ever so.

One love took me down memory lane;
When I was sitting in the park with this chick
I was insane fo'.
This album represented everything I ever went through in life.
It ain't hard to tell I wrote this one time 4 your mind.
And life's a lady dog but you told me that the world is mine;
This is the Genesis, what I wrote,
I live my life in these lines.

Thank you.

-Lij.

Dear literary journals:

I'm a millennial American male
who came of age in the aughts.
Do you have ANY idea how much
RAP MUSIC I GREW UP ON?!?!?!?!

And now you want me to write some
sort of rhyme devoid, metrically impoverished
modernist dross which is REALLY

just prose that's written in line
and stanza break, in order for you
to publish me? Please do clarify:

HOW THE HELL DO I DO THAT?!?!?!?!

I have SOOOOO much more in common
with Mos Def, Talib Kweli, and MF DOOM
than I do with any of that ridiculous nonsense
that your stuffy Imagist deity Ezra Pound
(who was also an ardent FASCIST, might I add)
churned out page after page. I mean, look

William Carlos Williams:

"I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold"

Now, look at Kweli:

"Yo, I activism, attackin' the system
The Blacks and Latins in prison
Numbers have risen, they're victims lackin' the vision
****, and all they got is rappin' to listen to
I let them know we missin' you, the love is unconditional
Even when the condition is critical, when the livin' is miserable
Your position is pivotal, I ain't bullshittin' you
Now, why would I lie? Just to get by? "

and please explain to me, just exactly how the former
is SUCH a higher form of art than the latter?

It's beginning to seem to me that
The REAL issue here is that rhyme and meter
were co-opted by a group of writers
who evolved
the usage of
said literary devices
to such an advanced degree,
that many of the older styles
paled in comparison, and
ESPECIALLY in terms of technical prowess

It just so happened,
that to the great misfortune of those
brilliant auteurs
they just so happened to be
not only POOR,
but also BLACK,
thereby barring their innovations
from serious consideration
by those in the ivory tower
of so called "HIGH ART"

As if to say:
"Oh, RHYMES?"
You mean those old artifacts
of the outdated formalists, and
favored staples of the lowly rappers?

In a way that as if by magic, makes Williams'
Inane single sentence about eating plums
written in line and stanza break, somehow
better, more enduringly creative, and
of greater importance, than
Kweli's incisive social commentary.

But, you know. I'm always open to being wrong.
Since, I usually am wrong about most things.
But, it seems that every time I pick up a lit journal,
it's the same type of broken narratives, with
the occasional token verse or rhyme
thrown in for good measure.
Maybe I just don't read enough lit journals,

but I can just about GUARANTEE that in 100 years,
people will have a much more distinct memory of Nas's
"Illmatic" than they will Ezra Pound's "Cantos"
And in point of fact, most people with whom I speak these days,
do not even know who Ezra Pound WAS, but they SURE know Kendrick's verses from "Alright"

So what gives, lit journals? It seems obvious at this point
that rappers are now creating the most successful and
widely disseminated forms of oral poetry currently in existence
So why is it that your publications seem so averse to
styles which bear a written resemblance?

Just a touch of
CLASSISM, perhaps?
Or am I just being ignorant?
Paranoid?

Sitting on the bench, hontoni arigato and hakagawa bows
Brushing my hair, thankful for a different language
Touching my knees, thank you errantly erroneously
Sit and gardens stare
Wildflowers in two words
Twos often wonder what was the word
Parallelogram vans wish they could be sentences
Pass me with the deans
Two summers bravery Illmatic plays
Slavery washed on me and flowed words with wabi-sabi
Ignorantly searching for simplicity, and intercepting
Lugging learned that he was sober and insightful
Things change inciting when he says I love you, but, I lost Arizona, leaving with LA pallbearers speaking in hymns for the lost weekend
When the two words, change to three words
And the different hangovers for different times
For the lively souls, rap still pays a visit to the nation that held millions, front and back
There lies a line of shining boundaries on the war that fire
Moving like a lava lamp
Back again, frontal lobe pulsates those ups and downs
Delightful lively and where did I lose my shine, and the fire of eyes flickers with the midnight spoon of flickering night streets
Uh soon, **** is a disease masking the ability to change
Politics is where greed wears the mask of morality
But, **** man the less I know them better, right
in the circus of an ersatz clown, as the frugal fire of the murders of the shining and the power of music, burning your conviction in my heart
Dying with the fires of hell, anecdotes of simple fools who can understand simple things
Fools are the wise men when they learn to sharpen their knives
Leave themselves in the sharp mouth of gorillas in the lava iridescent friends, grins writing your heart, your light, your life like a monolith
I miss your thoughts and knowing, and adding what's my own
What can I add to New York state of Mind, does the midnight strike the good night, and ask it to be gentle
As morning cup of tea of burning brilliance of dull months of April under the arid love, that's a moral desert I cannot stop, I'm on the road of life, the battered suitcases catch the candor of deserted times under the train, had it told me you'd to leave the intrigue of the speakeasies, with your French look and glib iridescence of shyness, Canadian stealing cars under the mobsters that leap out
Falling in love and breaking bad would start chasing you
Understanding good and evil, I've been the prisoner of the holy child
Antediluvian time and all that crap, mice among men we crawl the streets in the friend that remembers on the outside
Familial uproar bringing up the baby under the ****** footprints, under drama and cine lights
Life needs a little soul, and a little love to grow imaginative
These years go by, and the pensive life doesn't find solace in good company on the streets belonging to the streetlights, and angry streets with desolate angels

Desolation angels looking for their place in the sun
Fortifying a lot of observation, and marching band with their meters
Challenging themselves, music and jazz, we talk about inconsistency of the eon
Poems, of thee Buddhahood looking for a friend, in the supernatural darkness
Sagacious beams from the life dedicated to accepting the life of cause and effect where I had only but silence
My faction of the Eastern Bloc, we are looking in all directions and running in de jure circles
Facts of scientific, joking in your book and hysterical and naked surly curs on the fruit covered by the dust, I need to embellish these claps
In the fire times, of the watered Cupid in the Venus allegorical girl
Beezlebub lost his mind paraphrasing in Hell, arrived in Lucifer on the cross steeple
In the land of milk and honey, in the passion of the church
I'm laughing at my typing, and the technology has changed and so have the women
I'm the living embodiment of a ceiling now, spinning like an embryo or test tube vestibule
How am I gonna survive on the ability to live like someone has committed suicide for me tonight as it grows hoarse
Stand the generous suicide, it was painless
You know o'er head her still face has madcap laughter at her soundful something, I don't know after I climb the ladder and yell this is the answering bell to doors of Heaven and Hell's doormat, I am a plenary one
Virile yelling on the catatonic piano, we are imagining peace and lost like a dreamer, just like the flower that grows like the uncle in Albert, we just lost our only photographer from the ashram

In
indecsicive
instances
I
instantly
interprept
irregular
inflama­tions as
illmatic
interpretations of
irregular
isolations
irresistable to
introverted
infadels.

“The Revenant”(Ghost Song Inspiration)
Awake yearning Asleep
Barnacles of riveted keel ajar with wonder keepsakes to sweep
Traipsing the moonlit path between equidistant insanities
Billowing fumes of rage fulgurant in the vogue modality
Whispering 9 Billion hymns to an immemorial cemetery
Silenced by shattered quakes rumbling in the deep forest
Imagined long ago yet again…
Surfing the few fragile crestfallen waves Tighter Nooses in tsunamis on Portugal in the eleventh month hanging ten
Fragile swoons of kenspeckel verbatim echoed in hallowed halls of evening Diaspora gilded in excellence
Limit is no boundary to the timeless clock of tilted tendencies towards barbed decadence
Revelry is no artifact tethered to a patibulary pole folded in the pokerish sneakthievery of triumphant owl’s night
We laugh like soft mad children waxing the candlelit vigil of barren Beirut struck down with ultrageous fright
Cackling as misfortune trespasses are shot on sight
That The Remedy asphyxiates National Anthem hues
Slippery in the crevasse of caffeinated daydream sues
Toasting butter cretaceous with wonder a lapse of sentience is its ultimate blunder of 1015 Rooz
Because the tottering paragon overlooks his habitable tomb
Bequeathed in Nero’s fright askew for the itching view
Spawned instants of thunderous applause serenade the weaning night littered with dancing fragments of illusion
Time is no object to objective dimples on Helicopter dime
Swank is no subject because the predevoted pause owes all to cadence of currency in the heyday of sublime
Long-winded but curt
Outskirts to every vacant and inhabited skirt suburban to muses crooning with antiquity destitute with forbidden flirt
Livid with indignation over fallen hands outstretched to unheralded bands
Simpering with scalded water of tattered whisper of the nauclatic heralds of sunrise over moonlight land
Effort is no music without tragedian Shakespearean rebuke
Taylor’s stop-and-go with flashlight frisk a Pharaohs’ Zion too much of a Fluke
Greco-Roman travesty blinks with scary flicker in an alpenglow Apollon stained-glass window summit
Dirges always precede precipitate glamour aflame with spectral filibustered blight and plummet
besieged by fallen wonders
Sunken by echoes of consequence in Heavy Metal Thunder
Glimpsing the Revenant of a future tango with backwards sentinels of séance
Grief overtakes the rejuvenated sunlit hike
Hitched by Horses with No Name Painless by harnessed spike
Of a Roadhouse Blues not Red enough for the Scarlet Letter Hues of Bill the Butcher White with Tweed nullifying his diacopes of spite
Cadence peerless paling to mirrored reflection of recapitulated mated soul
Limpid nexility that ghosts flex with reflective Jazzy soul
Jailhouse rocking Malone swerves with jaunt
Easy to dance easier to flaunt
Dastardly darts four score and seven jerseys ago
The seamstress of violence alacrity to sow
Vindication belonging to orphaned asylum 44th
A King lost too soon because of masons coming fourth
Degrees of Solomon rustling through A Biff’s Palace
Jimpster hitman an Akabu of hustled alarm pegged to wild shadows dancing a delicate filigree of spawn and spark
To the plug anointed by tethered Cable Guy treason
Few vigilantes of Batman’s caliber yet to reason
In the Revenant’s wake of fallen timbers of Sunset Strip
Reapers prowl with the tide of Bruno Mars RIP
That he sprawls in survival a hat too generous to tip
Uptown Chelsea in uproar as auditoriums fill with hedged victims of sense and sensibility etched in Gore
Lone Pine Mall stranded by conflagration of bulletproof lore
Clowns dedicate independence while crowns croon ***** repentance
For a forlorn starvation of cities of jackals sailed to sentence
Dripping with a faucet of ghostly haunts
Kapstone Paper in Kansas verging on misery wants  
Yet Bleeding American with French-British hues
The world’s lovelorn starlet yet too swollen to amuse
Stark travesty in fatuous emoluments to Walter White vanity
A current streak unbeaten because of realism in Virtual Insanity
A Joker’s Gamboled revenge skittish in sketchy chalkboards of ossified prestige
Left to the milk carton missing is yet another Abandoned Pools squeeze
The Young Robot scared to Fly-by-Night in the pathway of terminal poignant disease
A punitive prison worthy of the cackles of Dinosaurs besieged by Mr. Freeze
Folksy natatoriums agape with bathhouse squalor
Every hierodule a ******* to the witwanton bottom dollar
For the buggery of a Titanic warning towering ever taller
Stilted Wilts 50 a game warbles without Chinese glowers of Silk Road Silk
An albatross of agrarian hubris is how Ping-Pong Champions were eventually built
Hollywood’s grotto a despairing bravado
Of a masonry skyscraping a surpassed entelechy of a half-known tomorrow
Escape malingering and dare to dream
Listless maneuvers of space a hipster jam of the rollicking heyday of a fortress of a team
That I brandish with pride and retrospective snide
How perjury Underoath is a much better bribe
Air Force pride against Scorched Earth fallow because of a wayward bride
The Spectrum of Casper is galloping in deceitful degrees of a piety too wide
Swayed by Swayze pretended or lazy
The whole world in centration glistens with the fashionable crazy
Electromagnetic Detroit a rumpus for Notorious donnybrooks of a Gretchen cloaked too tight for Avalanche brawls cemented in burgundy and white
Industrial locomotives bulldozing Buffaloes of a Boulder fraternity too leaky to always be right
Scattered on Dawn’s Highway Bleeding crowded by a sing-song peril by design
That deference is reference to rappers glistening in surrealism ripe and prime marveling at the Ace of Military Base’s glaring Sign
Lethal Killers on patrol roaming Earthquake plodded land
Count the number of hairs of vitriol in silicon purebred amicable handfuls of wafting sand
Drifting in Mescaline ends at the periphery of Desert Movies Goldmines for Choosing
The Native American Jabberwocky or Mulder’s Father’s dying musing neither of which is favorable to boozing
The Brown doctor disfavored by armed aristocrats is always alive and rarely unbuttoned when snoozing
Flynn torches bemuse the tattered knight
Presumptuous Arthur is only on the quorum when consentience of accord is proven right by both deed and prescient light
Hardly a sidesplitter for a curveball time
California Love is plastered with rivalries of NorCal grime
Of the greatest Banana Slug Fiction flagrant with Quinntessential clairvoyance of a deceased 60’s crime
A dead queer lollygag belonging to the advice of a Pearl Jam Jeremy’s erasure of snares of beleaguered blasphemous chyme
Nonlinear spurts fielded by stolen bases of paralyzed rebuffs rather curt
A rapper worthy of the stage rarely an actor beyond a churlish vendetta hurt
Yet I dazzle the lingerie of even the most guarded skirt
The kiln of machination is a wedding of guarded betrayals of Monster Mash extortion
Alexisonfire a harbinger to the world’s belabored victory over corrugated striptease contortion
Thursday is a miraculous noise of shattered glass
Inertia knows ventriloquial varnish of shattered bones and tempted blood dripping in crematorium ash
Yet I survive with a Jive walk and a sardonic wagtail flock
Of the best patronage of cognoscenti shockwaves of bonanza stocks stalked like a swarpollock locket invisible to Tik Tok
I’m the best hip-hop in the game beyond the treachery of retreads of psychobabble inane
I strut like magic belonging to the sanitorium of the edgy swank of modest profane
Granite defected is my cement planet infesting the game like Boardwalks on the revived Titanic
Aliens headbash the gamut of my spangled manic
Ghost Ridin’ Raiders of the Lost Arc leads to hysterical panic
Indiana laughs at Elway’s squirrel because he bolted Baltimore with a baseball pretense for a sexier girl
When the rigmarole of genius aligns infamy bails out the oyster aphrodisiac of a Heart of the Ocean pearl
Time is a self-referential quisling of a monarchy built of subtle curling
A bored sport dazzling with scintillation in recursive zeal unfurling
A Canada Dry livid stargazer dozes on Oiler comets meteoric as hydroponics
**** quaffs the lazy lollygag rarely hooked on the righteous phonics
But no distaste to the canine game
I am well beyond the distance to the lethargy of NV in shame
Bear Bryant on Rushmore flowing high
Jetsetting across Pink Floyd’s lurid Clear Blue Skies
George trampled by Chauvinist monsters
Zuckerberg and Gates are honkies betting on bonkers loud both in Boston and in Yonkers
100 Billion of counterfeit souls sold to slot machine mannequins quite droll
Someone needs to devour their corner like a Revelations sour-tasting scroll
Tagged to apothecary mountebanks of Trey’s on repeat
A hard-won small Utah town harder than Joe Montana to beat
Bypassed hack of time Luminosity the adultress of 1693 regaled as a freakish feat
Time simpers to Spirit of Grace graven kantikoys in Seattle Graveyards blemished by dancing Creep
The Idioteque squalor of bemused negligence in a flooded Avatar Jurassic Park Jeep
I recall the St. Joseph’s brawl not with Sevendust Animosity or a squawk on short-sighted grating flag hooped with haywire lines snorted on Basketball
The marstions of plenilune filigree are 32 Leaves of RINOs of crestfallen dirges of cacophony deafened by Yachted Wedding Crashers’ squall
The swagger of a Vogue Rose kissed by Shadow Dancing ******* is livid in throes
Of a throwaway stretchgrave of Jackson’s crooning on astounding Mike Bossy Bose
Engraved with Islander epiphany that smokestack chockablocks itch every more Leary in gawsy clothes
I rampage through the filibusters of Jerusalem silt sunken by immigrants in tired tattered kilt
That the only famine known to McDonald’s is the demolition of Fireman of young Wayne Enterprises yet rigged to insuperable caverns hitched to the hilt
Soul Kitchen alphabets on Dewey Decimal design swagger yet with a Lugubrious Monkey-Silent Bob’s Feared Spinosity in Sprites of commercial Lemon-Lime
Of a dauntless Decision among many subdued by Prison that the apish caper gouges 20/20 Vision a cacophony dimpled in recessive alleles of a modern prime
That is also primacy antecedent to yoked Cartel SUV’s perfected in acerbic dungeons Monster Mash corners yet death unfurled in matchbox tinder of Futurama slime
Jet Lagged infancy of Nuclear Duff hustling the Illmatic Annoyance of BiffCO ***** riddles Uncle RICO wed boschveldt of Kansas City seen 21-30 with zeal and repine
The Bizarre Inc. of a lovelorn 96’ robbed Liberace into untimely death the spinsters of Key Auditorium Dine
Hemlock sprees of Socratic whimpers of treason of Piraeus marks the infamy of Brutus lagging with conscience diseased
That the marvel of vengeance is the plaudits of swanky New York Times rustling against dead Nevada Subways and Lusitania rollicking seas
Rage itches as Brock is capsized to Hearts of Oceans littered with Sparrow Murders of Ravens Batty with Belief
Mourning the Twister carnage of A Shining City on a Hill printed by Federal Way disclosure by Armada Music without a receipt
To the dozen graves of Monster Mash London Fog the Undeveloped Story of a balcony of Wayne Packer Million Dollar degrees
Challenged to a Final Revolution of a Fantasy terrorizing the Trafficked hand a Coca Cola seizure God spared for “Canceled” Taco Bell automotive brain freeze
Spinsters with vertigo paralyze on the hopscotch kettle of popcorn for amusement racketing squashed Colombia too many lines yet to appease
And too gaping Walls of Chauvin weaning on freckles of Comfortably Numb disease that Love Story castle is the monarchy of allusion to 19-17
Coffins for 24k Carat foresight by the antiquated architects
attacked for 2001 vengeance on Forsberg’s Spleen
Notorious by scores of tourists in aperture for Native American Casinos blankets on Red Scare forests
Apple’s chocolate-box sergeant prescience on brittle Reed Chorus
Sung by the litany of Ima memorialized by punctual Grace of the sashay of Delphinium fountain pens porous.

Does 10 minutes mean I'm done
listening to Illmatic like automatic
4:08 will be finished instead of
3:50 and I'll follow the narrative
Peace and tension from the minutes left
Until I'm done
Philosophy please do this justice
Stream of feeling and I need a story
Maybe the cause alone can carry a
Reason why I'm an artist, was the cause enough
To show why I'm here
Neat little bow and I'm searching for a beat
Like I have earnt it, And I mean money
What does it mean to earn without currency
Mutually exclusive, I search and search my
Mind for the right feeling as it appears
And know the considered approach would yield
Allusions of grandeur as it should
Yes, it does end.
The beat is a motivator
'Cos what else would it do
The weight of capitalism, **** what's it matter,
Maybe I'm looking for that person who
Matters so inrefutibly that I just stop
And commit until the end.

Hey, teddy
Bear can we friends or eternal flowers in a garden
Blossoming together with passion, talk about the passion
Words endow us, as the lack of them help us understand
Hey skull in the eye of the saint's shadow
Shiny stares, be my companion or femme fatale
I wanna shine without craning my neck in pallid scales
We walked into hamlets, cafe looking for love that was callous
It hides sometimes like a callow canto for you
A bit lost too, I suppose these are the inchoate creepers of fincas
What's the verbal cue when you're so scintillating and coruscating
Scaling forests with your vivid, vivacious looks caressing my hilts
No lie, you look better than a tiagus
A fruit from Cezanne's pears and the road is life
Baring suitcases, and battered too
With your dancing days and cold gaze, warming and thawing my heart out instilling blue

Got me on a leash, my by-lines heralded by the perfunctory hooks
Take me out to the freezing forest in neon lights of colorful minds
Tiagus and meritorious places in your eyes, climb on the grass
Mirror them with your coldness in the heat of your mind, the rogue looking glass
The mirror is beyond false compare if I'm looking through you
Mirror them and I can find myself holding you close, sunglasses with flowery spokes
She bent to tie my laces and dealt the cards too
To my child as we find love, I can tell this how we should write
Or well that's how I learned from ya'
Truth, my contemplations never end if they start with ya'
I tell everyone she is the one, she isn't unctuous or sanctimonious

By shedding our souls and peace requires understanding
Ain't nobody us understands like you, yeah
In the cusp of my childhood and keeping the nightmares at bay tonight
I can finally look at the waning moon come out after the sun dates the light after each stanza
Light of my life and the darkness of frolicking thing dancing on the iridescent shore of the frescoes of lithe la fille plus anime  
Having fun innamorata, or thallasophilia of the hills that have eyes
We can share the peak of the fire, and the icy handshakes are gone
The glaciers are meticulously melting in love
I'm still staring at the puddles

The memory of water, fuliginous orchards set ablaze
What are you waiting for, get in first with a blazing letter
Style can be introduced, and that's how I understand vermillion art
Hold you tight in my daydreams and the fire of my likeness
I love the heat of chartreuse and a campfire near a distant river of reflected dreams

Much better, if I limply came with roses
Hugging you tight in my wounded life
And bare our souls or becoming deeper
We can spend togetherness on this night of scattered starlight

In sudden heaven or sudden bliss, that's immeasurable
Either way life or living, you expand my mind amiss
The fire of my likeness, a visceral starry dynamo of minds
What's my verbal cue, when you're the Goddess of my ****** things

We speak in silence and hear the heartbeat
Silent because we don't deserve each other, probably
Assimilating these feelings is an immaculate conception and form-expression in one
You make me and complete me, halcyon I tell ya'

That's a truth stated in scientific truth with calculated looks
That lie like the fires in my coal eyes, although Illmatic eyes are brown stuck in moral kiosks of the midnight soul
The body that walks under cloudless climes
The midnight chimes with the starry skies perturbed
Le écrié drama pensée suiva
Winking at us, or we look at them once in while in emollient Earth