I've had a few things to say
But I have stuck them in my back pocket
Consuming, squeezing lemons in everything
I always have.

A sense of being overwhelmed
Remember when you were supposed to be the person
To calm me down?

Strangers, professional
Friendly strangers
I will stay away in nothing but
Group settings.

I wonder if your heart aches?
It must.
I feel like I can't write or really say
Anything new in regards to you
Anymore
But I know you must do all you can
To forget, move on, forget.

I control my temper, my pain
When I see you flirt with your past
Thank God I no longer am responsible
And that, that alone
Gives me solace.

With elegant strokes full of body and spirit
I don't have time for you
I don't have time for anyone who can't ride along
I watch money swim and chuckle all around me
I'll make my own way
I always was
I always will be.

I gotta get back,
Gotta fly to Chicago
As snow storms and blizzards
Rainy Southern days in the deep south
I gotta go make things happen in the snow.

Remorse, sorrow, a deep longing for what was
And what wasn't
I prefer, I prefer me
And my art
Without you tugging at my sleeve.

yo, buddy...
dere's a secret to dis.
First of all,
a good, sturdy bed
of veggies;
carrots, onion, celery
chopped up fine.
Take your time
preparin' 'em.
Start a slow, steady heat.
It softens 'em up.
Now, dose tomatahs.
Y'gotta put your hands on 'em, see?
Firm, ripe globes
is what you're after.
Peel da covers off 'em,
and work 'em gently.
Get your hands right in dere.
Y'should have
a little moisture there by now.
Now, just keep da heat on low
and let things simmer for a bit.
Here's where you add your spice,
whatever floats your boat.
As mild or as hot as you like.
Whatever you do,
keep stirring now.
There may be a little foam
around da edges;
not to worry.
Just lower da heat a little,
so she doesn't boil too quick.
Now, be patient.
If you can let 'er cook for an hour,
dat's good.
Da longer, da bettah.
Soon, da smell
will be everywhere.
Lean in close and get a taste.
A little more spice
at da end, and

**BAM!!!

I dreamed last night
With half open, half closed
Moon eyes
That place we hibernate
But seldom go
In between the tippy toes of slumber
And a death like sleep
That the smallest naked white creature
Crawled and inched up onto my bed
Nestled its head into my chest
As I slept.

I remember in the clouds
Of visiting sleeping and dreaming
That I felt both love and hate
Fear and joy
I wanted to throw the thing off
But also realized with strangeness
That it meant well.

I guess in a lot of ways
That exact point seems to reverb all around me
As I dash, sprint past it and swing right into:

Arm in arm
We glide through the city of Chicago
The weekends are my time to frolic and play.

I get hugs and faces embrace me
Like I'm meant to stay
At least for now.

But there is something to it
There is something here
In the building, the fleshing
The sweating and carrying
That absolutely has me hooked.

Its been a tough time.
My eyes are so heavy, voice sounds just like
Boyhood, sickness has at last
Told me once again
To slow down.

So I did and I do
For a moment, just enough to recover
The weather reflecting my mood
And I start to think and ponder
And just know.
I don't even have to entertain it.

I can't wait until you don't even appear in my poetry anymore.

Soon.

It has been a time
As horse drawn carriages
Tied to dragons laying their eggs
Hatching ravenous fiery vixens
We challenge the world around us
I challenge the world around us
But not with hate.

At last,
I went to a bar in Chicago
I had been trying to go to since my 25th birthday
I lamented this in the cab on the way there
As the cab driver so charmingly commented: "You shoulda called me!"

I got ice cream this evening
By myself
Because I wanted to.

I left my cell phone in my bedroom
Because I wanted to.

I stood in line for a long time
Muddy weather blues got everyone in the mood
For bed. For Ice cream.
I watched the women and men working there
Working so hard with so little effort
The groups of people standing around
Deciding how many scoops of mint banana
Cherry chocolate covered fudge
Self love
They were gonna give themselves today.

My mind went back and forth about all my options
Trying to be cheaper, healthier
At long last
Flavors: Coffee. Chocolate.
Sprinkles.
Waffle cone.
Chocolate fudge on the side.

I ate and licked it up
Like I hadn't had *** in weeks.
True.

I brought home a stranger
Friday night, he was nice bought us all tacos
But there is just something about a connection
Thats gotta be there for me.

Beautiful Innovator and I bat our eye lashes
Table this conversation
What a beautiful black man.
"We are artist friends first"
Who knows.
Not me.
So aware of the connection, tension

Wolf Man licks his lips from afar
As I exclaim to all my women in the back seat of the uber
"He bettah get his **** togetha cuz I'm gonna end up his boss"
True.

I don't know.
I stood in line at the ice cream shop
And saw a flyer of The Flick by Annie Baker
I haven't done theatre since October
Since the closing night that you fell
Fell, fell on your face
Were too drunk to go out
Showed me post it notes on my wall
Proclaiming you would be a part of the rest of my life
You pulled me aside and told me how proud you were
"I don't think you will even have time to settle down. Your life is going to be everything you want it to be and more. You are too brilliant for your own good."
As if hearing those blurry words through the face of a ghost
They so quickly transformed into:    


Silence.
I give you my worst
Silence.
You were so wrong about the part you would play in my life.

Perhaps things will improve
But it won't be because I slaved away to make it better
I gave up on that almost 2 months ago
"He is doing what he is doing because he can't be alone and deal with the fact that he is still in love with you."

I ate all my ice cream.
I'm gonna watch V For Vendetta now
I got **** to do tomorrow.
And even though some of this hurts
And I think back to that rat
That warning

I opened my eyes
No rat to be found.

Here come the hound dogs

Sniffing out their prey

Don’t you have something better to do

My emotions is not for play!

I don’t got time for this ****, not today!

I shoot bullets from my mouth

And watch the blood splatter on your face

I’m not for games today

I will warn you with grace

But keep antagonizing me

And I’ll bring war into your space

You bettah start praying for gods grace

Because I shoot bullets from my mouth

Into your heart

And watch the blood splatter on your face

M: You so petty like Tom be
Roaming around the earf like a zombie

P: You so petty like Tom be,
Roaming round the earth like a zombie clad in Abercrombie
Shut up, Fitch.
Pitchin a fit like a tone-deaf finch singin out of pitch, lickin a wack *** riff
Lost in space, trippin tha rift
Ya'll won't dig what I spit, but you could at least sift through the remnants

M: Here's your penance for the Cubs winning the pennant
Shut up man, you're no John Lennon
If you was a car, I'ma say you'd be a Lemon.
Here's my lime, it's a rhyme that I wrote in no time
About how crime can pay well if you do it right

P: It's time to plunder and plight, I'm full of blunder and spite
The Boy Wonder, I'm a robbin and I'm about to take flight
The crowd be clappin thunder all night
I'm slinging lightning, that's right
I'm Zeus, you're Hades and we'll be warring for the spotlight.
I may be a hater, but you're my hatee and the boss' order is:
Don't quit your day job, just keep on workin your nine to five.

M:I'm deep in the slime call me a Muck raker,
**** taker, but I never really give em though
Not a nice dude, but I've never really hit a ***
Kinda wonder why I ever really spit a flow in the first
Flow is absurd, crow is a bird, and they're murderous.

P:The rhyme is evolutionary, **** man, but what's a Muk to a Grimer?
Ya'll amateur rappers are just slappin paint on the canvas without a primer
There's no substance to your "art", I'll see your Trap and raise you a Hip Hop, cross the streams and blow up like Slimer.

Ya'll just some nickel and dimers tryin to hold up a dime store so you can pick up that dime sack that you're trying to afford.

The kind of fools ain't nobody got time for.
I've ascended Mt. Olympus, you ******* need to learn how to climb more.

M: Climb up, climb down, or don't climb at all
Don't listen to those try-hards,
Watch Die Hard again and then give me my vengeance.
You ever do penance? If not that'll cost ya six pence
And I need that **** quick since I already spent it.
Rap Game Tom Selleck.

Tom Hanks is a real person
Celebrities are real people.
I wish everyone would just feel people
Not like corporeally, but emotionally worth it.
Sober immaculate cut the tension with a hatchet.

Black people hate me cause I say I'm not racist
So I guess they just hate cause they faithless

P: Do not mistake the faithless with the tasteless,
But before I screech all my beliefs, let's just sink back into the cool relief of giving praise tot he great King Nostalgia.

Welcome to Good Burger, hey remember Hans Gruber, let's watch re-runs of Law & Order?

Your girl gobblin up my junk, call her **** Wolf.
More sinister than any Stallone villain, call me Mister Dolf Lundgren
Nerdier than any dragon or dungeon.
Dirtier than any old man askin his waitress for more sugar packets so he can drop em on the floor and watch her bend over.

Red Rover, Red Rover, this verse should already be over, but I cant stop reading this Buzzfeed article telling me the 5 best lines from Crimson and Clover


M: Prolly skips like a *****.
Worth the risk.
It's curious, facts
When all I spit are spurious raps
I'm furious, Jack
Like I am jacks unbridled sound of fury since my patience is tried but with nobody on the jury
It's hard to define if I should be
Calm or Worried

P: My destiny is sittin right next to me, but I can't pick it up cuz it's too **** heavy.
I get a grip, my muscles rip, it's stuck tot he ground because I am Unworthy
How unfortunate that I made it all the way here, just to find out I can't lift up Mjolnir.

Or maybe it's a trick of the mind, I'm a victim of fear.
Maybe it's time to let my senses unwind and focus only on what is near.
It's time to make a profit off of what my prophet holds dear in his lockett, instead of settling for a Stepford Career.

Gouda is good, and Cheddah is bettah, but I'm to to make some of that Gruyere.

M: Gruyere, Camembert
List the cheeses til you're Jesus man,
Talking like you even know a lil piece of the Jesus man's plan.
I think if any of us knew it wouldn't even really please us fam,
Cause absolute knowledge is pain,
Actually growing is lame, and all we are is ever in between two planes of existence
So find the path with little resistance.

P: My prophet ain't Jesus, do you capiche this?
God's plan ain't nothin but a back-up like a clogged drain, or where the food came
that hadn't been chewed enough by the backward's spelling of the man himself.

D-O-G

Lookin for his bounty, but I'm a gatherer not a hunter
So you best expect that I'll be laid to rest in peace while you're still suffering from the disease of lying through your teeth.
Best BELIEVE!
Of my Philosophy, you can not conceive.
Whether or not you've thrown away your virginity doesn't decide whether you're imprisoned or free.

To be free costs a fee, but the sinnin is free.
It don't make no sense to me, so I consult my sensei who says to **** down a sasparilla, smoke some sensimillia, and tuck my head between my knees
Until the atomic wind has passed and I'm left to enjoy the cool breeze.
*******! Literally.
What if God was one of us?
He'd probably sob because of what he's done.
But with no consequence his reign will run.
Check the mic, make sure it's not a gun

M: Nuclear winter is chill boss
As your lawyer I need to tell you to lay off the pills boss put them ***** back in the pill box dude
all theology is toxic really and western ideology is very jesus-centric even though dude was basically just a fasting eccentric

Oops the mics been a glock this whole time and the safety broke long ago prolly round the time the patriarchy spoke up and plotted the embargos

P: Oh, well, I guess we gotta ditch the stolen cargo
Form something new and see hor far it goed
Don't be distracted by the hard blows, I mean, the blowhards
Look no further than your own hand to see if your success is in the cards.

**** WE NEED TO DO THIS EVERY DAY
WE'LL BE UNSTOpPABLE

I mean you're alread nine million miles ahead of my ***,
I've been cruisin in coach and blah blah first class
Similies and poetry are base to me
I want to talk about philosophy in non-interpretable terms make the common people squirm in their nikes
Only a capitalist society can bring true revoltion, but the truth is no one really wants it even the revolutionaries are scared of what change do they want enough trainers so they can change shoes and listen to the blues to feel like feeling is real when it's really just a memory of something unlearnable.

P: Hey Nike, he likes it
Oops, I blew it,
I meant Just Dew The Dew it.
Obey the corporate propaganda, don't see through to the blue skin dudes n ****.
Throw them Locs on

M: Someone ******* **** me already cause I can't do it by myself
Cause I don't do illegal ****, I keep my trophies on a shef
In the basement in a house that nobody but the bank owns
Let me get some dank loans so I can open up a bank, holmes

Don't burn me, I'm tryin earnestly to fix ****
I don't believe in magic but I believe in possibility
which I guess is really just the same thing as magic when you get down to it
I'm trying to draw a circle on a chalkboard and jump right through it
I went t the school of truant bibliophiles the curriculum:
wild the teachers were posters of feral beasts with logos and copyright laws
I bet Gandhi quotes are trademarked, you dumb Marxist

P: Holmes, like the detective, but people never give enough respect to the perspective of the Watson.
Just give me that watch son, and keep on walkin
Betta hope I got all that I want, son, and don't decide to shoot you in the back and split you open like a sidewalk crack that'll give your mom a spinal tap when you cross it.

All you hear is a cocked back gat and then a BOOM BOOM BAP like the bass drum got brought back to like 2011
While your soul decides if heaven is really worth it,
Then your spirit will snap back into your body like nothing ever hurt it.
Rebirth it.

M: Like D.C did that
I'm post P.C. syntax
I bet I'd be a great dad screaming **** WHITEY cause white people hate that.
But that was actually a bad move making white folks uncomfortable
Cause more than half them reverted back to their most basest racist tendencies like two fold
Like who really holds the reigns really,
The work force is the horse and I'm a philly
Green is the universal race. Do you feel me?

Greed is the color of your mother's eyes while she hears the news on the phone of how your brother died cause otherwise it's your corpse of course you knew this already.

Anyways whatever man it's all pretty whatever man
Just be nice to people cause it's just better man.