What do you want to tell the world today?
That you need drugs to stay awake?
That your hands used to shake?
And they still do.
But not as bad.

I take a deep breath, not because of anxiety,
but to let my heartbeat dictate the next rhyme scheme.
My eyes stare at the screen. And I start to sleep.
And off the screen
I go.
And I am back, but more weak.
Alright K-Def, what you got for me.

Don’t start a sen
tense as I was. I let it go be
causin you saw me dancing.

I write in gravity boots, I don’t give a fuck.
It’s trivial pursuit, and we all lose.
I can’t pretend to be you, so I won’t.
My boat is floating in its own ocean,
And I sing songs of strange things.
I see soliloquy in the trees.
You don’t need to know what that means
’cause it means something to me.
I see in the breeze 93 beats,
and it brings me back to the time when I was only 13.

I hear the school bells, I am just a young one.
I got young blood, I got a backpack,
a lunch bag, and I am on the bus.
My ma drives it, she does the late run.
I sit back stunned at how far back my brain was.

I can live in memories, I can move to the future.
I can see infinity, I can see stitches and sutures.
I can see destinies, and I can see martyrs and movements.
I can’t see me in the crystal ball,
I don’t quite come into focus.

You, know I have tendency to go off beat, and I don’t care.
That’s the nature of the 3, the wild want it that way,
so that’s the way it may be.
I just want a little piece of turkey,
gravy, mommy, can I have some please?
It never sounds good to me, It always sounds like
rinse lather repeat, so I am just going
to write a little faster, a little stupid,
use a word that don’t mean nothing like lupid,
Shock G. Rest In Peace.

K-Def drops it down, like a break
from a pool cue, the green felt,
the billiards scatter, and I am there
with the hat on backwards,
wondering why what my mind says matters.
There is smoke in the hall,
and I am trying to go hide behind it all.
I look close, what the hell is with that 3-ball.
It’s red, it stays in my mind.
That’s odd.
The name sticks, it’s like a noise brigade.
Dicky Barrett might get that reference,
but away with the methods,
I sit translucent, transient.
Really, college professor, I know what that means.
It means she stayed there
for only a second, wanting to leave.
That’s what transient means.
You wrote on a yellow note
that if I use college words, then use them correctly.
Well you would hate me
and this sneaky Pete poetry
’cause I fly all over transiently,
using words incorrectly,
throwing adjectives and hyperbole,
oh so superbly.

You know that’s not the way to the poets heart,
to use adverbs, but hey, transient as I was
when you shot my plane down, I am back in round one
with glue gone, ready to say what you do sticks to you
because honestly that’s a bullshit lie that I was told,
that bullies words aren’t supposed to hurt,
that they don’t break our bones. Nah,
they make you question your motives,
why you didn’t say something.
Now you’re home, writing in your notebook
and wondering if sticks and stones don’t hurt
then why am I labeled an introvert
Not everything is sherbet, baby, far from it.
Come see the doctor, he’ll take you away from it.
Each thought you have in your head
dropped down, like a bass clef
with a chef cooking up Raekwon shit,
and he just got warmed up,
and you wonder what’s the voice
in his head at the moment.
It’s not a voice. K-Def
got the mind’s synapses
making love with themselves,
a barrel of monkeys,
remember that game?
It was a red barrel.
What was its purpose?
Its all or nothing
I guess, Parker Lewis.

Can’t lose, Chad is going
to hate editing this,
but I am going to love reading this,
’cause the longer the misfit goes,
he goes all night like Cialis,
till his mental feels like its finished,
a complete sen-tense.
No, sense, you are too tense,
want to go way off the timeline,
to another template.
If you can read this,
God bless you got a gift.
This is the neverdids
letting it all out
with a nevertown anthem.
K-Def got me planted,
heading for another planet,
and I don’t want to stop the rhythm,
but I got to goddamn it.

I don’t want to ’cause that’s what poets do.
I write ’cause I feel alive
when I wouldn’t otherwise.
Other words, the words are like bandages,
cold compresses on bruises,
the excitement of the minute.
I don’t want it to end,
but everything always ends.

And when it ends, I’ll just start again.
Just like that. poets blood is thick mud.
It’s like chewing gum, its b-sides
on a whole other album.
And my job is never done.

I can’t find a moment
to drop a wish in your well.
The inkwell does me well.
It’s a Rorschach heart attack,
I think I like the way that sounds.
A Rorschach heart attack,
an ink blot test
for the rest of them.

If you cut me open, I
am sure red ink
is what you would find.
A little bit of blood
with a little bit of rhyme.

A society of mind.
with a little time left to write.

 

Jason Wright is the editor and founder of Oddball Magazine. His column appears weekly. His third book, Train of Thought 2: Almost Home will be available soon.