Journal entries / I listen to music.. well live in it I suppose - songs you can checkout in correlation to the cadence of my word choices and language: playlist .. you can read these however you'd like at the end of the day..
O3: witness
Waiting, that ain’t stillness, just still breathin.
I guess looking at the past makes a different perspective.
Sister smiling through the hardships, so close to paradise,
Ripped away at different norms, now we taking different paths
I lie to you, and I can’t see his face through the cracked door
Will he recognize me through my tone, I wanna buy him basketball courts
Tvs got your name, I wonder if I’d be the same.
Wander tracking through the pavement, we got streets with different flavors I’m not asking for a savior… said you’d wanna see me,
Go to downtown we can meet for an hour or about cause Im busy
With a second life you aint ever heard ab it aint easy
Plethora of sun in my window I got hella friends why I fret though
Life isnt easy but it aint hard I got a nickel for every dream shes had
Rolled the dice, fell on a double 2
Rerolled thrice lucks so good im on legal advice
Brooklyn in the 2014s wasn’t your typpa thing, moved out to cali in your 23s, wish you would've taken me.
O1: Community
I crave community. I don’t like standing still, the idea that I am moving backwards.
Causing a sacrifice of downtime on the stupidest things, when I could truly be moving forward.
A loop of life. When we cradle our hands to the sky.
Can we really collide to create another disguise for the feelings of thousands of mice?
I chase a wheat field, filled with laughter n warmth.
They said this summer would be another hit, now we’re all racing to get our deadlines fixed,
you got your hands wrapped up in another problem and I’m stapled to the dreams I once flied with.
We put stars into the sky for the wrong ones to take them off the shelf,
say hello to a customer, wipe away the smile once you get laid.
Your cat says hello, now you have another reason to know your worth.
I wonder about the ring of the elderly couple, the job he’s running late to, the freckles upon a kid's
face. We got memories, are we willing to keep them till we dead?
I’ve done nothing for the last few years, questions of time relevance,
what do I have if nothing's what I got? If the world is the creation of God,
am I the puppet of a master?
I fear the richer man,
the one who laughs in the face of ebt, when momma ain’t got nothing to feed me.
When the debt starts crawlin in, is this what living meant to be?
I know nothing's out to get me, when the man talks about philosophy now we breaching outside
territory.
Multiple smokes, lawyers inhibit our lungs, morality just another spark.
Circling over and over, circling over and over again, as long as the blood inside is still mine, circling
over and over again.
Used to be determined to find the spirits, lesser to know they were walking amongst us.
Do not care for the rich white men that plague our streets and eat our hares,
I want life outside of prime, couple friends like bullets for a rifle.
Now I ain't a priest, I'm not here to relinquish your sins you can go confess to a real head chief but it
aint be me. I will tell you one thing, that your problems are merely the weights of your past, when
your wings start to flap you’ll understand.
O2: 8/8
You’d look at the free time I got in my hands and call me a waste,
Every hour unused turns into another proof of the waste I’ve produced
I got nine options to create from but the presence overwhelms
I'd rather be a child milking cows, now I’m carving ceremonies into thin air.
I crave the moon until it turns into the sun.
I smoke my herb and I feel a sliver of vague notion inside my bones, we could talk till the ancients rise.
Whats a little lie inside this castle of white..
We all know we ain’t got shit to hide until the wolves howl at midnight.
They try to get inside my mind, fill it with murder and crime, but I ain't turning to the streets.
I miss the old, I miss the old
But we can never truly return
Until the tides bring all our storms I don't know what will be home
Maybe you could crack open a beer
Tell me a story from the stomach of your beast
I ain’t got much to say, I ain’t seen everything
All I’ve seen is the poor wishing for a brighter day
All I’ve seen is the shackles keeping us tied to this
Missing the what ifs of a childhood long gone
Mama aint facetime me in 15yrs, we got long roots to untangle
I swear she wont feel the same as me, never got to live out the dreams
Of the kid that wanted to swim near the shoals and schools
Rebuilding all that’s lost from scratch won’t ever feel the same
Whats the point, id say that, maybe there’s more hope in it than doom
But I aint know the path I lead myself to, stray.
Wanna open my phone to a groupchat, saying ideas off the top of my head, couple of plans, couple of laughs, couple of hits.
Who’se gonna be my witness when I reach my end,
Seen outside the photos and the cameras,
When I ain’t go no more ‘wisdom’ to spread
When all I got is gone, who’ll remember me
Trying to figure out the next ten reasons before I close my eyes, we reachin, really far. I don't know if my words can run that far. I gotta be the one to do it, gotta carry up the burden till it crashes further. Can’t stop, can’t imagine a future without a need to push harder.
Lying to my own kin, I am a shameful man,
But they can’t know, she can recall the childish memories
But she can’t recall who I really am.
Can’t tell her where I’m from, can’t say who brought me home
Can’t tell her the newest of laws, gotta keep it hidden
Cause if she finds out, then so will she and it’ll become another circus act that I ain’t ringing for.
I got a list, she can’t find out about it,
If she does it’s the end of my story,
But what if I want her sisterly advice
What if I want her to see who I really am,
All she knows is a young girl from our russian dreams
She don’t know the forms I’ve been.
Or the spliff I spark outside my patio
She don’t even know the patio! Hah! She thinks Im 5hrs away
Can you believe that? Yeah me neither, thats the lie I be weavin.
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138,660 Literary Works • 672,196 Reviews
Hello! I really enjoyed these - they've got such a wonderful percussive rhythm to them. I could tell they were rap-inspired even before looking at the playlist. That especially shines in the following lines:
Really grabbed me as an opening!
I keep saying this line under my breath because the sound of it is so satisfying!
I love the pause here - a bombastic, aggressive statement that slowly lapses into a movement towards connection. There's something very beautiful in that understated little turn.
'The newest of laws' is a really striking phrase. (Although I will say I'm not sure what 'then so will she' is referring to here.) I love how you veer between a very intimate, down-to-earth register and one that feels more grand, almost Biblical. I can also see that in 'Do not care for the rich white men that plague our streets and eat our hares,' which is another standout line.
I love how the repetition reflects the feeling of repeating the same pattern! Also 'as long as the blood inside is still mine' is just lovely.
I will say that the endings of all three pieces feel a little arbitrary. The last one in particular - I really like 'She don’t even know the patio! Hah! She thinks Im 5hrs away' and I think it would make a stronger last line. The current last line deflates it a bit and feels a bit underwhelming.
I'd be curious to know why you grouped these three together? I feel there's a strong throughline between 'Community' and '8/8', but 'Witness' is a little more disconnected. It's also the weakest of the three, in my opinion, although that may be because it doesn't have as much time to build as the other two.
Overall, really good work!
I haven't read one of your other works before, but I am very excited!
I was very impressed by the poem due to its high level of intimacy and how it makes one feel that they are actually put inside the head of the speaker. It is as if the speaker shares his or her thoughts directly, creating a very vivid image of the stream of thoughts without stopping for too long on anything.
The concepts of identity, distance, and hiding something from those who are close to you appear quite often throughout the poem, which makes me believe that O2 is the most successful example of that.
To me, it seems that this quotation works very effectively as it touches upon the theme raised by the title of the poem and creates some connections with the idea of identity. The section when the speaker is talking about lying to his or her sister makes the theme even more visible
The combination of huge philosophical issues and very ordinary things is what makes the speaker seem to be a real person and not someone who gives us thoughtful quotations.
There are definitely some lines that caught my eye visually as well:
and
The second one is very reminiscent of the nostalgia throughout O2.
The one area I think could use some work is definitely the structure. There are so many interesting ideas here, but they kind of lose their power since the poem is moving on to something else pretty quickly. Breaking the sections down differently – or trimming them – might help the best sections stand out more.
In any case, O2 is definitely the section I thought was the most interesting to read. There are so many layers and complexities with this one, particularly with the way the speaker hides things from himself but at the same time longs to be known by someone. <3