I did numbers offa SkyNet, so leave the Pyrex at home,

come to my shows, and I’ll sign your router.

Okay, Tommy Tough Guy,

I’m sure you really would have rummaged through the Tunnel

after hogtyin all the bouncers

That’s big kap, weird flex,

you ever tried to convince a teenager to write a poem

in the first month of a twenty-year stretch? I thought not.

So you don’t know what hopelessness looks like

just cuz you caught those long looks on the wrong block

Sometimes doves cry when it snows in April,

And we keep the vault locked.

Chock-full of soft spots and dark thoughts

Like I’d be lying if I said I never smiled

at the idea of someone I reviled

turning up dead.

They’re all still alive cuz I’m accountable…

but mostly it’s just cuz I’m just a coward

like those who call their lives real sending people they admire

time stamped videos of themselves

Unaware all that stood between them and that final hour

was a lawn, a gate, a door, and lack of firepower.

Nice guys got clouds in their heads, too,

demons waitin in the spaces where we fled to.

Just don’t let those dragons catch you.

Never let those beasts out their bedrooms

Inner monologue was chilling and sick,

tellin me spirits never need permission to visit their kids.

Another swig, I’m swingin fists in the abyss,

Cuz me and my shadow had irreconcilable differences.

swatted that creeping feeling before it could reach my hands.

So heavy with grief, I could barely even stand,

let alone breathe with the cold wheeze of the afterlife

coolin off my anger while suppressin its appetite.

That was why I had to write,

why I learned patience in the cypher

waiting for all the older homies to pass the mic.

Never understood “own worst enemy” cliches,

til they stared back at me from the rear view on the e-way

each day I had to drive to and from a life I’d broken.

Only sober when the baby was in the car,

otherwise I was smoking, or sippin on something

knowin it wasn’t helping me,

but inner demons only love you selfishly.