Starseed

I don't know how to be anything other than honest I have lived in Nashville four years now come this summer Which means I have not spoken to my brother in almost six Time sure does fly while rearranging kitchen drawers to make new spoons fit I Venmo'd my dealer last week for some weed to help finish this poem How many licks to the center of a hypocrite All the same, I have been dropping masterpiece after masterpiece I put out three over the course of one year When California asks, I tell her I've been stitching together poems so big They could be thrown over entire countries to keep them warm And I could give a f*ck about a trend I want to be the word so universally healing That generation after generation will keep running back to them Because ever since I was a child I had always felt like there was somewhere I needed to be So when I'm feeling burnt out in an industry that is anything but gentle I think back to my youth Libraries as lunchrooms I throw my soul to her fountain and wash, rinse, repeat And I've been told some of you are wondering, and yes I just keep on getting better at resuscitating memories with words that run like water twenty years inside the books, now I shall never be alone again By noon I'm ruling Rome, I built my own up from the ashes They mistake me for the apple without knowing I'm the seed As in which any earth I'm planted, fruit is harvested around me And it's funny the way they will treat you once they realize your mind is worth money Sand dollars are found out past the break of every wave, but that is also where the sharks are Cracking under pressure, too much liquor, forgetting all my words at slam I promise you this, I will never again allow that shit to happen But after all, I'm only human, only flesh and blood imperfection And you're bound to hit some turbulence when a bad bitch is about to shatter through a glass ceiling Keep your eyes on the credits of the rock charts, your girls' name is about to be all over them That's why I never tell them what I'm doing till it's done And the only name you'll ever catch me dropping is my own They say imitation is flattery, but I say it's thievery And sympathy is bitter depending on which pair of fangs you taste it from If you sip on my stars, I will swallow the sun You are limited only to what I have already done Some see me as competition, but I see them as all my children Because as writers, we must hold our immortality with the greatest reverence The holy crack in the spines of our books, forever embedded in their memory Just like Stephen said, approaching every pen in any way but lightly So your cadence may be mildly entertaining, but what are you actually saying That's the thing about the quiet of a page. you can't hide from it Strip away the smoke and mirrors of performance, let us see the quality of your sentences So mark my words, my children and my children's children Will never again know the weight of this brokenness It ends with me here, so let us be this A love letter etched into an old notebook Tucked away on a bookcase A collection of soul rearranged, inked into words In hope that someone may read them Find healing in the shape on a page Memories found in palms I will never trace Once I finally lay at the feet of rest We will soon be an echo, so Let this page be proof that I have lived And I have loved, so good