Life don’t feel like life when all you’ve ever known is a deep lingering desire to not be alive.
You don’t tell people about this. You just keep walking like Christopher.
You deleted your facebook today. You don’t care, you’re shutting everyone out.
You wake up screaming at 3am but you don’t actually wakeup, but you are waking up inside your dream, screaming, and no one can hear you. The worst screams are those that go unheard. The silence implies that your voice makes no difference in the world. That no one cares. And that’s life.
Used to cling to the idea of making it as a writer, like, world famous and shit.
Slowly learning to let that shit go and accept whatever I get from this.
And this is the best I get from it. Survival. Which is more than I could ask for.
I speak to you in a way I couldn’t speak to myself. To my family. To my therapist. Considering firing her, might already have in a passive way. No one is helping me, so I have to help myself. Only I know what I go through. Well, me and this place. Blank page. Hate white space.
Used to cling to the idea of making it as a baller, world famous and shit. Ain’t think too hard about genetics and work ethic. I just figured it would happen because I wanted it and that’s how life works right?
“we, on the other hand, have no such immediate sense of belonging,
only of drift”
I am drifting
Dionne provides the beat
and I
Rap Back
Dionne Makes Beats I
I Spit Tar Black //
Bars Back
The irony of being alive is most people don’t want to be alive.
But we don’t know the alternative, so we keep walking. Christopher Walken.
Used to craft my words more carefully,
but now I’m just focused on staying alive, not thriving, surviving.
Living.
I tell myself, “One day you’ll look back at all this and be proud of your sheer determination in the face of pain, fear, an entire institution trying to break your will. You’ll remember how hard you fought, and you’ll smile like steel.” I tell myself things like that but don’t stop to consider that I might not make it to see that day. You take that however you want it to mean.
Niggas wouldn’t understand what I mean by that.
Shit, it’s better to write these things than to let them brew in me.
It’s better to name your demons than to let them sneak up on you frozen.
I’m in my prison cell crying, middle of the night
just realized life
gave me a life-sentence
and that I’ll die here.
No hope of being paroled straight to heaven.
I’m hiding behind the piles of snow on my sidewalk stoop step.
Meanwhile, niggas dancing.
My favorite rappers joke about working for Al Qaeda, but the US used to terrorize people like me for saying bomb in text messages.
“That’s some bomb ass yogurt,” Feds at my doorstep.
My nigga said mask off with the chopper. Doot doot doot doot. Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrt. Griselda.
These niggas dancing. My words dancing. Looping back and forth like an Andy Warhol sample on a Basquiat documentary.
Learned about Basquiat from that white tweaker chick whose boyfriend had a condo on the west end and I’d be at his house while he worked for a living. Getting high with his girl. Tryna fuck her. I guess I never really wanted it. Cuz when I got it, I ain’t even celebrate. Shit felt like defeat. Going through the motions, never really wanting. In the gym shooting up
race tracks.
Niggas ain’t want it.
white rabbit candy rappers
I break down in ways that most of you wish you could.
Depression is a common side effect of prolonged binges when addicts attempt to break free from their demons.
Demons are a side effect of depression. Addicts are a side effect of demons. Depressed demons affect addicts sideways. Hands in the air, I’ll shoot it sideways.
Suicidal rappers boast about taking other niggas lives in they bars, but the “other niggas” are just a foil for themselves. Alter egos. Parts of themselves they don’t agree with. But nobody wants to buy suicidal rap.
They do, however, pay Spotify 12.99 a month to listen to rappers kill themselves in oppositional format. Kill the opps. You’re the opps. Not stopping till the opps blood is on they boots. They are the opps.
Don’t stop until the knife leaves a greasy trail on their shirt where they used it to wipe off the opps blood. They are the opps. We are the opps.
I’m the rapper and you’re my opp. Keep your hands where I can stand them. Tucked in your pants at random. Killing niggas for the love of fandom. I do not consent for these lyrics to be used against me in a court of trial.
This the deep dark shit that niggas don’t share.
Came to the coffee shop cuz I know I need to purge, no matter what happens after the words leave me.
I’d rather the words leave than my breath.
Pardon my urgency.
They said he broke down in a way that most of us wanted to.
Couldn’t stomach to.
Then he survived that shit. Then he came back and wrote about it.
Now we stand around asking questions like he’ll actually give us a roadmap to his survival.
Not for the sake of our survival, but because we demand entertainment.
And if he’s gonna put himself out there like that, well, then, we can stab him.
Applaud him. Say we understand him.
But we just want something to watch with our popcorn.Niggas don’t een know bro. Hands in there air, I’ll shoot it sideways.
This is art to me.
Lord don’t let these white devils prosecute me.
I wrap up this session by giving thanks to my Lord for this tool, without which I know my thoughts would overtake me. Sometimes you just have to stop listening to your body’s pain and write until you no longer feel like dying again. And that’s life. Lmao.
Upon re-reading this I realize it may cause some of you alarm. In the interest of transparency, yes, I’m having a hard time right now. No, you should not be concerned for me. That I have the energy to write this piece is a sign of my desire to live. That I’m still fighting to breathe.
That I would take the time to write this postscript is a sign that this isn’t a cry for help. I don’t like explaining myself, but I usually don’t publish my dark material, so I consider this a courtesy. The actor breaking character. You should know, too, that I have much, much darker material than this, but that’s for me. That’s my catharsis. That’s how I survive.
I decided to share this today because it’s winter and I know we all get depressed every winter, to varying degrees. This is the power of art — bleed those negative emotions onto the page, lest they wither you away.
Alhamdulillah till my dying day.
Said Shaiye