On the Stereo, Typical

On the Stereo, Typical

I think you oughtta know that every day
on the radio all I hear, all you show, is another blank verse
of the same song about bitches & hos.
Don't get me wrong, I'm guilty too and no better
than you for bouncing along to the rhythms of a cataclysm,
my renunciation of avocation in not seeking
retaliation for this repudiation and annihlation of every woman you claim to know.
All the same it's all so tame, playing the game and
building a name by the shit you proclaim about
the girls you meet while disclaiming our voices and seeing only meat.
So come and get it while it's hot, I've got a lot to say so go ahead and spew
your best shot before this bitch, switch, educated diva witch exposes
one hell of a scratch to itch.

It's alright, I can take it, and if you want we can even
fake a bit of real animosity if it's what you need to spill useless seed
and beget profitable hypocrisy instead of becoming the
prophet able to pour rage through pens like a camera lens snapping off
pictures of hostility and futility in this wasted age.
I'll let you keep developing negatives of
some endless night though it isn't right to waste
what you could create with what fate already gave you.
And even still, it's not just me. We stay with you like mothers sister friends
willing to pretend that we adore being taken
for a blank slate, vessel for hate, someone's endless
whore with open legs and spread heart, our only chore
and sole art. We put up with it all and more until you bore of this
swinging on the vine like Tarzan while we drink your
whine and offer more than you can stand--rusting away and lusting
for a trusting hour when you aren't afraid to be a man who
stands alone if needed and doesn't cheat
himself out of what his work could mean.

I'm not afraid to tell you just what I see and what I think
you oughtta know and need to do, cuz at this rate it'll take forever to
have the guts to come together and it's a long time 'till
never and I'm tired of being severed from the resourses of humanity
so I'll take this last recourse to some discourse. Speaking for the lot of us,
we've got demands so I'll tend & bend & recommend until you
understand that we're all menned out, manned up and tired of holding
the overflowing cup of bile you call a style.
Somewhere inside still needs to grow--you gotta know you can do
better, so call this my open letter to the soft-lipped
wing-tipped freestyling poet you fight to hide.

So, yeah, I'm way out of pocket, because I carry
your image in an empty locket over my heart.
But I guess this might be the point where you fade out so you can trade out parade out
and trade on what you're not really about just to get paid
to shout and get laid in a desultory way as a daily result of
the hollow rage on the page, the biography of an iconography
of tirade.
Turn up the bass, drop some new beats old beats nothing but a bunch of dead
beats so used to being made, being had, that you're not even glad to be
alive, be where you are...and can I have your attention, cuz I'm about to mention
my intentional rejection of that stereo-
typical ghetto superstar. Tell me to shove it,
you're above my elliptical rhymes and get dismissive of this
elliptical missive, a fantastical kiss from
another bitch all over your case.

Little boys grow up and get out without flowing into a
knowing built on hindsight about dads
who weren't there or didn't care or couldn't compare to the myths
manhood began with. So now you can't escape the nightmare of
this title fight you've got to win for your own skin, this
hypocrisy of aristocracy in a democracy,
the inifinite diversions of a perversion called
an affinity for masculinity.

You've learned the lessons well and it sure as hell
sells copies to live young, die fast, angry & afraid right to the
last commercial break.
I'm already at your wake because it makes me ache to see you broken
on the wheel of the bigger fatter better deal,
clinging to tattered pride and outrageous lies, nostalgic
like battered wives with shattered lives
who died inside because sad men & bad men and madmen learned to hide
what mattered.

I ain't mad atcha and won't throw back atcha the dream
you bought, cuz it's what we're taught.
Just don't want to be erased again or see you
become wasted men when you could still be a seller and
grow into a teller helping us all get
wise and forget the time we've wasted, lies
we've tasted. I know
you don't know how--the game's rigged and you're a big boy now,
not supposed to cry, not allowed to feel,
prevented from growing up and learning to deal with the truth.
But I long for brave men, strong men, less headstrong and afraid men--
the fierce brothers, tender lovers, crazy sexy got something going on men,
penitents & kneelers, guards down and seeking the crowning
glory of a neverending story,
proud but free to need
saviors and healers
ready to reject, rephrase, resculpt,
replace their masculinity with what's needed now, a double
barrel shotgun blast of bigger badder better humanity,
more than icons, at last
ready to see the true
faces of the gods you struggle to be.

11/8/03