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Rob Will

What makes you feel free? – Lily The Prelude: Young Freedom In Chains

Updated: Feb 24, 2021

Many times freedom wears a mask

and under that mask lays the face of death.

We recognize its face yet we kiss its lips.

The taste is sweet, so sweet it hurts.

I left home wading through pill bottles

And generations of built up hatred

Dodging corvette red talons

And screams.

You little no good bastard, you are nothing!

You’re no good!

You are never ever going to amount to anything!

You’re just like your father! You’re just like your fucking father!

You’re no fucking good!

You’re just like….Just, just…

Just like…Your father.


And the venom trailed off

Violent crying replaced

By a childlike whimper

Psychotropic bliss.

I wish you would just talk to me.

That’s all I want.

I love you mom.

I just want you to talk to me.


Black and grey backpack stuffed full and bulging with ambition

Screw tapes laced with ‘Pac, clothes and Ziplocs.

Three pounds of weed

And a triple-beam Beretta 92f I got from Billy M. Before he was killed.

Heat on my waist and city lights in my eyes.

Fuck, It wasn’t my fault that little punk snitched on me

And that asshole school cop, who thinks he’s still in Vietnam, found weed on me.

I mean, Shit, Weed should be legal and uncle gave it to me anyway.

Plus, How the hell was I supposed to get school clothes?


Northside hotel room

Wallpaper yellow from Years of weed, crack, and cigarette smoke.

The dull piss yellow

Of a dope fiends smile.

Hey whiteboy!

Hey, Say, say, Let me holla atcha’ fo a minute.

See, peep game young playa!

I ain’t like them ole stupid ass niggas.

See, Nigga like me got some sense!

I’m cool with them white folks man.

I like white-folks, Led Zeppelin and them, Pink Floyd and them.

Shit, all them white folks cool!

Now, I see you, A young hustler, A playa,

You about your paper.

Go on and let a fellow playa get 10 dollars and a couple them blunts you be sellin?

Cool man, I’m cool with them white folks!

These lil punk ass niggas ain’t about shit!

Just let a playa get a lil somethin’ man!


Pyrex psychology

Fully auto street game

Spit clean in 60 seconds.


Shit, man, just let me get 50 dollars then and one of them blunts you be sellin.

My momma’s sick man!

Come on man, Help a playa out.

I’m doin bad right now.

Led Zeppelin and them man!

I’m cool with them white folks!

Come on , don’t do me like that man!

Shit, hell with you then!

I ain’t never liked no goddamn honkies anyway!


Sad white spots

Struggling to free themselves

From their yellow coating

40 ounce bottles lie

Empty on the floor

Little transparent dreams

Turned to nightmares

Waiting to be forgotten

Old English

St. Ides

Mickies

(Because Everlast from house of pain drinks mickies)


Everyone else is passed out

Young bodies on twin beds

More on the floor

Young male minds

Dreaming of “Pussy, weed, and alcohol”

“Money, hoes, and clothes”

Young female minds

Dreaming of love

And acceptance.


My beeper beeps 150-911

Tito wants a quarter pound.

I hang up the phone

And leave

Past the chain-smoking Pakistani at the front desk

Always sweating through his polyester shirt.


My freend, My freend,

Do not forget my freend!

Tommorrow Saturday,

Pay one more week my freend.

Maybe one the sexy girl for me one night?

Hmm, My freend? Hmm?

No pay for you two weeks my freend,

If for me one night the sexy girl?

Good, good, My friend?

Two dirt-faced franklins On the desk

Polyester stretching tight

Across an overfed stomach

Buttons crying out for help

Black chest hair

With grey highlights

Thin tentacles reaching out

For the American dream.

Ok, ok, My freend. Maybe next time one the sexy girl for me my freend!

Ha, ha, ha, haaaaa!!…..

I hop in the Honda accord

Light up a blunt

Screwdriver in the ignition

Crank the ride

Tape in the deck

Screwed and chopped ‘Pac Blazin’ out the speakers.

“Back in Back in elementary, I thrived on misery

Left me alone, I grew up amongst a dyin breed

Inside my mind couldn’t find a place to rest

Until I got that Thug Life tatted on my chest”

All black hat

Cocked to the side

Black shirt

9 in my lap

On blue jean dickies

Quarter pound under the seat

Air max on the pedal

On the Highway

Wind in my face

No school cops harassing me

No teachers or preachers

No drunken uncles talking shit

No condemnation or hate

Weed smoke in my lungs

Subconscious suicide

A kiss so sweet

That it hurts

Young freedom, in chains.


“What is it to be born free and not live free” -H.D. Thoreau, Life without principal (1863)

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