The R.H.Y.M.E.
Ongoing at ProjectRhyme.com, currently 4-1
Week 2
Topic: Reality check: Earth is just a speck
Posted on Jan. 16, 2015
Result: Won via Cereal_Killer no-show
Scepter in hand, The Dark Lord measures his plans.
The buzz of black holes and ballistic stars enters his scan.
A multiverse all to himself. The war was won
through steady hands and death commands from The Dark Lord above.
But the broken fragments of a total spastic reality,
replicated three times over, through a plastic totality
were worth every last fatality as the chords were plucked.
Yes, The Dark Lord surveyed his masses as a chore of love,
that which drove him to cover his sword with blood.
A madness, the last king, the last titan:
He extinguished stars as the final chorus sung.
His grasp tightened. The multiverse became little more than none,
a dormant hum, encompassing darkness and flash lightning.
So The Dark Lord smiled. And he considered the path.
And he destroyed every last planet with a swing of his staff.
He stared into the gloom of the void, unpolluted with noise.
And he left,
having proven his point.
Week 3
Topic:
Posted on Jan. 26, 2015
Result: Beat PancakeBrah 6-0
We rose with rockets.
Bottled up. Claustrophobic. Drones of progress,
emotive posits supplying power to the grid.
We towered as we slid across horizons.
Days, hours, minutes. Quick.
Our mythos twists like cloud grimaces,
and we're shaping them.
Personacentric model of our universe,
rising in the bluest burst.
Trial/error, too rehearsed.
Looping till we swoon.
This is a crucial moment. We're too condoning.
We're not usually stupid
but move with hope and room to grow, and
there's something unhuman consuming, enclosing,
as we're reduced to our notes scribbled on walls of caves.
The call is made.
The broken-down socio-economics
offer tectonic shifts with even the smallest waves.
We're making progress. We're doing what's right
in the name of honest science.
Houston's problems loosen as we solve them,
reducing our nights
to some combination of hot coffee, cold pizza and luminous sights.
We dropped like bombs.
Fell like comets.
Fell as the rain falls. Puddles of devil's toxin.
Breathing the air, completely aware of the hell we'd walked in.
Sweeping away misdeeds
with the ease of pressing a button.
Deviant thoughts. Scenic on walks,
our speeches were flawed.
A broken union trying to break a union,
defeat at all costs.
We believed in the cause. Well, at the time.
Deceived by the flaws of a dystopic design.
The city glows beneath us,
exposed to the deepest chemical secrets,
teaming with growths, malignant seeds in the bones of children.
And this is the tome we've written.
This is the road we've gilded.
Burning bushes in hopes that they speak to us,
because even the coldest cynics
tend to be exposed as Christians when crammed in shelters.
The plans have melted. Stuck in a war of attrition.
Discordant friction,
as a cigarette plume renews our final coercive addictions.
But we should've just floated.
Split the difference, for the good of eloping.
Through strategic escape patterns, we could've took to the ocean.
We could have looked for an opening.
Sprung for the past, fell into future.
Dug at the scabs, swelled with each suture.
Too humble to laugh, propelled into stupors
with every twist of fate avoided below.
Watch as they crash. Watch as they die.
Watch as they passively cry,
as actions derived from passion and fright
matter less and less as our paths all divide.
We should've just floated.
We couldn't condone it.
An ominous pride, an obvious lie, a crooked invoking
of a deity none of us really believed in.
But the sun still will rise on the coast today.
If not, I'm leaving.
I'm going to float away.
Week 4
Topic: Office Trip
Posted on Jan. 31, 2015
Result: Lost to B.E 6-3
The smell of genital sweat, cheap perfume and cigarette grinds
filled the back room where she slid into her fitted disguise.
Glitter-covered breasts, squeezed first, then clipped with a bind
to further give her a rise, heaving chest over shimmering thighs.
Mary stroked the mirror with the photos attached by tape,
cracked and frayed — just like their mother, she figured.
The liquor burns as it pumps to her liver, but she's past escape.
Head down, deep breath. A soft curse hung from her lips.
"FIRST UP, WE'VE GOT VOLUPTUOUS VICKI!"
That's Vicki with an "i," she half-laughed as she strutted on stage,
recalling how they said "Mary" wasn't slutty enough of a name.
Happy Hour: Time spent fucking a pole and clutching her wage
while egos with black suits and dead eyes lusted and waved.
He caught her attention, spilling a smile and his wallet's possessions.
"Buy me a drink?" "How about a private dance?"
She paused for a second,
usually preferring to flirt first instead of devolving to reckless.
"What's your name?" "Joe." He seemed mostly calm and collected.
"How's your day going, Joe?"
"Better now." His half-smile dissolved all her questions.
The private rooms were all leather seats and purple walls and bodily fluids.
Mary pushed Joe on to the couch as she throbbed to the music,
pressing herself against his prodding protrusion, grinding slowly.
Her eyes were closing, thinking about why she chose this.
Thinking about Jeremy and Christine, the loves of her life,
all while some stranger named Joe was rubbing her thighs.
"Hey," she smiled coyly, "I don't think I said you could grab."
Another guy willing to pay for the vague hope of getting some ass.
But Joe apologized profusely and explained he's a novice.
"Aww, don't worry, honey, it's just another day at the office."
Joe sighed with relief, then made a play for his wallet,
producing three-hundred dollars and a grin betraying his object.
Mary swallowed her pride. ... His, too.
She figured this pays for the kids' school clothes and all their supplies.
But as she started to leave the private room, she caught a surprise.
"Freeze! You're under arrest for solicitation." Joe had cuffs and a badge.
"Excuse me?"
"You'll have to put some clothes on and come with me, ma'am."
And as she slid into the back seat — "You played me! Just stop this!" —
Officer Greg Kelley smiled: "Just another day at the office."
Week 5
Topic: Bungee Jumping to the Boogie Down
Posted on Feb. 10, 2015
Result: Won via SacriFICE no-show
We took the plunge.
We took the plunge from the top of the sugar hill,
masking delight with passion and impossible rookie will.
It came with a flash of the lights, but a message was served,
and all the blowback to these breaks simply tested our nerves.
Put a veteran's verve on awkward display while walking this way,
but it was never rehearsed or manufactured, never lost in the game.
Yes, the boom-bap dripped while we were taking the plunge,
but no one could accuse us of even once faking the funk.
We took the plunge.
We took the plunge as we fought for our rights,
even as we emerged as enemies, faded and lost in the night.
Parents couldn't understand, stamping advisory warnings,
but they can't touch us, as much as we tried to ignore them.
We busted moves to dusty tunes on top of cardboard squares,
the ultimate soap boxes for our artform's heirs.
We scratched and prayed and pulled in hopes of getting paid in full,
but it only took two before the leader's technique betrayed his skill.
We took the plunge.
We took the plunge because the bass line starts at the bottom.
So they moved their hips as we moved our lips, imparted our toxins
of something greater than the hardest of rocks, and
we carved something targeting pop hits with no acknowledgement.
We took the plunge ...
... only you can't fall from the lowest of rungs.
We began with twisted break beats and gloats over drums.
We were Party Rock before Planet Rock, unfocused and young,
with the sprawling energy built for provoking some fun.
We sampled Iggy Pop before Iggy popped, atoning for none
of the mistakes that we never quite owned as they hummed.
We identified old school within a limited context,
but never left room for the prism of all this.
We never left room for a picture so honest
that we could admit that rap is pop. Forgive us, our fathers.
We took the plunge.
It was two dope boys in a Cadillac,
who rattled trunks and threw hands in the air to their battle raps.
They sparked a creative desire, opened up planes to aspire.
They led a cultural revolution that gave us a fire,
well, them and other bigs, lils and greats who inspired
a generation that came to recognize through all the beef,
that mass appeal has its very own gangster qualities.
You see, they said it before: The goal is to move the crowd.
So while MCs act like they don't know,
we've long produced the boogie down.
Week 6
Topic:
Posted on Feb. 16, 2015
Result: Beat Timeless 5-1
The walls were blue.
He faced them while he crawled at 2,
faced them while he sprawled in youth,
faced them as he taller grew.
Until all he knew
was these painted walls, their toxic hues.
But the boy in the maze can never escape.
All-consumed, all-defused.
Destined to traipse to daunting tunes
in a world that's never been fair.
Never repaired.
He held his breath through baseball,
through football,
through every despair.
His walls were blue,
unlike in his redecorated underground lair
for the Ninja Turtles.
He prefered Raphael. He perfected his muttering stare.
Ennui on the downbeat,
sweeping away his tumbling hair.
The walls were blue.
His onesies, shirts and jackets all were, too.
He wore a heart on his sleeve — blue, too.
Pressured to be.
Predestined to be.
Something it seems.
Something so "he"
rather than "me" or "you" or "I."
Defined by generalist genes.
His walls were blue
because he was a he.
They never did see.
They never noticed the preference for green,
the glances at pink,
the measured reprieves
he took when he felt most trapped.
The walls were a maze, with shuttering doors.
He could never go back.
The maze was blue.
And the color mismatched
with the heart on his sleeve
and the blood on the path.
The knife's edge slipped carelessly through all
of the pain and confusion, of the parents' refusals.
The floor was red.
And she bled out and died staring at blue walls.
Week 7
Topic:
Posted on Feb. 25, 2015
Result: Beat SacriFICE 6-0 (won interim championship via Split Eight no-show)
Meredith hoped
to glean pearls of wisdom
from ocean depths.
She'd hold her breath.
She'd turn and throw her open nets
aside the boat, the lining floats.
The gentle breeze grows colder yet.
Each dive invokes untold regrets.
She swims across the current's path,
then up for air, a turn and gasp,
then go again.
Meredith dreamed
of thrashing seas,
of magic beasts and fragile reefs,
escaping to the widest blues
where silence hues a tacit peace.
It's there. It's there that she'd
cast her nets.
A bid to drag the depths for treasure,
lost and rotting, amid
the oft-forgotten passage dregs.
Meredith searched
in murky trenches, flooded still.
The work is reckless, hopeless, tireless,
a product of a stubborn will.
Yet she dug on.
Dug past the crusts
and pasts the bends
and past the pressure gage's limits.
She knew there was so much below,
so much beyond the hazy physics.
Meredith Dorsey was a marine biologist I first met in East New York.
She had red hair and deep-set brown eyes that always seemed so deep and warm.
We were younger then, she a grad student totally convinced
she'd change the world. While I was writing, totally convinced
that nothing could be changed. That we were hopelessly adrift.
She put a sail on a boat and, unknowingly, opened me to myths.
Meredith hoped and dreamed and searched beyond my broken pleas and yearns.
She saw an ocean of opportunity that only needed her.
Within five years, she found her calling in aquatic ecosystems,
marine biologist-turned-archaeologist, a decent living
and a true calling. The depths took Meredith to heights and fame.
and then they swept her away,
from me.
A tidal wave.
Week 8
Topic: Finish the Thought
Posted on March 4, 2015
Result: Lost 6-1 to Pent uP in championship
The beeps came from all around.
The steady hum foretelling life with each beat in the background.
She sat up. Kept her shoulders high, finally comfortable
but deeply in pain. The only thing keeping her sane: "Nine months until ..."
Now the doctor's speech is restrained. Hand on her knee
as though that's easing the strain,
as though there's any way to alleviate the evil betrayed.
Stillborn yet so unsettled.
The umbilical choke kept blood from reaching his brain.
The lights came from all around.
The glowering sirens pierce the alleys on the wrong side of town.
He took off. Peeked at corners before turning quick,
breathing heavy. Their radios warned his nervousness.
Fleet but heavy, he slid down the stairs to the lobby floor.
Grabbing an unlocked bike,
he rode like nothing was worth stopping for.
She arrived home. Disassembled the crib,
then started to unravel herself into a bottle of gin.
Alone. She wanted to be alone, she said.
They left her be. They'd never see
all these tears and fears exposed and red.
Like her broken irises.
He hit the stoop. Pulled out the liquor bottle,
the cash wad and the pistol, throttled
with an amateur grip, a novice.
But he was 14. Time to grow up, become a man.
They said he'd find power with a gun in hand.
They said he'd find Jesus with a couple dime pieces
and a fifth of Jack,
so he tried to chug again.
The doctor's office. They said the checkup was vital,
so she's naked, legs open,as they're testing inside her.
It's the same position.
But she couldn't be further away.
Her mind racing, turning in waves.
Trying to imagine this as something different,
something beautiful,
some more perfect display.
The police cruiser. They patted him down with aggression,
tossing the bottle before pulling the cash and the weapon.
"Not even loaded."
Their eyes rolled as they laughed deep
and told him to get the hell into the backseat.
Sped to the station. Papers, prints, mugshot all in order.
They slid him three quarters:
"OK, kid, call your mother."
She closes her eyes. She tries not to be alone. She looks within.
The single mother-that-wasn't,
imagining what could have been.