First off, fuck you @
Certain. My mom's name was Sandra which is who my daughter is also named after, and my fiancé's name is Jessica. So with the amount of funerals I've been to in my life along with my mothers AND reading this while my daughter is in the hospital, your piece forreal had me in tears. You captured basically all of my thoughts I've had at funerals over the past 2 decades, brought em back full force, and had me second guessing if I should forgive my father for becoming a heroin/crack addict after my mom passed. This piece was not the cleanest verse I've seen from you especially with the paragraph format compared to the normal stanza's i'm more use to seeing from you. But the emotion, thought process, and way you portrayed the inner most thoughts at one of the darkest times in a persons life was done whatever is better than perfectly. The ending especially got to me because I had that exact mindset at my moms funeral as I was the crutch everybody else needed while I seemed to be the only one capable of handling the death on my own. Enormous props on this my dude I cant say that enough.
and @
oats I loved this piece also man. after reading that clip you posted about Penn's career I had an all new out look on the man. I despised him for years after he beat matt hughs but after reading his story and "getting to know him" I started to actually wish I would have followed his career more closely because of how tough he is/was and how inspiring his story is. You really showed the ups and downs of his career along with the disappointing yet accomplished ending to the tale. I wish it could have been longer cuz if I could read all of his fights in your writing giving the outtakes in rhyme form I would have loved it lol The rhymes were simple but placed well and of course flowed flawlessly and the imagery was on point along with just a mellow cadence and strong story. this was just a dope ass piece.
All in all this is an extremely hard decision for me, on one hand I have the story that reflects all of the hardships of a funeral and emotion out the ass that I connect with on every level, and on the other I have a story about a great UFC fighter I learned to respect done with precision and detail few are capable of. Honestly I had to take my time with this and this is probably the longest vote I've written in my entire text career, but I have to go with Certain on this one because I've never read a piece I connected with more and in this instance that takes the cake for me. I have no idea who's gonna win this battle but imo its a hof battle easily. Dope shit guys forreal. its an honor writing in a league with you two.
Vote: Certain