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By Michelle Brieno

Can’t sleep. Doin too much thinking

Can’t sleep a wink n words swirling thru my head can’t just go to bed trying to get these rhymes on a page. It doesn’t seem to work, it just ain’t the same. No masterpiece no Picasso… shit I ain’t a painter starting to work tho. Just trying to spit out some lines, smoking it up like it’s my last dime, not as good as Tech 9 or Tupac… but at least I won’t get socked in the face, Not dissing or portraying, all in all I’m just saying. The words that come to me Maybe in a dream, on Main Street, not even on key.

Sometimes I don’t even know what I’m talking about. Please listen so I don’t have to shout. Maybe I should just whisper all this in your ear to make you listen. One of these days you’ll hear it on the system.  Bumping in someone’s truck going down the street, you see their head bopping along to the sick ass beat, rapping along, knowing every word to every one of my songs.

They call me the new MC cuz it’s who they want me to be. I hold the key to the success they want me to lead.

But many times I have to STOP………………………………... .getting writer's block. Keep looking around ‘specially at the clock. Here I am lying on my bed, Lights off in the room but not in my head. My brain is feeling trapped. I gotta get it all down, to free a mess that’s jumbled around. A piece of paper in one hand, a pencil in the other. I start writing it down one sentence after another. Flowing across the page it’s starting to go along, my head starts bouncing to this beatless song. Once I got it in my mind I keep saying it over. It might be the best I got, my four-leaf clover. Gonna show the world just all what I got, Ok I’m ready put me on the spot:

I got my shades on and my hair pulled back. Step up to the mike, lips bout to spit a poetry rap. I look at the glass. I love what I see. My lil one is smiling and waving at me. I smile as I lean into the microphone. Here I am finally right at home. I look up to the sky “This for you my #1.” Look up and say, “For you and my son.”

By Michelle Brieno