"Rap Right Now"

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"Rap right now," they say, always either excited or judgemental, and I refuse.

They don't expect the polo shirt wearing, black plastic glasses clad,  two hundred milligrams of Zoloft popping nerd closet basket case to have fallen for H.E.R., as she is most commonly referred to. I thought the same four years ago. But normalcy exited with the other genres of music when I realized I could make my own raps.

And make 'em damn good at that.

It was the only thing keeping me alive at times. The beats and the rhymes broke in when my mind locked the doors and kept visitors out. Screw connecting an IV to me, connect the M.I.C. to some speakers and let me loose. I'll be straight, player.

For as long as I can be.

It's a perpetual tug-of'war between the musical and the medical, the disease, this plague of the brain that makes it so the tip of my pen doesn't taste as sweet as it used to. My options quickly narrow down to the hospital, the streets, suicide, or doing nothing, and the last only advertises the first three.

I've been waterboarded with my own tears, and nothing. Absolutely nothing. Can fully stich those wounds up.

That's why. When they tell me to rap right then for them, the murderous subtlety of my excuse for a mind wires my jaw shut.

And I refuse.

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