Paper

[Verse 1: AMS] A life in epistolary, trap an existence in words/ A life story between the lines, follow the details of the curves/ Every inkblot donates to intricacies untold/ The frayed edges of the notebook, and how easy the paper folds/ The scratched and erased, the lifespan, probably what it's seen/ The ink fingertips that traced and dog-eared pages, making the edges unclean/ The scars and imperfections seem simple on the surface/ But every mark and singular speck serves a significant purpose/ Cognizant of only myself; the stray noise I could hear/ The soft static of pen against paper, and the speech that reached my ears/ The space between inspirations was just the wide rule of a line/ My ranges were infinite, lying between divine and D Minor Nine/ An addiction to ball-point pens, inject upon a daily round/ Carrying blanks with in case something came disguised as profound/ The hands ached, the surroundings and purpose changed/ Leather bound journals became napkins in restaurants, but the drive was still the same/ I dined upon jazz records, and digested the inspirations/ But suffered stomaches if I hadn't fulfilled the post-listening obligation/ Sip the record skips, and drain the rest to use as ink/ Absorb the stereo crackle of vinyl platter, and pushing myself to the brink/ Breathe deeply and exhale scrawls onto a page/ Falling off of my margins, and straight into a state enraged/ Attempt to chisel writer's block, back into tabula rosa/ A long journey to arrive back at the same line I was supposed to/ Plagued by papyrus, reject the type-casted elite/ Because I'd rather scratch out lines, instead of hitting keys to delete/ Rejoice when a manuscript is complete, consider the end product blessed/ But never resting on the laurels, turn the page, and start fresh// [Verse 2: AMS] Around About Midnight, I drank the last bottle of Bitches Brew/ Contemplating A Love Supreme, left me feeling Kind of Blue/ To snap my mind from the Blue Haze, I scribbled Sketches of Spain/ Spent the detail on the Birds of Paradise I saw from my windowpane/ Spoke on paper In a Silent Way, Explorations of better days/ The Undercurrents of my Tijuana Mood describes my Interplay/ Sundays at The Village Vanguard, and evenings at Birdland/ Drifting in and out of listening watching Porgy and Bess hold hands/ Naima said I was living my Life on Mars/ Hallucinations of Bamboo Children hanging outside of campus bars/ Stood under the rusted street lamps of yet another Iron City/ That was father to The Birth of Cool, but still shows no pity/ Tip my Porkpie Hat to my forefathers, inspirational kings/ Who pushed me to wire-bound and wide rule, A Few of My Favorite Things/ Put the needle to the groove, mindset at 33 rotations/ And attach ballpoint to Mead surface, riding along the improvisations/ The simplest of substances, with the greatest potential/ Less than centimeters thick, but having the power to trap instrumentals/ From phone number to phoneme, chicken scratch to magnum opus/ Oral hocus-pocus, smoking focus, just to make the dopest/ A paper planet with syllables written on each scrap side/ Would leave a lifetime of turning pages, looking for sentences inside/ Constrained only by time and the stanzas composed/ Letting the instruments fade to nothing, as I let the notebook close//