En Route to Damascus

My mother asked if I was on the phone
When I was speaking earlier aloud in room alone
I told her, "No Mama, I'm talking to an old advisor"

Revolution started, ink was zealous sympathizer
Dive to kill my vices in molasses
On each sweet stroke
Fear whispers to its kaiser
Believe I was always meant to fall off the ass
En route to Damascus

I walked to crossroads
And a blind man gave direction
He said, "Beware the vampires"
And heart would aid detection
"Some will suck your time
And, some will target funds"
And, others could be deemed so
For their absence of reflection

Stepfather remarked
That dogs throughout my hometown
Howl in harmony when I am on a track and I sing
Uttered I no comeback
Stoop too far, you'll drop your crown
Couldn't let a jester control
Emotions of a king

Asking
One aim with which I am my pen tasking
Discography, becoming the body of my philosophy
Is a goal, for me
When I see another sage in a quote
Want to see myself in the footnote
Not so to gloat
Rather I don't want to digress
If I could allude to myself
Could say more, speaking less

Hone
Faculties that make my art quite hard to clone
Path's shown
The pits of truth where light hasn't shone
And seats of ruth as rigid as stone
Despite the current
The sea I tread in won't my future sins atone

Favor
Rarely manifested by my teachers
Along with students, deemed my curiosity, a tactic
Ponder
Often all the times I was outspoken
In lieu of understanding, saw I only faces frantic

Many equate perfection to symmetry and achieve neither
Chasing symmetry to cemetery crooked mindset
Hone, how to navigate asymmetry and truth decipher
To stay triumphant even while by failure beset

Creatures in the forest howl when they can smell devotion
Albeit I do hear the growls I'm not afraid to frolic

Pinching nose does not detract from power of the potion
Just from savoring the flavor of the prophylactic

Ken the difference
Between didn't
And couldn't
And when you tell a story
Do not frame me in the latter
Afore you ask
The storms I've sailed are another matter
All you need to know is I could thrive in any weather

Blessed, with a fertile circumstance
All was not appealing
But it offered me the chance
To grow without a ceiling
But do not think a second
My calloused hands are in any less prepared
For my fecund field's tilling

Product of ethereal backing meeting unyielding vigor
I'm result of matrimony between nature and nurture

And my kingdom's not from scratch
But I'm proud, not ashamed
Privileged to focus longer on how to reign

I, represent the dream that
Martin Luther King did
Prophesy over Lincoln memorial green

Bid, upon me in the stable
Afore my hooves hit the racetrack
Dividends are gleaned from every stanza quill has painted

Each intimate moment I grasp, is haunted by the past
Gentle touches stalked by memories of former trespass
Still enjoy the thought my present vista I would find
Without the flesh and blood I've lost along the climb
But alas, grander the light, greater the shadow cast
Patent that pain and path are tightly intertwined
Peace and strife, character foils, in tale life
Agony and destiny at same table dine

It's important to be conscious
Field degeneracy is luscious
How we quell ennui and lust define us

Biggest fan of me, is I
If you'd my eyes
Every one of my lyrics would be
Met with a gasp or a sigh

Challenged my guilt
When I kenned the extent
In spite of ego's protest
Of my sinful fallibility

If warmed, by a lexical quilt
And child of verse you invent
I attest
You are a poet, veritably

Poetry is only dead for eyes covered by blinders
And ears plugged, by the rhetoric
From constitutive excluders
And other gatekeepers
Who glean malevolent glee
From being authors
Of narrative that poetry is for select few
Or that its marriage with music is brand new

From lura comes lurikos, basis for lyrical
Lyre and lyric are thus, inextricable
From chants of a choir
To chants around ancestral campfires
Each desert and mire

Bards reciting epics to the sound of a lute
And commercial jingles, made, so to patrons recruit
Poetry arouses emotion, establishes memory
And its presence is ubiquitous
Thus discussion is moot
Though, knowing timeless precedent
On work sheds a different light
One feels different on the stage
In the limelight
Or as sage
Writing runes by the candlelight
Every era, merely a verse, on the page we write