Short-armed and under your influence / tonight i go boxing with words
In a dark proud stance / nose dripping sweat / there's sprays a mess of life from my bloody lips
Blindly swinging at shadows / flaying the flesh of us both / people hurry by / eyes downcast
Fraying the line between maker and made / all white-knuckled ideas and exhausted tears
Still the effort pools at my feet / and i stomp and i scream and i punch like i dream
With more abandon than perseverance / and for a pacifist i sure want to beat the shit out of the unseen
My so-called soldiers are too busy making a scene / so i call on death
And we become an unholy tag-team / undercutting rap dreams and spirit-slamming unbelievers
Yeah / me and death stomping creation in the streets / bellowing our crazed anthems
With glorious fists like verbs / landing now on noun-nuns dave-dazed
Firing our mouth-guns into the skulls of walk-less talkies like rahhhhhhh!
Like Ra / head like 'so raw' / raw as vocal cords snapping / raw as our hands' skin drum-boxing the pseudo-enlightened
Resurrecting executed slaves to proclaim right crosses / burning through the immortal melee
Laughing with jabs / even eternal when slain
Death was dealing himself thin / so i tagged in and began round two:

Howl move burn change sing reach dance teach
Grow play scream give read live write die
Love cry cast fly guess wish ask train
Do act will make bleed march need start

Now black enters the fray and white tries to act gray
I've stopped bleeding as death becomes sane and slowly retreats appalled
At how much we're begging his favor / and twelve-year-olds afraid they won't
Get to use their gun before sunrise
Now the words dribble / stuttering incoherent / even rafis ferdinand has slumped himself home
And i'm alone on the corner again / mumbling to nobody
One solo backward is half-marching symphonic stub sickle
Shivering timbers intended to save backward solo one
Friends, country, justice / these are sounds quick forgotten
By street fighters alpha / just aimless concepts
Like high schooling / my dueling / mc's spewing death standing next to death
Like 'you gonna eat that?'
Fuck / the world is spinning colors over my eyes
And somewhere there's a gutter to kiss
Cats are pillars of static / i'm on some butterfly shit
Meta-morphing back into a warrior ablaze inside a fire
Inside a fire / feeding the sun's nuclear engine love / and one
Suddenly the block's deserted and buildings pretend to be trees
We can't fight in the jungle of steel stolen screams
I pick up a syllable scythe and slice my way to round three:
Ingest/embrace/inform/incite/ignite/encode/entrap/escape
Exude/instill/inspire/imbue/entail/intend/expound/infuse

I enter a ring surrounded by everything and display my gloves to hoots and hollers
'audience!' i cry, 'it's time we let these words think for themselves.'
The sun replies / washing my face / and i'm content to bask for a second...
Now bathed and solar-winded i turn center and see seven million objectives
One by one they fall / risen / and smiling something wonderful
For the sun has given daylight over to the stars to be on my side
I look over and kill my senses / it's on / we are so on
With fission psalms and diction bombs fixing throngs / eclipsing strong
But not us who find all inherent all
The sun's been here all along chilling with death and me
And these battles will forever not be fought by us
But the things we do without rallying the troops / plan / free
That's an order / tall and strutting his self-righteous ass on corners, open mics, and the same tired discussion
Wake up to us / here's to shutting up and his followers in a glass box smoke-filled and falling
Our squad is too much / catching the earth stalling
Death and me and the sun makes three / answering the calling

Coalesce. confiscate. activate. sacrifice. specify. teleport. captivate. catapult
Exercise. advocate. disavow. saturate. culminate. cultivate. sensitize. occupy
Remember
Embody