there’s a price we all pay, a rate of exchange   to make ideas in our heads into art on a page   the transfer takes place when you pick up the pen   as the perfect idea leaves to corners of your head   sinking in seas of sequence and memory   fighting for life like overturned centipedes    you grab life rafts before they all drown   you save some, other words can’t be found   you write down tandems in random order   stare at the ground but you keep pushing forward   the ink takes shape of original thought   a string of events becomes a story and a plot   the story gets recorded, overdubbed and reworked   cos your voice sounds boring when you form the words   slam the door, take the stairs, give it time, let it happen   work on form, get some air, say the lines, make the magic      this is the song that you never wrote   the words that stayed stuck in the back of your throat   the ones that left the second that you picked up the pen   the idea you had that you’ll never get again      frustrated with the nonsense that got on the page   you made a promise to take a break and walk away   is all you’ve got to say corny polysyllabics?   and self-schematics like, “just watch me establish   my place in the game with my name on the crown”   but the way you explain makes you sound like a clown   in your head all the raps are the best on the record   but the pen and the pad can’t get it together   so you let it develop, took some time to relax    if your mind is detached then the rhymes’ll come back   as you’re trying to step back, your head runs in circles   so you grab a scrap from the back of your journal   turn to the side as the words blur in time   which went where, how did I finish that line?   the words aren’t working, syllables out of place   your eyes are burning and the page is still blank      it’s painting a scene, a flame flickers and burns   what came as a dream is conveyed in the words      out of my element, I rap for the hell of it   close my eyes and feel beats like Helen Keller did,   consensus is my penmanship could use less senselessness   the rhetoric’s irrelevant, seperate from sentences   developing intelligence makes a fan tell a friend   so you can circle earth the same way that Magellan did   Africa, Asia, New York to san diego   on the way change your world vu like deja   from draining Bacardi at basement parties   to going back home where they still call me Charlie   to phone calls from buses, fraternity rushes   earning nothing, still trying to work a budget   am I learning something, each show with new kids   who came to sip drinks but don’t hear the music?   right now it’s too loud and the lights are too low   quiet things I won’t know, just go on with the show      this is the song that never gets written   trapped in the back of your mind like a prison   trying to see through the fog in your hell   finally finding the key and unlocking the cell      hum the instrumental, tap your feet to the tempo   your favorite song was once just lead in a pencil   a piano stroke, a couple notes in a margin   organized into lines in the mind of an artist   lying on the carpet and trying to get it started   or driving and writing, finding himself carsick   stop to vomit in garbage, but he can’t lose that flow   words are seeds in a garden, need to leave room to grow   planted in rows, they need strength from the sunlight   so he can’t sleep til the beat is coming just right   just like the words, first they’re blank canvas   as the colors swirl and explode like a canon   load up the handgun, metaphors in the clip   ignore the corporal’s orders and perform it to kids   Lawrence and Trish were origins of my life   but it’s this mind that made the dormant arise