Self-Portrait in Lieu of My EP

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Nobody step to me unless they got a problem with the way I cradle the mic because I cradle the mic my way. Nobody gets to question what I feel. When it is said that the tables have turned, I think of turntables. When the beat drops, I let you tell it though I’ve already talked that talk. It’s like that. On my resume, action verbs. In my coffee, a black I recognize even after I add more sugar. In the plastic-sheathed rectangles of our most revisited photo album, a djembe I played like there was a stop made for me on the soul train line. Second cousin to the sun so it’s a cookout every time I walk outside. And a reunion for each new dance my brothers and sisters make before I wake up and learn the choreo to. It’s like that. And it has been since I found out the progression from A minor to G major. And it has been since I froze on the two like a mannequin. Since the upbeat of my pulse had a plus-one added to its thump. Baby, since self-interest. Since backwash. Since way back. Since carburetors mixed fuel with the referendum of air. Car don’t got no roof. It’s like that. It’s like that very first taste of hypocrisy, like that fetal position we practice and fittingly forget when the speakers pick me up with my filth, things I’ve brag-rapped on tempo, a magna carta I can call a track if I run fast enough for you to ignore what we keeping a hundred. I’ve said what I said and now there’s a bridge where I can check a one-two thrice before twelve hit a U-turn. Before it’s all sirens and hoping those lights pass me by. It’s like that.


Olatunde Osinaike