I own the stage with my first step while you approach it clutching paper like it’s a shield.
While you sound off words laced in cotton, I bleed razors dipped in iron.
You find divinity in rhyming tropes like love and dove.
I rhyme silence with your grave and make the bandit eternal.
Poetry makes your lips tremble like it’s a confession.
I take the stand to execute the jury that dares deliver my judgement.
Verses shouldn’t be served like weak tea that you hope someone sips.
It’s top barrel rum that you force down their throats as they beg for more.
Applause and finger snaps disappear under arms becoming your crutches.
The blood and bone in language I find and snap is the only thing I lean on.
You force metaphors into your gaps, it’s no wonder they wilt like sunburnt roses.
Mine arrive scarred and missing teeth from the wars they already won.
My art was never about sharing feelings, this poetry doesn’t seek to examine my heart.
I take a sharp blade to the memory of the world and carve my initials in its spine.
You ask for permission to be heard, politely voicing your concerns.
My voice storms the room, blowing hinges off closed minds and ears.
You define poet as a manipulator of killer words.
I define a poet as the assassin of any word that defies truth.
You shrink to the microphone like it were a pious priest.
Mine bends towards me seeking to serve a true king.
You whisper to it, praying your lines survive the night.
I know ghosts that envy my tongue, will whisper mine into centuries.
You note death every time you open your rhyme book.
I slay the delighted audience with my opening rhyme.
The difference between us is you name your fears into words.
I scare letters into being and words fear that I even know their names.
Your dream ends in an unread book that still smells of printers and publishers.
My dream will be carved in stone so sharp that even gods cut their fingers.
Writing is a comfort for you and your audience.
I write to conquer the time and destroy your ears.
I don’t want to be remembered, I want the world to regret teaching me how to speak.
That is the art in which I stick and sharpen my blade.
That is poetry.
And that’s why I will announce my entry…
While staging my exit.
The Divine Bandit™ 