He’ll never make something good as Acid Rap

The poem is the worlds you build in me. When I catch
wind of the sweet buildup in No Problems I'm somehow
transcended back to the day we listened. It was summer '16,

months before Trump became pr*sident in a stuffy apartment.
I don't know how a choir singing louder as the bass
crawls up to the 8-count can reverse me into a time you were

breathing. I hear your critique loud & clear. "He'll never
make something good as Acid Rap", you say
as passionately as a broken boy from the hood looking

for a mother's love in a cup full of cheap vodka & tahitian treat could,
not even knowing the next album would actually be the flop.
I want my days back where rap could just be that,

non-lethal gunshots in the background of a single.
Bladders shaky while preaching about the origins of rap
with white boys & niggas still working on mixtapes

that would never see past the 5-mile radius. I want
my journals back, T. I'm tired of the tenor & vehicle
somehow always leading to you. I sit in coffee shops

where outlets look too much like your face & get pre-weary
about archivists finding all the notes I've left behind for you.
As I listen to a brother named 2 Chainz tell me

He’ll never make something good as Acid Rap

"this is my blessin'" I'll try my best to edit this poem
into something I haven't already lived. Should I live
in a world where the present takes precedence, or

is it meant for me to see stanzas & tell you
"You don't want zero problems, big fella!" again. Damn.
How miniscule the problems were then.