I Listen To the Version of a Lil Wayne Track Where the Words Niggas, Fuckin’, Shit, Dick, Ass, Bitch, and Pussy Have Been Bleeped Out
[Niggas] be asking me what then is left of the song; shut up,
get you a scapel, cut that out an’ move on to something
else/and yeah that pun is totally intended/you want to know
about leftovers/then don’t ask me/the science of remnants is
not exactly my forte/myself, I am merely the breath of my
grandfather’s ghost misting a train window/as men in dusty
caftans wave machetes in praise of sunlight, cheering the
hunger for the crimson calanthes nesting in a man’s body
you see/wholeness is a whole new concept I am alien to/go
ask the policeman arms akimbo before the surging crowd
man’s sidearm switched a son from songbird to silence/and
the ground became a carousel beneath the boy’s mama’s feet
her wail wafting into heaven’s face as a whirlpool of waxwings
just before her purse dropped onto the asphalt an’ her braided
head followed/I am the last note of a very long symphony/prelude
To the grand organ knowing the teeth of an axe and splinters
flying/I knew him by his tattoos, the glint of his teeth/as he
glared menacingly from barbershop posters/I grew up/an’ heard
a tape ache out the words I now know him for/every language
of desire and violence sheltering in the smoky temple of his
tongue/the uninitiated mistaking burnt offering for weed smoke
and the god’s sacred serpents for dreadlocks/freshman year in
university, a friend told me/the first woman was not Eve/but a
woman named Lilith who always insisted on getting on top
whenever she and Adam were [ ]/then, ancient dudes/or was it
God/felt such a woman could not be allowed existence/an’ wrote
her into a demon who sucked kids’ blood while they slept/what
the hell is this whole bull[ ] with bleeping out the juicy parts
of the sonata/why give horns and a forked tongue to the woman
who could have used the apple to crack the serpent’s skull with
the force of her throw/they have killed another kid already/one
Boy out of many who go out to get sweets and are not allowed to
come back and watch any of the series showing this weekend
you see what happens when every Tom, [ ] and Harry who can’t
even wipe his [ ]hole clean is given a gun to fight crime/there will
always be a father, head in hands, fighting back tears/look
the president has proven himself to be an ultimate son-of-a-[ ]
who neither barks nor bite/mind you, my neighbour’s lady-dog tops
the chart on both counts/these days/boys can’t stand in the hood to
talk soccer, cars an’ how to find some [ ] to get down on without
some [ ]hole making them go down on the sidewalk/begonia
blooming from their breast pockets/boys can’t brush their hair/look
fly an’ go down the street without coming back with an eye sewn
shut an’ painted black from rifle kisses/some queen said [ ] has
been a bad boy/yes, that word was not in the song/it’s just one of
those things my mama stopped me from sullying my tongue with
by saying/while she still has me/while I still go out to get sweets and
come back with sweets/and not a bullet nestled in the folds of my brain.