122,031 blue faced voyeurs view Russell Tyrone Jones bare his soul. Strip raw. I’m related to you, ya’ll know it. Watch a man dripping with sweat, perspiring cocaine, get nude. Laugh at the wound. He’s bleeding. Bitch, who don’t get dirty mother fucker? There is no beat to lessen the blow. No HEYS or HOS. No hand claps, or snares, not even a boom bap: This is how heartache sounds when it doesn’t rhyme. When it isn’t a funny skit in the middle of sped up soul-sampled tracks. I don’t even know nobody. Let the silence speak. The awkward sways of a crowd who came to see a legend perform. This is James Brown pre-cloak. No golden caskets here. No dancing feet. Fuck all these microphones. Tank tops and broken dreams. Ticking hearts that become bombs. Toothless pleas. Torture is persisting. The bastard beget bastards: Seven. I have a cocaine in my shoe. Twitches accentuate the diatribe. Broken rhymes of a fractured brain. There is no entertainment like watching a man die. WHO CARES MOTHER FUCKER!? Eyes bulge, pleading for rescue. The hypeman doesn’t know this verse. He can’t help the energy. This is straight off the top. Organic self-hatred. This is a show. Give him a round of applause. Before he falls on his Shaolin sword call an ambulance. Better yet. Call a friend.
Grant Schubert lives, loves, and labors in Rockford, IL. His fiction and poetry have appeared in the African American Review, RipRap, Broadside, and Voices. He is on the internet but quietly. All praise to the 36 Chambers.
–Art by Mustafa Dedeoğlu