Open Season II (Aryeh Diss)

acrostic architecture crumbling, the spelling bee credential dissolving mid submission,

the gimmicks the admission that the bars beneath required the ammunition

of the letter game, the alphabetical position

of the insecure, the phonetic permission

slip signed before the battle, the self issued

clearance of the mediocre, the tissues

handed to the crowd before the issues

with the craft surface, the residues

of somebody who studied battle rap academically

memorized the terminology, the epidemically

spread vocabulary of the craft, the endemically

circulated phrases, deployed them systemically

without the organic understanding underneath

the music theory student who can read beneath

the staff but cannot feel the underneath

pulse of the pocket, the bequeath

of the genuinely gifted versus the credentialed

the difference between the experiential

and the studied, the sequential

versus the instinctual, the preferential

treatment the culture gives the one who bleeds

onto the page over the one who reads

about bleeding, the one who needs

the textbook confirmation supersedes

nothing organically generated, the planted

crop versus the wild, the granted

permission slip versus the undaunted

arrival of the thing that cant be haunted

by the question of its own legitimacy

i dont ask if the bar has the dignity

of the elite, I feel the rigidity

of the structure holding, the frigidity

of the cold bar landing in the warm room

the temperature differential, the costume

of the comfortable stripped, the legroom

running out the second I consume

the oxygen, three days, a weeks worth

of veterans repositioned, the rebirth

narrative belongs to nobody, the worth

of the newcomer measured by the dearth

of the response they generate, I generated

a weeks activity, the understated

arrival that the platform celebrated

by attacking it, the consecrated

attention of the opposition confirming

what the self assessment keeps confirming

the thermostat I set keeps the room squirming

at a temperature of my determining

whos the real lion when its in the hebrew

the animal arrived and what it threw

was a spelling game, a residue

of borrowed bars, the interview

portfolio of someone auditioning

for a seat at a table the conditioning

of the platform built, the positioning

of the latecomer, the requisitioning

of the moment somebody else constructed

the battle joined after the verdicts conducted

the flag planted in the ground inducted

into the record before you conducted

a single syllable toward the conflict

the timelines the fingerprint, the edict

of the timestamp, the verdicts verdict

stamped before your openers first beat

dropped, im the seismic event, your the

aftershock arriving late, the free

rider of the moment, the debris

field claiming to be the catastrophe