When I started this journey, I didn't think we'd end up this far
I didn't think things would go like this
But I just got one thing I want to tell you real quick
We are the shape of jazz to come

They told me drink to your success, became an alcoholic, nineteen
The good die young, I lived the blueprint of cracked dreams
Took about ten years to find pleasure in the simple things
X marks the spot, but I never knew Y, I was off axis
Pretty people and cocaine was praxis
Hotel charged me two hundred, we fucked, broke the mattress
Six months later, I broke your heart too
You tell me I'm yours, but this spliff ain't enough
Let's keep it blunt, boo
Let's keep it crack
Nah, let's keep it MDMA
You get fed up with my distance, but with cops I don't play
Love is the law, you judge, I bear witness to its sentence
Escape the heart's asylum, enjoy my last sentence
I think we're better apart, not trying to be cuffed, not trying to be jailed
Behind these bars but the instrument my bail
And if you don't like it, you can suck the Moby dick of a young Ishmael
Free form flows for you flailing fucks that's frail
I turn a crime scene into poetic detail
I am the flickering sanity of a young black male
You can't blackmail

Cause I seen switchblades cut faces while niggas kayfabe
Seen them spin, hit the block like a game of Beyblades
The mainstream media hound our pain like a great dame
These fucks are Cromwell to the Irish wolf
Antipathy to common good
And sometimes I feel like a courtesan to morning wood
This a free meals program giving soul food
I seen fake thugs waving arms like the lines of a polygraph test
Just to get chipped by liars that they couldn't detect
The speech impediment of a duct tape tech
If the gun jam, the switch flicks
So say less or say more
Shamik from two-one-two still laying on the floor
No disrespect, I confess the intellect been addressed
Not disavowed, never yours to allow
Peep the style, could go a hundred rounds
Fuck with me, catch a round
Oh shit
Oh you like how I'm rhyming now
This is the shape of jazz to come
The foolish think it's ornately done
We take the plastic sacks and run
Like Coleman finding gold in New York
The shape of jazz to come
The shape of jazz to come
The shape of jazz to come

I am forever an affirmation of my mother's prayers
They said speak with conviction, so let me say this
I married joy, but cheated on it with sadness
I fathered love, but abandoned it result of madness
Child of the internet, looking for happiness
I heard blue birds the reason you catching flies in your mouth
Get it
You the web now
Let the pen bleed, let the thoughts feed
Maslow's pyramid co-opted by schemes for human greed
I'm writing sermons to the congregation of your inner child
You look back at me and said that was nothing profound
Child rebel soldiers at war with poverty
Dead em like Fenian raids of eighteen sixty six
Closed fists hit the wall, then snapped the wrist
Cheeks turned, but now there's blood in the spit
Between cut fingers and squat thumbs
Halo effect inscribed on the trigger of your snug gun
We are the shape
We are the shape of jazz to come
We are the shape of jazz to come
I am the shape of jazz to come
Ornette Coleman, if you can hear me, you gon' fuck with this
Ladies and gentlemen, and those who are neither
I'd like to take a moment of your time to allow a good friend of mine
To just serenade you out of this experience
Please give it up for
Luke Corrigan