[Verse 1: AMS]

A life in epistolary, trap an existence in words/

A life story between the lines, follow the details of the curves/

Every inkblot donates to intricacies untold/

The frayed edges of the notebook, and how easy the paper folds/

The scratched and erased, the lifespan, probably what it's seen/

The ink fingertips that traced and dog-eared pages, making the edges unclean/

The scars and imperfections seem simple on the surface/

But every mark and singular speck serves a significant purpose/

Cognizant of only myself; the stray noise I could hear/

The soft static of pen against paper, and the speech that reached my ears/

The space between inspirations was just the wide rule of a line/

My ranges were infinite, lying between divine and D Minor Nine/

An addiction to ball-point pens, inject upon a daily round/

Carrying blanks with in case something came disguised as profound/

The hands ached, the surroundings and purpose changed/

Leather bound journals became napkins in restaurants, but the drive was still the same/

I dined upon jazz records, and digested the inspirations/

But suffered stomaches if I hadn't fulfilled the post-listening obligation/

Sip the record skips, and drain the rest to use as ink/

Absorb the stereo crackle of vinyl platter, and pushing myself to the brink/

Breathe deeply and exhale scrawls onto a page/

Falling off of my margins, and straight into a state enraged/

Attempt to chisel writer's block, back into tabula rosa/

A long journey to arrive back at the same line I was supposed to/

Plagued by papyrus, reject the type-casted elite/

Because I'd rather scratch out lines, instead of hitting keys to delete/

Rejoice when a manuscript is complete, consider the end product blessed/

But never resting on the laurels, turn the page, and start fresh//

[Verse 2: AMS]

Around About Midnight, I drank the last bottle of Bitches Brew/

Contemplating A Love Supreme, left me feeling Kind of Blue/

To snap my mind from the Blue Haze, I scribbled Sketches of Spain/

Spent the detail on the Birds of Paradise I saw from my windowpane/

Spoke on paper In a Silent Way, Explorations of better days/

The Undercurrents of my Tijuana Mood describes my Interplay/

Sundays at The Village Vanguard, and evenings at Birdland/

Drifting in and out of listening watching Porgy and Bess hold hands/

Naima said I was living my Life on Mars/

Hallucinations of Bamboo Children hanging outside of campus bars/

Stood under the rusted street lamps of yet another Iron City/

That was father to The Birth of Cool, but still shows no pity/

Tip my Porkpie Hat to my forefathers, inspirational kings/

Who pushed me to wire-bound and wide rule, A Few of My Favorite Things/

Put the needle to the groove, mindset at 33 rotations/

And attach ballpoint to Mead surface, riding along the improvisations/

The simplest of substances, with the greatest potential/

Less than centimeters thick, but having the power to trap instrumentals/

From phone number to phoneme, chicken scratch to magnum opus/

Oral hocus-pocus, smoking focus, just to make the dopest/

A paper planet with syllables written on each scrap side/

Would leave a lifetime of turning pages, looking for sentences inside/

Constrained only by time and the stanzas composed/

Letting the instruments fade to nothing, as I let the notebook close//