[billy woods]

Cover of dark, City of Quartz

Cynar, falernum, and simple—everything in equal parts

I start the car like, “Gentlemen, on your marks…”

Made so many deals you’d be forgiven for thinking I’d passed the bar

Wake up in the Hollywood Hills feeling like Poppa Large

If we being real LA traffic what killed Biggie Smalls

I see plenty go out on their shield and have no interest in that at all

The gall of these grifters trying to rip us off

The small talk in the strip mall parking lot

Backed into the parking space like cops

Droppеd the verse in thе dead drop

Diner cross the street, I watched from the window seat

Cheap meat on the flattop

Soft Places, liminal spaces, I left when they started to mop and pushed up on the block

The night is young to a mark (?)

She came to me with an intricate plot: five figures in a shoebox

But you get what you pay for so the whole thing was ad hoc

They took final edit, I took my name out the credits

And gave them bits and pieces, odds and ends

Choppy sixteens, cutting room floor glitterable gems

Swirl Listerine and spit, teeth aching

Born into sin, born into this, born again in the bellies of ships

Biblical whales, dry aqueducts fish-scaled in the bed of pickup trucks

Rainbows in the red, black, blood, and guts, rhymes like Puck

Our Zodiac signs was aligned from fuckery but this is a bit much (it’s a bit much)

Ten thousand Ubers moving in unison

The computer’s confused who’s Turing Testing who again

The ostery is open, the 105’s wide but fuck the live potent

The coward dies a thousand times, I got a few more to go then

Some cats love jail, wouldn’t be surprised if they broke in

Haberdashery with the veil, kisses stolen, and bodice rippers

My prose flowing like Danielle Steel

I bring trees to Santa Monica so you know how I’m living is real