Nick Shepard

Social distance block party

6 feet apart

strictest (and oldest) middle school dance

i can remember

DJ spinning

touch, daft punk

this mothafucka! shiiiit

next song should be

don't kill my vibe

I wanna whisper to my guy

but how i'ma whisper from six feet away?

Touch, I remember touch,

pictures came with touch

All these hugs, kisses and tags in the cloud

Less clutter

We'll touch again soon

Touching screens and swiping right

The convenience of online shopping

A room within a room

A door behind a door

Touch, where do you lead?

I need something more

Most places have statues for conquerors and warriors

Veterans Day

I’ve never seen a statue depicting a sleep deprived mother waking to nurse her baby while comforting him in lullaby

Do you know what happens when you wave at a child?

They wave back, of course

Do you know what happens when you wave at an adult?

They look at you like you’re crazy, naturally

From up high

The lights still shine at night

At the right height you can count the baseball fields and pools 

I wonder if Miss Baker and Able did that

can you imagine being a monkey in space

not the jungle, not the zoo, not this planet

shit, not even the fake tiger king zoo

Miss baker lived 20 more years

I wonder what echoed

Anything?

Was it all just the same?

Show us the way Miss Baker

When we come back to earth

How to write a poem to be heard by people who don’t listen

The youth ain’t trying to hear real spit. They into mumble rap and all that litty shit.

I hear you but I feel like they thirstin for some truth. Yea there’s a time for that weak stuff but those joints like zero proof

Yo the youth ain’t trying to hear that just accept it. We old it’s not like it used to be just end the session. These kids want the beats they don’t wanna hear a lesson.

Maybe I’m buggin maybe I’m just stressing but I feel like u just gotta do it to perfection

Aight man well show me how it’s done if u cooking up confections

Nobody trying to hear a lesson? say less

Hook the people w what they want

Just start w lyrical flex

Try something like

I don’t got bars I break them

I shake pens to break pens

Free men from the state pen

Free minds from the state zen

Meditate on life and write what’s left —

Over like yesterday’s dinner

Food for thought we all lost

Chasing winners

Like a sinner to a non believer

Lines so sick they burnin like I got a fever

Pull the lever get a rhyme

Man v machine win every time

flies on the hands of man like a kite

Way these lines got em hooked

You’d think the lines I write was white

Slow down son you killin em

Nah my lines just Ill and then some spit slick w my rhyme shit track slick cuz the flow is water plus a daughter plus a mother a holy trinity of life you see how holy it can be? goes on forever pullin the c off clever so I can use the lever for another four bars

Yo I gotta cut you off

Cuz you dropping uncut gems

I can use those scraps for some diamond rings and them

Like I said slow down son you killin em

The sun can’t slow down it’s fillin

The earth w life never willin just exerting it’s power by stay stillin

got a feeling there’s a lesson in the sun and the stars ancestors speaking through me got me thinking near ain’t very far

Far ain’t very near

My thoughts Caribbean Sea clear

I hope u got your scuba gear cuz we goin deep to unchartered water come along on a journey w this midnight marauder

Yo they not gonna get the tribe reference

That’s cool cuz this when I hit em w universal truth when they least expecting like the Virgin Mary when you’re vision clear life ain’t quite as scary like a reflection in the water results may vary

when the waters still your 2020 when there’s friction you’re distorted like an 1800s penny

When your spirits still your visions clear when your drama filled the ghosts appear

So busy trying to be butter fly don’t realize you can’t skip being caterpillar

No roof can stand wo a pillar

A house is just some walls wo no filler

Emptiness is space

living life wo a break like a car that got no breaks

The fast lane ain’t even a lane it’s a track. What u in such a hurry for just to go around and back?

When the clouds out the moon still there

That’s not even faith, it’s facts

So there’s no need to ever front

When ppl got your back

pt.1

The look on q tip face when he loop a sample

I feel it

Carry the spirit that cut the layers of onion

I peel it

Living life at its core

Embrace what’s in store more than what’s in the stores

Cutting through distraction like a leader of the moors

Sharp blades to mend hearts, do surgery w a smile don’t even have to press start

I live it so I give it, spirit runs through me so I just exhibit intuition and give thanks

See ppl spending life filling banks with broke hearts

Being human, the lost art

Spirit tingles all around me, the fountain of youth is in a baby’s eyes

Magical powers are omnipresent and unwrapped

Accept them, their only in disguise to the mind, plain to the eye

The look on curry face when he start hittin

I feel it

Let the spirit run through so I pivot on the center of my square

Navigate the crosswinds, awake

Give give give

Transcend the limits of self

It’s not nonsense

It is

If I could go back in time

I wouldn’t bet on the World Series

I’d be too busy undoing amendments and commandments

The voices of the voiceless are never voiceless until we accept they are

Wake up

pt.2

Meanderings of a mind resisting rewind and fast forward embracing now but aware on whose shoulders

I stand so I stand for something and over flow w fulfillment undeserving of so many gifts

Watching a culture worship tanks instead of worship thanks

Prize attitude and punish gratitude

People used to sing thanks to the sun every morning, not thank it for not destroying them but thanking them for coming out again to give light give life

Can you imagine? How different than waking up to the “weather” on your iPhone

You gotta laugh out loud

You gotta do it

The history books are perjury

People get a face lift when they soul need surgery

We destroy the rain forest but more worried bout when the Amazon merger be

All trading is insider

The outsiders can’t pass go, pay $200 dollars

The world of the word is absurd

The world of the spirit doesn’t exist

It’s not contained by a world

This is math

Add it up

People used to wake up singing thanks to the sun

Can you imagine?

Can you imagine imagining?

The image has been commodified for branding and we’re bandaging a gaping hole

The source is there, down, up, around, circle

Go there

The giggle of a baby

Go there

pt.3

Imagine

Imagine a person starving for food and fighting a harsh climate with nothing more than sticks and stones

Imagine telling that person they could have temperature control, a phone to answer any question, enough food to never starve, a plane to fly, imagine if they could have it all if they just gave up thanks, thanks to the sun,

Would they cry?

We all die, do we get it?

That look on Serena’s face after she crip walked on Wimbledon

I feel it

Call me a simpleton call me a woebegone call me just call

You don’t need a phone

Do our tools help us be more human or more tools

A fool will think evolution is survival of the fittest

Cooperate

Operate

Do it together

What happens when you put a human in solitary confinement?

But we tell our youth you gotta be self made, do it on your own, people born w a silver spoon wanna keep everything as mine like they was the ones in the mines

Open your heart

The pain of seeing injustice is life, cry, allow your intuition to be incensed, the blindness of privilege, why you wanna live in the cave? What u afraid of?

Why you make Plato look right?

You afraid I don’t matter?

U don’t?

You are matter

Isn’t that enough

We were dancing around the ring of the bagel

Not realizing we could fall in

The emptiness that makes the bagel whole

Jewish tao te Ching

Dashing between poppy sesame and salt

We had everything

And we had the hole too

Too pure to commodify

You ever seen a bagel hole?

You better not Dunkin’ Donuts

We’re in the hole of the whole now

No Ws

Not taking Ls either

Essential workers only

Do four walls make a house?

Does a train car make a subway?

Do rimless hoops make a park?

And yet there’s still the hole

There’s a lot there

It’s different though

The boom between dribbles echoes infinite

Squeaking sirens of sneakers calling all hoopers

We got next

Lie silent

Yo pass the rock

He wit us

Let’s go!

That’s a one!

And 1

And 1s not a call

That’s weak

Nice shot

We got next

Untended gardens gather dust

Far beyond Boston and Madison square

Our forum for performance

Competition

Aggression

Control

Release

What’s your worlds most famous arena?

Now introducing your

...

Still waiting

A little sunshine

A little rain

These gardens are concrete and wood

Held together by bonds

Of love and enmity

All in the same day

Double helixes of feeling

He’s feelin it!

How many down on next now?

Better have your 5 ready

That ball gonna come back down booming

Gravity is undefeated

The Buddha said we’re all one

The civilized ppl shook their heads

The paper said scientists determined that all living things share DNA

2,500 years later.

Scientists came looking for truth

Native people told them the trees could talk.

They laughed.

Scientists “discovered” trees talk through a network of fungus and roots

I wonder what native ppl thought about their amazing discovery

I wonder what the trees thought.

I used to think I could seek and find truth

Then I saw my sons eyes and had proof

Of how wrong I was

Truth had to come to me

How headstrong I was

To think I could find it through books and guidance

Man I felt it, never try to define it cuz what’s the time to the timeless

I tremble at the glory of it

Don’t even need a base or a treble to sing the whole story of it

Feel the song inside me but I’ll never know the lyrics

Cuz they dripped in holy language

Humbled by the spirit

The tree didn’t have to say

how long she had been there

didn’t have to recount all of

the recipients of shade

the original shade

the best kind

it is 96,241 people

If you’re counting at home

been stuck on that number for a minute

the tree didn’t have to tell everyone else she’s still open for business though

the squirrel shade recipient number just hit the 200,000 milestone

No big deal

Birds sheltered is about to hit 177,877 soon too

That’s a big number for trees

The human obsession with even numbers

has alluded the trees

and their shade

As the sun shines

The shade continues

Don’t even get her started on the acorns