Was it written in blood and stone?
I ponder

In my youth I met a man
whose spoken word could shape reality

A man incapable of introspection or gratitude
but nonetheless blessed with this arcane ability or inherent knowledge

The nature of such things is unimportant
And though it’s possible that he was but one of many,
he remained an anomaly to me

Even lacking evidence I stand convinced
that power like this cannot originate from the devil’s magic,
but can only be bestowed by our God Almighty
for the man would breathe a sentence into the universe and it would Be:
Kun fa yakoon
Does that not speak to Divine source?

But as I mentioned, the man was thankless and thoughtless,
too wilful, too ill-equipped to ponder on that which had been conferred upon him
He could not speak himself happy
He would not speak himself fortune

In all my long years, I’ve known of no man before or since
whose pen held as much of destiny’s ink, yet he shouldn’t write of himself with it

Why? I ponder to this day

Perhaps another of his kind had imprisoned him first
with her own words as a preventive measure
Or had they muzzled each other in invisible stalemate,
a mutually bound perverse prison?
Perhaps

Or is it much simply
that the language of fate is written in a deeper script than reality,
etched into our very blood and heaven’s stone

King’s Disease 3 by Nas, out November 11th 2022