The Voice

you can interpret it many ways,
the significance of the voice.

i spent an afternoon with my boy
and experienced a revelation
that came back full circle.

—

law of equivalent exchange.

everything costs something.

women.
growth.
ambition.

the question was never
what do you want?

what are you willing
to exchange for it?

i know my price.

i know what isn’t for sale.

the world operates dirty.

i don’t need it
to operate like me.

righteousness is being able
to live with the man
who made the choice

when there’s nobody left
to explain it to.

—

life changed the question again.

growth doesn’t stop
when you understand yourself.

i got three books
that disagree with each other

and every one of them
was telling the truth.

i left old consciousness
between covers

and kept living.

there are versions of me
that only exist now

because i gave them somewhere
to exist forever.

thoughts i once called truth
became evidence of transformation.

every answer
gave life another question.

every death of self
gave consciousness
another body.

i kept becoming.

and somehow,

the pen kept meeting me there.

three books later,

i realized
i haven’t been writing about change.

i’ve been leaving proof
that consciousness can survive
every version of itself.

—

then i looked around.

everybody hustling.

different dreams,
same hunger.

my boys becoming
in languages that got nothing
to do with writing.

one building.

one risking.

one chasing something
only he can see.

and i recognize myself
in all of them.

because hustle
doesn’t belong to one dream.

ambition doesn’t belong
to one profession.

becoming doesn’t belong
to Mr. Mak.

it’s the same spirit
wearing different bodies.

we pour into each other.

knowledge.

belief.

opportunity.

energy.

spirit bomb.

every hand around me
adds something
to what i’m able to carry.

and everything i become
increases what i can give back.

equivalent exchange.

—

then i went alone.

walked into a gallery
outside my world

and spent twenty minutes
with a painter

talking about art,
identity,

and how much of the person
lives inside what they create.

i looked at her paintings
trying to understand
the mind behind them.

she listened to me
speak about mine.

two artists.

different mediums.

different lives.

different networks.

one conversation
was enough for them to touch.

i told her about Telos.

then i went home.

days later,

she posted my book.

—

and life
changed the question again.

what happens
when The Voice
travels outside my world?

a movement
doesn’t become alive
when everybody moves
the same way.

it becomes alive
when separate people

carrying the same spirit

start finding each other.

i know that spirit.

i see it in my boys.

i saw it in a painter
i knew for twenty minutes.

i’ve watched it
change bodies

and still recognize
the hunger.

because that hunger
lives in me too.

i’m not standing outside
translating the movement.

i am what i’m translating.

i am the hustle.

i am the ambition
that refuses to die quietly.

i am change
with a consciousness.

and i’ll keep changing
while i speak for everybody
doing the same.

three books
gave becoming a consciousness.

now that consciousness
has a voice.

mine.

—

I am The Voice.

— Mr. Mak



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