Rhymes, Memory and the Virginia Incident

I am very pleased right now. Before I left town I was going to perform this song about Baltimore at the Tuesday spot. It's routine for me to run a rhyme down in my head before hitting an open mic, but when I tried this one I had forgotten parts of it. I forgot like 12 lines between the last two verses. I tried all types of tricks like writing them backwards to see if I could jog my memory. I hope other emcees go through this, when you can't remember that one line that bridges the whole verse. Or you forget how a verse starts and remember everything else. I went through my (current) rhyme book and couldn't find a printed copy and I couldn't find the last book I revised it in. Some may say why don't you have a written version in your rhyme book? Greyhound sucks that's why. I went to Virginia for a conference in '02 and because I boarded the bus at a stop coming back I couldn't tag the bags. When we got to D.C. the "throwers" sent us back to get tags for the bags, while waiting in line - one of them came and got us because the driver was ready to go. For some stupid reason I left my bookbag with the rest of our things and when we returned to Baltimore it was not there. On the way down I had to take my bag from and mug down some latino dude who "thought it was his bag". Even though he was never on the bus and I saw him with three totally different bags and hour later. Greyhound sucks. The content of my bag: two rhyme books, all my trinkets from YO! centers across the country and 30 C.D.s. It breaks my heart to even think of it but included was one of my Queen joints. The one with Bohemian Rhapsody, Princes of the Universe and Flash Gordon's theme song. Not to mention my Mos Def, Californication...Ugh! I have to stop listing them under pang of death. Anyway within those two rhyme books were the first of several full songs I had begun writing which were marvelous. My B'more song being one of them. What's so good about this song you ask. The average city salute in Hip-Hop can be summarized as follows: if you come here we will fuck you up and/or kill you. Shit is raw here and it's worse than you ever thought. My song was a recollection of all the good things past and present about Baltimore. I figured I had already done verses listing good reasons to leave town, let me do a song about why I love it here. Anyway today I found a Zip Disk that said rhymes and when I loaded it at work it contained that and a few other songs I had forgotten about. Sooooo...I will be rocking this joint tonight. I'm considering getting the band to play "My Minds Playing Tricks on Me". BTW someone told me the Ghetto Boys were recording an album together. If so I hope it shows their maturity and not their ability to fit in with the "young guys". Hooray Zip disks!!!