Don’t Start | IBJB 🎙️ | #InkDrops Inspired by Dua Lipa

🌹 #InkDrops | #InspiredBy — A freewrite inspired by Dua Lipa’s Don’t Start Now, sparked by a creative exchange with Tammy Jones in April 2020. Originally shared in the Dirty Jerzy Lab, revisited as a finished audio production in 2026.

Don’t Start — Full Poem

Thought we was cooler than this
Never mind
there’s levels to this
Umma a psychic
not your sidekick
You missed the signs
you was new to this

Heart chambers wired in coils
You celebrate blood
I was pouring oils
I donated plasma
darling
You never struck gold
you never struck oil

The nerve of us
Now
you’re shook and nervous
Barely scratched the surface
Picked at the scab while the poison 
lurked beneath the surplus

Can’t respect perception
When reflection’s warped
Glass house
dirty mirrors
My flaws stay visible
yours stay distorted

Transparent sinner
Neon glitter in my aura
I wear my scars outward
Never needed an interpreter for ’em

Whatever tho
I’m never truly bitter
Just a little more aware
A little less willing
to carry dead weight with me

Five-dimensional daydreams
Week five
weak vibes
Quarantined notebooks
Filled with hard truths and cheap highs

Breathe my words in
Deep dive
sink slow
Exhale my emotions
Like your skin was made to hold smoke

It’s funny tho
I showed up whole
Left with less illusion
Still somehow left richer than before

Work from home
still broke
Why you looking confused?
That beard became a noose
Cut it loose
let freedom introduce you

My love ain’t disposable income
Never budgeted for temporary people
Never financed false futures
Or leased loyalty to strangers

Already on a mission
You couldn’t see the vision
Can’t issue credit
When the credentials missing

Something in the chemistry
Never sat right
So I vaped my exit
With one long trembling sigh

Mourned your absence
Before I wrote the eulogy
Cut ties clean

You can’t hurt the introvert in me
With the gift of goodbye

~~ IBJB 🎙️

Composition Notes & Credits

Writer: Jamie Bond (IBJB)
Audio production: FinalE — Poem Star Studios (PES)
Creative inspiration: Dua Lipa, Don’t Start Now (2020)
Freewrite origin: April 11, 2020, following Tammy Jones’s April 10 post in Dirty Jerzy Lab.
SoundCloud: Listen to IBJB Don’t Start

#PES #IBJB #UnMutedInk #DontStart #InkDrops #InspiredBy #SpokenWord #Poetry #Boundaries #SelfWorth #GiftOfGoodbye