{

The Dead Emcee Scrolls

The Lost Teachings of Hip-Hop

And Connected Writings

}

“Saul is every kind of great artist combined into one.”

—Nas

In the underground labyrinths of New York City’s subway system, beneath the third rail of a long forgotten line, Saul Williams discovered scrolls of aged yellowish-brown paper rolled tightly into a can of spray paint. His quest to decipher this mystical ancient text resulted in a primal understanding of the power hip-hop has to teach us about ourselves and the universe around us.

Now, for the first time, Saul Williams shares with the world the wonder revealed to him by the Dead Emcee Scrolls.

I have paraded as a poet for years now. In the process of parading I may have actually become one, but that’s another story, another book. This book is a book that I have been waiting to finish since 1995. This is the book that finished me. The story I am about to tell may sound fantastic. It may anger some of you who have followed my work. You may feel that you have come to know me over the years, and in some cases you have, but in others … well, this is a confession.

“A profound poet who inspires us. He challenges us to be individuals.”

—Russell Simmons

Cover design by John Vairo Jr.

Author photo by: katina parker

Register online at www.simonandschuster.com for more information on this and other great books.

Published by Pocket Books

PRAISE FOR SAUL WILLIAMS AND THE DEAD EMCEE SCROLLS

“Saul Williams is the prototype synthesis between poetry and hip-hop, stage and page, rap and prose, funk and mythology, slam and verse … he avoids classifications, and empowers the human voice. All of this is represented in Williams’s newest book, The Dead Emcee Scrolls.” —Mark Eleveld, author of The Spoken Word Revolution: Slam, Hip-Hop and the Poetry of the Next Generation

“Once again one of the finest minds in the country has put pen to paper, voice to verse, and dug into the deep, rich planet better known as the souls of black folks.” —Nelson George, author of Hip-Hop America

“One of the most inspiring voices in American hip-hop.” —Trent Reznor, Nine Inch Nails

“An astonishing … poet. The internal rhyme, metrics, and imagery are so fleet … that they’re humbling.” —The Washington Post

“Hip-hop’s poet laureate … Saul Williams isn’t out to save hip-hop, but he is out to elevate the art form [and] is effectively breaking boundaries while blurring the line between poetry and rap.” —CNN

“[Saul Williams] is a mighty talent. He takes readers on epic voyages into frontiers that offer a refreshing awakening of the mind and a roller coaster ride into an abyss of demons, deities, occult symbols, and more.” —Amsterdam News

SAUL WILLIAMS, one of America’s bestselling poets, is the author of three previous books of poetry: , said the shotgun to the head and S/he (both from MTV/Pocket Books) and The Seventh Octave (Moore Black Press). His music albums, Amethyst Rock Star and Saul Williams, earned him great critical acclaim, as did his starring role in Slam. Williams also cowrote that film, which garnered the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and the Camera D’or at the Cannes Film Festival.

THE DEAD EMCEE SCROLLS

ALSO BY SAUL WILLIAMS

, said the shotgun to the head.

The Seventh Octave

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Copyright © 2006 by Saul Williams

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Excerpt from Wattstax courtesy of Columbia Pictures.

“Funky Drummer” words and music by James Brown. © 1970 (Renewed) Golo Publishing Co. All rights administered by Unichappell Music Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

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ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-2304-8 (eBook)

PUBLISHER'S NOTE

This eBook is best viewed at smaller font settings on your device.

This book is dedicated

to the dedicated:

Afronauts of over-

crammed space, those of

sewed-in creases and

ironed shoelaces, Gazelle

framed screw-faces.

Way before court cases

were platinum sales,

quest for mix-tapes like

the Holy Grail. Retro

earthquake fitting.

Metro landmark bidding.

NGHs was wiggin out!

Newburgh know what

I’m talking bout. B-

boys! B-girls!

Caesars and Jheri curls.

This book is dedicated

to the under-rated

hustler, high school

dropouts, school dance

shoot-outs, NGHs with

Uzis! Bitches and

floozies!

This book is dedicated to

y’all too! Pull your

panties up and feel me!

Help me, lord. Heal me.

This book is dedicated to

the Sunday preacher:

the original pimped out,

laid back hustler, with

God on his side and

Italian leather in his ride.

Toot your horn

and feel me.

This book is dedicated to

the sho nuff sho nuff.

The nappy dugout:

corn-rowed, twisted and

braided and the NGH

who parlayed it into cold

cash. NGH, you crazy!

I’m ’a sick my dogs on

you.

This book is dedicated to

those who prayed for it,

who saw it before it was

here, who sensed it from

the beginning.

This book is dedicated to

the beginning. Before

before and right now.

This book is dedicated to

the lunch table. The

boom bap. I still got my

12 inch of Spoonin Rap!

To all the original

blueprints. I know ya

heard of that!

This book is dedicated

to yellow caps in

Lemon Heads boxes

(Krak Attack!), three

quarter bombers, and

Africans selling time

machines in Times

Square by moonlight

(clear nail polish on fake

gold will make it last

longer. Ain’t nobody

talkin bout diamonds.

Not yet.

But this book is dedicated

to that too!). Name belts,

name rings, name-plates,

gold ropes, door knocker

earrings, and gold fronts.

This book is dedicated to

that more than once.

This book is dedicated to

Phillie blunts, Oakland

Raider jackets, “X” caps,

Spike’s Joint, and a

bunch of shit that

became corny overnight.

This book is dedicated to

those that write! Fab 5,

Futura, Doze, shake your

cans and feel me!

This book is dedicated to

floor wizards spinning on

backs, head, and hands,

and cute girls that ain’t

afraid to dance.

But, nah, it ain’t only

about the old school.

This book is dedicated to

platinum grills and apple

bottoms. Backpackers in

Benzes with white Jesus

medallions and his crown

of diamond thorns

hanging from their

necks. Hardy har har,

NGHs. Change clothes

and feel me.

This book is dedicated to

moguls, def to death.

Please don’t take a shit

on the chest of our

generation (Vicelord,

your majesty). Ugly

NGHs with money to

burn. The ass thou

pimpest shall be thine

own. Funk God I know

you feel me. Now let me

hold a li’l something so I

can get the IRS off my

back (I can’t always bring

myself to pay taxes to a

government that uses our

money to steal more land

and ignore the ongoing

plight of the poor in our

names! What’s realer

than that?). All this

money is dirty. You can’t

buy freedom, but let’s

buy some airtime and

shelf-space and elevate

this freedom of speech.

Free your mind,

brother. Peaceful Pimpin’

since ’72. Ask my baby

mamas, they’ll tell ya.

What? You never heard

of that?

This book is dedicated to

Crunchy Black,

Willie D, Face, Kane,

and all you dark-skinned

cats that had to smile to

be seen.

This book is dedicated to

freedom, although it

comes at a cost.

Don’t steal it, y’all

(“steal” should read

“find” if the subject is

white, in which case

the subject is free

to help himself).

This book is dedicated to

white people, ’cause y’all

feel it too. All these

so-called races. What we

runnin’ for? Don’t believe

the hype! We are one.

This book is dedicated to

greater understanding,

power, and NGHs with

enough game to flaunt it.

This book is dedicated to

Yahshua Clay (You know

who you is NGH, Stand

up!), Niggy Tardust,

Tennessee Slim

(Detonate!), Soggy Lama

III (and the sirens of

Atlantis that sing his

praises), Zupert Henry

(your mamas car ain’t

faster than mine, boy),

Rebekka Holylove (hip

hip shalom!), and the

luminous heroes of

today, now, and

forevermore (I hold

my nuts as I exit)!

P.S. Did you know the

mothership was built in

Newburgh, NY? That’s

what I be meanin when I

say “Word to the Mother.”

Selah.

CONTENTS

A Confession

NGH WHT

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Amethyst Rocks

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Untimely Meditations

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Om

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

1987

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Sha Clack Clack

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Co-Dead Language

Chapter 1

Part 2: Seven Mountains: Journal Excerpts 1994–2001

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

Acknowledgments

In the final analysis, every generation must be responsible for itself.

PAUL ROBESON

A CONFESSION

There is no music more powerful than hip-hop. No other music so purely demands an instant affirmative on such a global scale. When the beat drops, people nod their heads, “yes,” in the same way that they would in conversation with a loved one, a parent, professor, or minister. Instantaneously, the same mechanical gesture that occurs in moments of dialogue as a sign of agreement which subsequently, releases increased oxygen to the brain and, thus, broadens one’s ability to understand, becomes the symbolic and actual gesture that connects you to the beat. No other musical form has created such a raw and visceral connection to the heart while still incorporating various measures from other musical forms that then appeal to other aspects of the emotional core of an individual. Music speaks directly to the subconscious. The consciously simplified beat of the hip-hop drum speaks directly to the heart. The indigenous drumming of continental Africa is known to be primarily dense and quite often up-tempo. The drumming of the indigenous Americas, on the other hand, in its most common representation is primarily sparse and down-tempo. What happens when you put a mixer and cross-fader between those two cultural realities? What kind of rhythms and polyrhythms might you come up with? Perhaps one complex yet basic enough to synchronize the hearts of an entire generation.

To program a drumbeat is to align an external rhythmic device to an individual’s biorhythm. I remember being introduced to the hip hop/electronica sub-genre, drum and bass, by one of its pioneers, Goldie. I accompanied him to his DJ set at the London club, the Blue Note. After about an hour of him staring straight into my eyes, gold teeth glaring, miming or pointing to every invisible, yet highly audible, bass line, kick, snare, and high hat, he took me outside and instructed me to monitor my heartbeat so that I might note that the intensity of the music in the club had actually sped it up so that my heart was, now, pounding—a sort of high speed drum and bass metronome. I had been re-programmed (note: it was a high-speed wireless connection). Did it affect how I thought? I don’t know, but surely, the potential was there. The music of that night had been mostly without lyrics. But if there were lyrics, could they have affected me on a subconscious level in the same way that the music itself had affected me on a subatomic level? Who knows? What I do know is that I have been a hip hop head for years. I have nodded my head to the music that initially affirmed my existence as an African American male. And then, of course, as the music grew more openly misogynistic and capitalistic, I found myself being a bit more picky about exactly what I would choose to nod my head to. It was difficult. Sometimes the beats were undeniable. Regardless, even though I always sensed the power of the music, even though I remember the few hip-hop songs that brought tears to my eyes because they went beyond speaking of the power of the music and hinted at the power of our generation, nothing, absolutely nothing could have prepared me for the story that I am about to share.

I have paraded as a poet for years now. In the process of parading I may have actually become one, but that’s another story, another book. This book is a book that I have been waiting to finish since 1995. This is the book that finished me. The story I am about to tell may sound fantastic. It may anger some of you who have followed my work. You may feel that you have come to know me over the years, and in some cases you have, but in others … well, this is a confession.

I came to New York in 1994, having just graduated from Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, where I had majored in philosophy and drama. I was about to begin my first year in the graduate acting program at NYU. I was very excited. I had been planning my career as an actor my entire life and everything was going exactly as planned. Because I could study drama in school, it was never simply a hobby for me; it was a professional choice. On the other hand, I had been rapping for as long as I had been acting, but rapping was never something I could study in school. It was extra curricular. I wrote rhymes between classes (and often during). I battled at lunchtime and recess. It was my favorite past time.

Time passed and by the time I graduated from college I no longer wrote rhymes. I was becoming more focused on acting. Yet, the time that I once spent writing rhymes was now spent listening and critiquing hip-hop. I was a purist. I saw my list of the top ten emcees as the list. I could talk hip-hop all day. And not just the music, the culture. I had been a breakdancer and had even spent part of my time in Atlanta dancing for an up-and-coming rap group. Junior high and high school had been hardly more than a fashion show for me: Lee suits, name belts, name rings, fat laces, you name it. Growing up just an hour outside of New York City had kept me feverishly close to the culture. We always did our back to school shopping on Farmers Boulevard in the Bronx, 8th Street in Manhattan, Dr. Jays in Harlem, Delancey, Orchard and any other place mentioned in classic hip-hop songs to make sure we were never behind the trends. I’m tempted to list the color of my sheep skin, Pumas, shell toes, Lottos, Filas, how many Lees I had, sewed in creases, fat laces, name rings, truck jewelry. What?! Unfuckwitable. Its really the only reason why despite any career success I may experience I hardly bling. I blang.

I never really tried to DJ, but I definitely tried my hand as a graffiti writer. I was never any good, but I always had the utmost respect for any kid that could “write,” as we used to say. I used to watch my cousin Duce and my man Sergio practice their alphabet everyday. As graff writers they knew that every aspect of their writing had to be original. They would transform their letters into highly stylistic, barely legible testaments of ghetto inventiveness. I would try, but I sucked and I knew it. So usually, I just focused on writing rhymes. But my admiration for the art of graffiti writing remained intact. So intact that when I moved to the City for grad school and a friend mentioned that he knew some hidden spots where some legendary graffiti existed and offered to take me on a tour following subway tracks to caverns between stations, I urged him to take me immediately.

Flashlight in hand, we descended the platform and ventured into the darkness. The mazes we journeyed were womblike and seemed infinite. I had to get used to the rats venturing between the rails. I was having flashbacks of Beat Street and Wild Style, two films that practically defined my youth. I remembered the word “Spit” popping up over detailed graffiti. The ultimate dis, defacement of defacement. My mind ventured to the present where so many emcees and poets were now using the word “spit” instead of rap or rhyme. “Yo, let me spit over that track.” Graffiti culture still resonates deeply in the heart of hip-hop, whether we realize it or not. I remember learning of ancient Egyptian dynasties and how, in some, the scribes were more popular, while in others the focus was on the illustrators. Depending on the dynasty or pharaoh of an age, the work on the walls of a pyramid may have more words and scriptures versus more illustrations of the words and scriptures. This topic always made me think of the subject of beats vs. rhymes and early nineties hip-hop, ushered in by Dr. Dre and The Chronic. It was the first time I ever heard people overtly appreciating beats and flow over content. I remember not knowing whether to fast forward or play “Bitches Ain’t Shit” (to me, one of the dopest tracks on the album, especially because of “The Bridge” sample) while in mixed company. Some people, women in particular, would be instantly offended, while others excused the lyrics because of Snoop’s intoxicating flow. It became common to hear people say, almost apologetically, “Oh, I just like the beat.” One of my professors at the time, Pearl Cleage, now a renowned novelist, had come out with a book called Mad at Miles, which she shared in class. In the book she spoke of not being able to listen to Miles Davis’s softly muted trumpet without hearing the muted screams of the women he had unabashedly abused. She opened my eyes to misogyny and the way it plays out in our daily life. I wrote a horrible play for her class attempting to address the issue of misogyny in hip-hop. The Chronic was number one on the charts at the time. And just as I began to think about how Ms. Cleage and her class had deeply affected me, we reached the first stop on our underground graffiti tour. The first stop changed my life.

A piece had been painted that, to this day, I don’t really know how to describe. It looked three dimensional, as if the letters had been painted on top of each other instead of side by side. They seemed to be exiting a wide-open mouth, like bullets from a chamber. I remember stepping closer for a better look and kicking one of many spray paint cans. This one, however, was heavy as if it were full. Excited by the possibility of leaving my tag, I picked it up. Almost immediately, I realized its heaviness was not the sort that one would expect from liquid. I then shook the can and heard a shuffle-like movement. I removed the top, expecting to find a spray nozzle. Instead, what I found was what appeared to be tightly coiled pieces of paper. Almost immediately, I placed the top back on the can as if I had seen nothing unusual, removed my backpack and slid it inside. I assume my friend thought I was keeping a souvenir for myself. He didn’t ask and I didn’t explain. For whatever reasons I had immediately determined to discover the contents of my find alone.

At home that evening, I removed the can from my bag and attempted to liberate its contents. It was an aged yellowish-brown paper that reminded me of the homemade paper that my college roommate’s crafty girlfriend would sometimes make out of recycled goods. I pinched the sides and without much difficulty removed it from the can. As soon as I did, instead of staying together as I expected, part of the scroll’s center fell to the ground. I noted that it had rolled under my chair and began a more careful process of opening the remainder. I began to uncoil the manuscript and soon found that it was not one long scroll, but several scrolled pages rolled together. The first page was the longest. I immediately attempted to read what was written on it and found that I could not make out the words. They seemed to be written with great care, yet almost appeared to be written in a foreign alphabet like Arabic, Sanskrit, or Hebrew. If this was the work of a graffiti artist, it was highly advanced and practically academic. I may have spent about twenty minutes looking at that first page, unable to decipher a single word. I rolled it up and then, one by one, unrolled the other pages and saw that they were all written in the same hand. I placed them back together, rolled them tightly and returned them back to the can. I then picked up the one page that had rolled under my chair, carried it with me to my bed and uncoiled it. It was no different than the others. The writing, though artfully crafted, seemed illegible. After a few minutes of staring at it, I began to form the opinion that it was not written in a foreign alphabet. It was someone’s personal alphabet, like the ones Duce and Sergio would create. But this “someone” was surely a master. It felt old. Older than something written in the eighties or even the seventies. It felt ancient. If I had found it in a museum, I’m not certain that I would have linked it with graffiti. But finding it in a spray can in a graffiti site put it in an unusual context. Yet, not unusual enough to think that it didn’t belong there. Somehow, it felt connected. It made sense. But I could make no sense of it. I stared long and hard, amazed that an individual’s penmanship could be so ancient and “street.” I began to think of it like a piece of graffiti. How many times had I stood looking at a wall trying to decipher a graff writer’s work of art? We would pride ourselves on being the first to decipher a piece. And the best pieces always had to be deciphered. But this piece was like no other. I traced the first word with my finger, turned it upside down, and squinted my eyes. I tried every trick I could think of, yet nothing worked. My eyes grew tired. I left that one page of the manuscript on my night table and went to sleep. I didn’t look at it again for over a week.

In the week that passed I started my graduate acting training at NYU. It was going to be three years of intensive study. To my surprise, the only book that we were required to have was a journal. We were told that no one would read our journals. The professors simply wanted to know that we were recording our thoughts and experiences and guaranteed us that we would thank them for the requirement. I had never really kept a journal and was excited about beginning. I went to Urban Outfitters and found a pocket-sized brown journal with yellow lined pages, and an elastic strap to keep it closed. It cost me five bucks. I loved it. For whatever reasons I had begun to put great thought into what my first words would be in this new journal. It was as if I was beginning a series of letters to my unborn children by keeping it and I wanted to pay particular attention to what I wrote. The blank journal stayed in my pocket for days.

At home one night before going to bed I placed the journal on my nightstand beside the scrolled page of the manuscript. I had recently begun the practice of sitting in silence and doing a five-minute meditation before going to sleep. I would sit on the floor, cross my legs, straighten my spine, close my eyes, and focus my thoughts by simply focusing on following my breath as it came in through my nose, traveled down to my diaphragm, and then exited my mouth. A certain peace prevailed when I did this. It also seemed to help me remember my dreams. This night, after meditating, I climbed in bed and decided to look at the manuscript page. Once again, I was amazed at the craft of the writing. It was slowly beginning to settle on me that this text was old. Pyramid old. But it still felt graffiti connected. Rather than getting frustrated at my inability to decipher the text, I was gaining more appreciation for the genius of whoever had written this. Almost without thinking about it, I picked up the blank journal and the pen beside it. I propped the manuscript page open on the bed beside me and attempted to copy the first few words into my journal. What happened next is hard to describe. I figured I would keep my eyes on the manuscript while copying my rendition into my journal. It was a subconscious decision. My focus was on looking at the details of the writing and copying it without looking at my hand or what I was writing or how it looked. I kept my eyes on the manuscript page while my hand worked at crafting a copy into my journal without peeking at my own handy work. I copied what seemed to be the first phrase or sentence and then allowed myself to look at what I had written. To my surprise, what I had copied was hardly as illegible as the original. I expected to find awkward scribbles, instead what I found was a sloppily written sentence, which read, “I stand on the corner of the block slingin’ amethyst rocks.” I looked back at the manuscript, and, yes, the first phrase was now somehow legible to me. I could see clearly that that was indeed what it said. However I could not as easily decipher the following phrase. It appeared that I was going to have to go through the process of copying without peeking again. I did. When I finished copying the next phrase, I looked at my journal and read “Drinkin’ 40s of mother earth’s private nectar stock. Dodgin’ cops.” I laughed. This was the craziest shit I had ever experienced. I read my first journal entry aloud several times, enjoying how it sounded. It felt like something an emcee would write. But what kind of emcee? What the hell did it mean? It was only after a few minutes that I realized what I had propped the manuscript page open with, a piece of amethyst given to me by an ex-girlfriend for my birthday. She had told me it was my birthstone and that it was known to enhance one’s spiritual capacity. I had kept it on my nightstand since she had given it to me and had even held it in my hand while meditating. I picked it up and held it as I repeated those first lines over and over again. I felt strange, like I was on the cusp of something. Was it mere coincidence? I began to feel toyed with, as if somehow someone had left this manuscript specifically for me to find. The thought both frightened and excited me. The process of deciphering felt way too personal. The fact that I could only make sense of what was written after writing it in my own hand was surreal.

I spent the next six weeks copying and deciphering that one page. I would stop often to repeat the lines. They made me think of language and my experience in new and interesting ways. They inspired me to write lines of my own. I would spend whole days repeating phrases like mantras and jotting down the thoughts that came to mind as a result of them. I had been an emcee for years, but I had never written anything like this and I certainly had never heard anything like it either. I repeated it in its entirety again and again. The wordplay, imagery, and content amazed me. It spoke of the power of the spirit, of overcoming oppression, of being of an ancient lineage. It spoke directly to me. I felt empowered by it. Little doubt remained that I had come across something old and important. I would spend hours trying to figure out how something that felt so old could speak directly to these times. And, even more so, directly to me. By the time I finally finished transcribing the first manuscript page, I had it completely memorized.

On the day after I completed that first page another incident occurred. It was Friday night and I was on my way home from play rehearsal at school. I got off the subway at my regular Lafayette Avenue stop in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. I decided that I would try to find some Caribbean food before going home. I walked down Fulton Avenue in search of a veggie patty. It was about 11 P.M. and a small crowd was gathered outside of a storefront whose steamy window proved impossible to see through. A neon sign hung above the door that read “café.” I opened the door and found a large group of people tightly squeezed into a small yellowish room with a woman standing before them reading a poem. A man at the door asked me if I wanted to sign up to read. It was an open mic. Immediately the manuscript page came to mind. I signed my name on the list in the last available slot. I purchased a muffin and stood near the counter next to a beautiful cinnamon-colored woman with short curly hair. She asked me if I was going to read. I asked her if she thought I looked like a poet. She looked me up and down and said, “definitely.” I blushed, deep purple.

I had to sit through about ten poets before it would be my turn. I had never really sat through a poetry reading before and was amazed at the seeming popularity of this event. It was packed. The people, all young like me, would vocally respond to the images and content of the poems shared. It felt like church. The poems were mostly original, although the content matter was standard for the time: revolution. Many of the poets would read from a typed page or even from a journal. Some seemed quite shy about reading in public. By the time it was my turn I was pretty excited. The host introduced me as the final poet of the evening and I took the stage thinking, “There’s no reason to be nervous. I’ve been on stages my entire life.” I was certain I knew my “poem” by heart. I took a deep breath and began.

I had already experienced a huge surge of energy while reciting the poem to myself, but I was by no means expecting the feeling that came with reciting this poem to an audience. I could practically see the words exiting my mouth. The image of the open mouth came to mind. I was becoming the manifestation of that image. When I finished the poem there was an immense stillness. The audience seemed to have the feeling that they had just witnessed something extraordinary. They began to applaud wildly. One woman, I noticed, was crying. A man came up to me and told me that the Last Poets and Gil Scott Heron would be performing at S.O.B.’s and asked if I would like to open up for them. Another man came up and told me that Sonia Sanchez and Amiri Baraka would be reading at a Brooklyn university and asked if I would like to read at the performance as well. Another woman approached and told me that KRS One and the Fugees would be performing at Rock Against Racism in Union Square and asked if I would like to join the list of performers. I received two other invitations, one for a reading with Allen Ginsberg and another with the Roots. I had one poem. A poem that I couldn’t even say that I had written. Or had I?

By this time, I had shown the manuscript to one or two friends that came over and questioned whether they were able to decipher any of the text. They hadn’t, not even when I explained to them my process. Now, almost automatically I was being thrust into the world of poetry with world-renowned poets and asked to share my writing, this writing. It felt like it was bringing attention to itself. I wasn’t completely comfortable with the idea, but I was even more uncomfortable with the idea of keeping it to myself. I hadn’t really thought of the text as poetry. In fact, my initial thoughts were that I had come across some ancient scriptures. But then, isn’t scripture very well-written poetry? I decided that I would spend more time deciphering the texts and that I would also begin to write my own words and thoughts either in reaction to the manuscript or simply inspired by my own personal journey.

I began to frequent the café, which I found out was called the Brooklyn Moon, sharing bits of the text that I had deciphered and sometimes even my own writing, and began to acquire quite a reputation. When asked about the poems I was careful to say that I could not claim authorship of the poems, although, I knew the implication was that I was taking the spiritually artistic approach of thinking of myself as a vessel. This seemed like the best explanation because there was a great deal of truth within it. I had begun to feel quite strongly that I should not reveal the origin of the writings until I had deciphered them in their entirety. With each recitation I could feel their importance growing. Often when I sat home deciphering I would slip into trance like states where I would sit for hours trying to imagine who had written them. The more I read the more I began to believe that these words had been written by someone African in origin. Perhaps some sort of shaman who foresaw slavery and the calculated oppression of African people and had planted this text to guide us through a crucial moment in our history, our future, our present. I thought intensely about the power of hip-hop. Had it, also, been planted by these African shamans as some sort of seed that would not blossom until four generations after slavery? Did it somehow hold the key to helping us express the greatest idea of freedom imaginable? Could any music have that sort of power?

Surreal, almost supernatural, things would occur every time I read aloud from the manuscript. I’d watch the words, themselves, settle into the minds of the audience and how they would leave inspired, almost as if they had witnessed something extra-terrestrial. And even within myself, the energy that would swirl within and around me as I deciphered and recited these poems is practically indescribable. But even stranger things began to happen. People began to respond as if it were their personal mission to see that these writings reach the masses. After one reading, at New York’s reputable Nuyorican Poetry Café, I was approached by Marc Levin, a director, who had an idea of how these poems could work their way into a film. That film was Slam, which ended up winning the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and the Camera D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in France. Paul Devlin approached me and other poets from the 1996 Nuyorican Grand Slam team with plans of making a documentary of our touring experience. That film was called Slam Nation. One of the slam team members, Jessica Care Moore, had self-published her own book of poetry and approached me about publishing mine. That book became The Seventh Octave, a pre-mature collection of parts of the manuscript that I was secretly deciphering, and my own poetry, inspired by the ancient text. Next I was approached by legendary producer, Rick Rubin, who encouraged me to sign to his label, American Recordings, and record what became my first album, Amethyst Rock Star.

It took much longer than I would have imagined to decipher the text in its entirety. Each “poem” often left me in such a bewildered state that I could never guess what would follow. My process of deciphering remained the same, yet the text became increasingly difficult, as sometimes I would have to attempt a passage as many as thirty times before it became clear. It often seemed that I could not decipher a text until I was ready to understand it. I often took long breaks between working on the manuscript for the sake of digesting what I had already deciphered. About three years into it I began deciphering the poem entitled “Co-dead language.” The long list of names baffled me. Most startling was that the writing seemed to be a direct response to the death of the hip-hop icons Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur. I had found the manuscript before either rapper had been killed, and even though I had been comfortable with the idea of this being an ancient text that had somehow fallen into my lap, when it spoke this directly to our times, I must admit, it frightened me. That fear propelled me to read it aloud as much as possible. I put it to music. I read it on TV. I couldn’t listen to hip-hop the same way. I felt personally attacked whenever I felt an emcee was misusing his power. I grew angry at the way capitalism and violence was being romanticized. Then I started working on the final scroll.

I had saved the longest scroll for last. This was to be the seventh and final “poem.” From the start, the tone of this page was completely different. It felt raw, unpolished, even gangster. My difficulty in deciphering it lay in the fact that I was completely surprised by the direction in which it seemed to be heading. And for a long time, I guess I wasn’t ready for it. More than any of the others, I could feel its direct connection to hip-hop. The style in which it was written felt more like a rhyme than a poem. It was hardcore. So hardcore, that I abandoned it for over a year, while busying myself with other projects. Had I abandoned hip-hop too? It’s true that I was listening to less hip-hop than I ever had. The growing romanticism of gangsterism and heartless pimpery had left me somewhat confused and more than a little angry. It felt like hip-hop was further off course than it had ever been. The have-nots of the African American ghettos had seemingly bought into the heartless capitalistic ideals that had originally been responsible for buying them as slaves. It felt hopeless. Hip-hop was dead. Misogyny and ignorance prevailed. Hip-hop seemed to be running the same God-forsaken course as the American government. Diamonds were as fluid as oil while the violence and corruption surrounding African diamond mines became just as overlooked as the number of dead women and children in Iraq and Afghanistan murdered in the name of American greed: the crudest oil of all. It hurt to hear emcees rapping about pointing guns at each other rather than at real enemies facing our communities and children (, Said the Shotgun to the Head). It felt senseless.

Slowly my senses returned to me. Through the growing popularity of southern hip-hop, “crunk” music, “trap” music, chopped and screwed, etc., I was reminded of the original passion embedded in hip-hop music. It’s not that the subject matter was any more uplifting; rather the context that shifted surrounding it. Suddenly, through hearing Southern rappers voicing their desire to once and for all “put the South on the map” I was able to see that hip-hop was still voicing a centuries old desire for respect. I was also able to realize how much of a product of America it is. This cry for respect allowed me to lose my impatience with hip-hop’s overall infatuation with gangsters and realize that even that was simply a cry for power and to be recognized. Like so many, in cases when the oppressed regain a sense of power, the initial intent is to express or abuse that power in the same way that it was used against them. Men have used this sort of manipulative power over women for centuries. In hip-hop, as in America, misogyny still prevails. But that misogyny is ironically rooted in an intense and undeniable love of women. How can we uncover those roots? I slowly began to trust that I would not be shocked by my findings with this last poem. I went back to deciphering it. Sure enough, I believe that that is what the last poem (actually the first in this collection, NGH WHT) is aimed at. The problem with poetry or scripture is that even after all my deciphering, there is still much to be deciphered. Phrases must be picked apart, dissected, meditated on. There are layers of meaning.

In the bottom corner of the final page I found the last few words. What I found, I initially thought funny and quite witty. I decided to use those words for the title of the entire manuscript, The Dead Emcee Scrolls. Of course, it is first a reference to the ancient Judaic texts that were found in the 1940s in caves near the Dead Sea. The Dead Sea Scrolls are often confused with the Nag Hamadi, other ancient texts that were found in Egypt around the same time that claim to be, among other things, the secret teachings of Yeshua (Jesus). Both findings, along with a few others, have been of growing popularity since the pop explosion of The Da Vinci Code, a novel that uses factual historic data to bring light to ground-shattering truths which may have been suppressed by the early Christian church. I also believe the title to be a reference to the two hip-hop icons whose deaths have served as an example of what can happen when the power of hip-hop is misused or simply over-looked.

I have yet to fully comprehend why these texts came to me. Maybe my training as an actor, and until then, untapped talent as a writer, prepared me to write and recite them in a way that would garner the attention they now desire. I believe this release to be a part of the original author’s plan. I have stopped concerning myself with the question of who wrote them and have simply found peace in knowing that “it is written.” Yet, these writings have also had a profound affect on me. In fact, I will go so far as to say that they have made a poet of me. Before encountering them I had certainly dabbled with emceeing and poetry. Shit, I never lost a battle. But my rhyming and writing before encountering these texts could have easily been aligned with many a braggadocious emcee. This manuscript changed me. It forced me to decipher my own life and purpose. Subsequently, my books, She and , Said the Shotgun to the Head, were exclusively written by me. Most of the poems and songs on Amethyst Rock Star and the self-titled Saul Williams album are my own writing.

I have decided to share some of the effect that the text had on me, personally, by including some journal excerpts in the second half of this book. As I mentioned, once I encountered these texts I began to listen to hip-hop differently. I began to think differently. The journal excerpts will give you a glance into the seven years of my personal life when the majority of these texts were deciphered. They are a personal offering in light of the impersonal nature of The Dead Emcee Scrolls. Through reading them you may gain insight into the way these texts helped me find my voice as a poet, emcee and artist.

Well, I guess that’s it. Enjoy it. Read it to yourself or out loud to a friend. Try it over a beat. Whatever. But spend time with it. If you’re an emcee, double that time and let it inform your lyricism. In many ways it probably already has. You may be surprised to see other emcees referenced either by name or by quote. Who’s quoting whom? There’s no explanation. Perhaps I was not the first to find this, but by some amazing grace it has found me and now I present it to you.

As for the scrolls themselves, I’ve kept them tucked away in hopes of one day being able to arrange some sort of exhibit. I am uncertain of the will of the “author” and, thus, have learned to sit back and allow things to unfold as they will. This has been my finding’s greatest lesson to me: patience. The changes that I have wanted to see in hip-hop, American society, the black community, and the world at large, can only unfold at the rate of our evolving consciousness. People ask me why I think poetry has become popular among the youth again. I respond that we cannot achieve a new world order without new words and ways of articulating the world we’d like to experience. The youth of today are using poetry slams and open mics as a means of calling our new world into order. Hip-hop has aided our generation tremendously in helping us formulate the ability to articulate our desires and dreams over beats and in our daily lives. Word up. It is only a matter of time before we realize the importance of these times. And in the words of Victor Hugo, “There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.”

SAUL WILLIAMS

I think that NGHs are the best of people that were slaves and that’s how they got to be NGHs. They stole the cream of the crop from Africa and brought them over here. And God, as they say, works in mysterious ways. So He made everybody NGH, ’cause we were arguing over in Africa about the Watusi, the Baule, the Senufo … all in different languages. So He brought us all over here, the best, the kings, the queens, the princesses, and the princes, and put us all together and made us one tribe, NGHs.

—RICHARD PRYOR, from Wattstax, the film

Fellas … I want to give the drummer some of this funky soul we got here. You ain’t got to do no soloing, brother, just keep what you got. We gonna turn it loose! ’Cause it’s a Mother.

—JAMES BROWN, from “Funky Drummer”

NGH WHT

CHAPTER 1

BCH NGH. Gun trigga. Dick’s bigga. Why

fuck? Killer. Blood spiller. BCH stealer. Mack

truck. Bad luck, fuckin with this black buck.

Bigger Thomas, I promise. Leave a corpse in

the furnace.

NGH WHT? I’m complicated. Down to my

strut. Like the way I hold my gat, flat on its

side, like a pup. And I’m tickling the trigger.

Make it laugh from its gut. You would think

I’m a comedian the way it erupts.

NGH WHT? I represent the ashes and dust.

All the soot up in your chimney. Got you

stuck in a rut. You could fire, hold your fire,

son, I’m smoking you up. You could withhold

your desires. Even Buddha got snuffed.

NGH, now, I’m standin’ on the corner of wow!

Exclamations pointed at me, ‘cause I’m gattin

these nouns. Got these kids inventin adjectives.

I’m gaining renown. Because I am, NGH! I am!

NGH please. The earth, the air, the fire, and the

seas. Third dimension. Fourth dimension, Fifth

dimension, with ease. All that shit you never

thought of. Got you smokin them trees. At your

front door with my sawed-off. Got you snortin

them keys.

NGH WHT? Boy I ain’t gonna knock. Open

up. When it’s time to meet your maker, ain’t

no changin the plot. You’re an actor in a series.

NGH, I own the lot. And I’m here to serve these

royalties like gold in a pot.

CHAPTER 2

Callin haves and have-nots, every cell on the

block, every NGH with a trigga: empty barreled

or cocked. Marchin like parade of scars if you

been stabbed or shot. Son, we smokin these

batons right in front of these cops.

Callin out to the kids, all my NGHs with bids.

Whether suited up or booted up or stuck in the

mid. You can download it or boot it up. My pupils,

un-lid! All my students of the underground with

record store gigs.

Callin out to the girls. The inventors of worlds.

The intelligence of relevance and elegant pearls.

Pour like nectar from the lotus, big bang opus in

swirls, down the sweaty back of hair weave tracks

and dry Jheri curls.

Callin out to the pimps. Hat-cocked, slump, with

your gimp on your wrist with just a twist of lime

to go with that limp. Hold your cup up so this

ancient rain can find its way in. Let these NGHs

know the cost of reachin heavenly bliss.

CHAPTER 3

Here it is! The contents of a balled-up fist. All the

density of matter could never add up to this. Here’s

the secret of the energy transferred by a kiss. Yes,

the secret of eternity, the secret of bliss.

And the stars: the rings of Saturn; fiery Mars; all

the jet-propelled philosophies of Venus in Furs. All

the pussy you can handle from a poet that purrs.

Chillin in a furry Kangol and some suede Timbs

with spurs.

(Arches back to hiss-story. Afternoon nap-py words.)

CHAPTER 4

Death creeps through the streets over programmed

beats. A rabid dog in heat on a dead end street. Oil

slicks: the only rainbows canvass gray concrete.

Shadows of skyscrapers fall when Mohammed speaks.

Corpses piled in heaps. Sores and decay. Reeks.

Placin tags on feet. A Nike Air Force fleet. Custom

Made: unique. Still in box: white sheet. Ripened

blue black sweet. White tank top, wife beat BREAK.

Hearts in two-step beat BREAK.

Dance pray work whip beat BREAK.

Neck back jump back kiss BREAK.

Now shake it off.

CHAPTER 5

Consider your-self: less than, inferior to,

half man, superior to, womb man, unbearable

likeness. Consider yourself: almost, never

quite, dark skinned, lily white, black as sin,

devil’s den, whiteness.

Consider your-self: outcast, criminal, unseen,

invisible, point blank, ready-cocked, trigger.

Consider yourself: hardcore, dirt poor, hustler,

BCH/whore, reverend, doctor, nigger.

Cotton corn crop wheat BREAK.

Entrails tongue pig’s feet BREAK.

Neck back jump back kiss BREAK.

Now break it off.

CHAPTER 6

Church of: fear and lust; hell or bust; back of

bus; scream and cuss; hold your tongue; unsung

apostle. Church of: God and Christ; men and

mice; Vincent Price; naughty nice; fat suit; white

beard; colossal.

Church of: down and low; sick and shut; born

in sin; usher strut; ten percent; short on rent;

basket. Church of: Sunday suit; hex and root;

chicken foot; dusty boot; foot stomp; hand

clap; casket.

Ashes dust kill crush BREAK.

Build up pimp strut slap BREAK.

Neck back jump back kiss BREAK.

Now clap your hands to what he’s doing.

CHAPTER 7

I came in the door. I said it before before.

The future’s mistress is history’s whore.

Ate the whole fuckin’ apple, NGH, even the

core. Swallowed seed. Made her bleed. Now

she’s begging for more.

Ancient Judaic law. Kosher, Crunk and hardcore.

Goat blood mark on the door. Open shut. Yom

Kippur. Now who’s gonna take the weight? It’s

your birthday. Take the cake.

Blow out the candles. I wait in the darkness,

like a vandal. The silhouette of SET in the

mirror on the mantle.

Fireplace is in the heart. Water places the art

’round the islands of desiring where most primitives

stalk, sacrificing their daughters. These primordial

waters carry a feminine agenda that no man ever

taught us.

True, they captured and caught us. Transported,

sold us, and bought us. Constituted and lawed us.

Distorted truths that they taught us. We rebelled

then they fought us. We conformed then they

formed us. Now y’all NGHs rhymin ‘bout

material possessions.

False idols. False gods. Revering false titles.

Peep dude with the platinum cross. He floss

bibles. Check vitals. Revivals. Father, son in

denial. Throw momma from the train and derail

every child.

CHAPTER 8

Rape of a nation. Offbeat complete. Blood of

the Haitian. Diaspora. Divide to defeat. Euro

invasion.

Legs spread ‘round midnight. “Hold still, girl.

Don’t fight.” Nurtured seed despite dawn’s

early light.

Back to basics. Back to the streets. Jordache

and Asics. Le Tigre hoodie, fitted and neat.

Graffiti capers. The spray can vapors. Wrong

side of the track. Third rail shock treatment.

Yo I’m bringin’em back.

Unwrap the mummy. Replace his heart. Feed

him. He’s hungry. Remind him of his nature.

Divine. Pictures on money. Cash in on melanin,

top of spine. He cries for mommy.

Mommy’s getting raped, right now. Greco-

Roman fate, somehow. Tubman’s running late,

so she plans her own escape.

She feels the music. Sign of the timeless flight

of broomsticks. Over the floor. Marital law.

The jump off movement. Movement: rhythm

and blues. Hip sways, acoustic. Wind of the

waist not want not case. Sign of improvement.

Movement: grind to unwind. The muse of

music. Even tonight, she moves despite how

dark her blues get.

Noose swings like a pendulum. Whip/crack

a/cross back, again. Simon bids his help and

then … DJs two worlds blend.

CHAPTER 9

Feel the music. Son, we got you programmed

like a beat. When I press snare, Yo, guard your

grill. Press kick, you move your feet. You can’t

compete. Got my hydrants parked on every

street. I’m federal, NGH. Son of Sun. Come

close and feel the heat.

I am the streets. The white lines only separate

me from me. You hydroplane in false god’s

name and still crash into me. Sign and tree,

mountainside, guardrail into the sea. They

thought they stole you from my arms then

carried you to me.

Here’s the key. DNA encoded in a beat.

White rocks in a vial, NGH, ain’t got nuthin

on me. BCH, I’m free. Ask these editors at

MTV. Far as they know they’re publishing

some new school poetry. Let it be. ‘Cause

even that will do to turn the key. Doorways

into other worlds. The truth shall set you free.

You are me. I am you. But also I am he.

Shepherd of a bastard flock that grazes in

the streets.

Feel the beat. Nod your head. Lean back. Yo,

touch your feet. Let me see you pop that

thang right there, girl, in your seat. Feel the

heat. Count this page amongst your whitest

sheets. Comfort in my every word. Slide under.

Countless sheep.

CHAPTER 10

Hail Mary, Mother of God. Got the whole

host of angels shuffling in my iPod. NGHs

learned to raise their voices when I lowered

my rod. Staff of Moses. Pharaoh knows it.

Son, my word is my bond.

Tune my heart with my mind. Speak my nature.

Divine. Called this shit into existence back in ’79.

With the future in my pocket. Tightly gripped

like a nine. Keep my finger on the trigger. Waitin

for the right time.

CHAPTER 11

Ancient NGHs align! Path of cosmic design.

Blood of kings ‘cause Saturn’s rings don’t

need no diamonds to shine. Yes, the reason

for the season. Ornamented, divine. Coded

language of the mystics with my fist

in the sky.

Keep your head up. We represent the

real, my NGH. Dead up. Book of the

Dead. History bled. This NGH fed up.

Led us to despair, some into prayer,

and they won’t let up until they got us

worshipping them false gods instead

of the realness.

God of the streets. My NGHs feel this. We

nod our heads and worship through beats.

Go ’head and kneel. It’s the love that makes

the cipher complete. And it’s displayed

through the way the bass line marries the beat.

CHAPTER 12

Yesh, Yesh y’all. You don’t stop. I spill

some liquid for my NGHs on the stop

clock. Then shake the hands of time. I

got him for his wristwatch. I got a second

wind and shook him, like in hopscotch.

Jumped the turnstile, turned, smiled, gestured:

hand crotch. Double-cross a motherfucker

’fore I get got.

Caught in the crossfire. Brought

over seas, you were caught in the

crossfire. Down on your knees,

you were caught in the crossfire.

Yeshua, please help us out of the

crossfire. The cross fire.

Caught in the crossfire. The KKK

had you caught in the crossfire.

Prayed every day, you were caught

in the crossfire. In Jesus name, you

were caught in the crossfire. The

cross fire.

CHAPTER 13

Get up and walk, NGH. You the one

we was waitin for. Way before dem

Latin books bastardized the sacred law.

Made a NGH question. Mark of the beast:

deceased. Guess what’s in-store? Wait for

it to register. Now, empty out that register, NGH.

And keep your hands in the sky. You the money

and the power. Get that green out your eye.

Oblivious. Hoodwinked back to black. These

NGHs wearing crosses. The shirts off their

back. Pay cash out your ass for that diamond

crack. Smoke rock-roll away or your money back.

Whipped and burned. NGH, you done

carried the cross. Made Milano a fan.

Black Madonna’s the boss. You free.

Half the cost. Grace maze. Now you’re lost.

Man-child in the mirror. The picture’s getting

clearer and it’s you.

I crossed that bridge in ’72. JB played

the funky drummer. Now these fools playin

you. A lie preserved in stained glass doesn’t

make it more true. Survey says, the little

drummer boy be drummin for you.

CHAPTER 14

Newborn king. Your moms: that fat lady that

sing. His eye on the sparrow. Point blank,

through a barrel. You bad to the bone. Cancer.

Sir, your marrow. I ordered the monkey. We

back to the barrel of laughs.

These NGHs God-body tryin to be golden

calves. Five percent on the corner of pure

science and math. While the eighty-five divide

their time between dead end paths. And the ten

percent have spent their rent on wars fiery wrath.

Dead Sirius. Waitin for damned self’s return

to true self. True health. True school. New book

on old shelf. I, self, lord and master. Choose one

path. Move faster.

CHAPTER 15

Yeah, though I walk still talk the talk. Exorcisin

all these demons. Black board and chalk. From the

brightest constellation on land, New York. To the

origin of darkness. BREAK/POP the cork.

To all the battles fought. All the captives caught.

Lives sold and bought. Enslaved for naught.

’Cause today, we ‘bout to make this freedom a

sport. Leave your jewelry in the bleachers. Come

take the court.

Yo the banana peels are carefully placed. So keep

your shell toes carefully laced. The illest NGH got

peppered and maced. Now amplify this. Turn up

the bass. And think about it.

CHAPTER 16

Picture me, lampin’ in the company car. Rims

like Tibetan prayer wheels. NGH WHT? I’m

a star. I cruise the block like a feather back and

forth ‘til I land as the song in your ear or the

book in your hand. Now the whole fuckin world

’bout to know who I am.

Got your whole system up in my trunk. That ‘dog

eat dog’ make my woofers bark: atomic crunk All

my trill NGHs know who be bringin da funk. Lees

and shell toes like it’s Black History Month.

CHAPTER 17

Son of a vortex. African roots. That chicken foot

hex. Binary star NASA can’t compute. Linear

complex. It’s simple. Bloodlines span from

Lalībela temples straight to chitterling minstrels.

Spin it back to the intro.

There was one. Bore witness to the rays of the

sun. Synthesized in her own image. Photo negative.

Shun. The development of Parliament. The phallic

bop gun. Thus, the mother-ship connection spawned

the birth of the drum.

Ancient drum begat drum. Kingdom go. Kingdom

come. Ancient sector of the scepter risen up to the

sun. Hidden hand of man begat patented clone of

the drum. Boom Bap strapped into a wire, tightly

coiled, and re-spun.

Trigger sound. Trigger gun. Drum machine. Machine

gun. Bodies piled. Carefully filed under beats that were

once reprogrammed to become: unplugged concert of

sun. Every ray with sample clearance. Every two begat one.

Boom Bap hard as a gun. White cross-trainers, unstrung.

Let these suckas know the cost of making Harriet run.

Let the North Star be your guiding post when turned

from the sun until knowledge reigns supreme over

nearly everyone.

CHAPTER 18

Check it out now! Check me out now!

I let these MTHRFKRs know what I’m

about now. And ain’t no way no one could

ever play me out now. Because I represent

the present, NGH, right now!

Check it out now! Check me out now! At the

helm of the ship. Shipping out, now! NGH us

angel dust and devout, now! Heaven high as

the sky. Never come down!

CHAPTER 19

Attention: another dimension. Another

complicated twist too twisted to mention.

Another pair of NGH lips tongue-tied to

perfection. Another frame of mind exists

beyond comprehension.

Attention. Fourth realm of ascension.

The absence of tension. A corporate lynching.

Their god is their henchman. And he ain’t

just pinching. This NGH bites! And, according

to pictures, this NGH white!

WHT?! Come down SLCTR rum pumpum

pum! Me keeps me tremor in me pocket. Come

and get some! Again! Come down SLCTR rum

pumpum pum! Me keeps me tremor in me pocket.

Come and get some!

Gimme diamond. Gimme gold. Gimme sugar.

Gimme candy. Me wine and me handy and dat

in me panty.

A stoppa! Na issa supa cat manna you a na lingo.

Tell him to come back. Tell him he a murderer. Tell

him mamma womb a she da real carrier. Woman

no a cry a you a no suffer. Tell him come a man

a who a no batter. Have mercy.

CHAPTER 20

Let me mold a guitar of your bodily bazaar.

Strap your tongue, chord your lungs, string

your toes. And bows that precede the rain

shall serpent symphonies in your name.

Mother of countless daughters. The tricks of

time. It is your thrust and grind that defines

us. We are the offspring of your decapitated

head. The bastard sons of Father Time.

Let Saturn be reborn a girl. Let her nurture

her children rather than eat them. Hide them

from our forefathers and the angry ghosts

of X-mas past. Let them be raised away from

the phallic dangers of our times.

Let their secrets remain secrets until we are

ready to cherish them as our own. Nurture

and adore them. The timeless secrets of

creation:

The darkness that yields light. The seed that

bears fruit. The mother that bears the cross

of her fathers and her fathers’ fathers who

beat her when she bore no sons. His raised

fist the original Boom Bap.

Spin that record backwards. Nigger to NGH.

Before before. John the Boom Baptist. Bring

me his head. His dick. His eyes and teeth. His

arms and feet. Bring me all that is mine, all that

has been buried, scattered or lost until history

is ours again.

Mothers of night and windsong. Daughters of dust

and detriment. Nameless. Fuck it. Let them remain

nameless. It won’t stop their truth from prevailing.

Because it is not written. Because it don’t matter

anyway. Because there’s nothing you can do about

it. Because there’s no excuse, no explanation.

And that is reason enough to

Dance. Even when your feet hurt.

Dance like the fires of hell are upon

you and you’re dodging every flame.

Dance when it tastes good.

Dance when the spirit moves you.

Dance because you feel it and you don’t

have to be taught how to count, how to step

and slide, how to twirl and jump and land

on a good foot before taking off to fly,

NGH, dance. Dance, nigger. Paint your faces.

Shine your shoes. Pop that collar. Shake it.

Wind it. Kick fight scratch rip kill BREAK.

Neck back jump back kiss BREAK.

Uprock freeze pop lock BREAK.

Don’t stop don’t stop snap BREAK.

Into ferocious song and dance. Calculated

movement. Gestures of prayer and invocation.

Dance. Your life depends on it.

Cakewalk. Lindy. Charleston Mashed potatoes.

Camel walk. Hot pants. Hustle. Electric boogaloo.

Patty Duke. Steve Martin. Pee-wee Herman.

Prep. Wop. Rooftop. Cabbage Patch. Chicken

head. Ragtop. Wobble. Crump. Snake. BREAK!

CHAPTER 21

You wish you could dance like this! You wish!

Standin there. High postin. You wish. “And our

American Idol is Fantasia.”

“You know you want me, Mickey. You

can’t afford me, though. My name is Saturn,

Pluto. I ain’t no Disney ho.”

Sing it, girl. Sing it. Southern trees bear

strange WHT?! Sometimes I feel like a

motherless WHT?! Drop beats like bombs

in Alabama churches, Afghani libraries,

New Jersey turnpike, the sphinx’s nose,

crack in Compton, AIDS in Africa, small

pox in blankets, blue-eyed Jesus, the Holy

Ghost and all dem other covered women,

fallen soldiers and noblemen.

Mother turned whore turn in graves

turn to each other and help us over-

turn tables.

Turntables. Nails sharp as needles.

Vaseline on faces. Scratch scratch

scratch scratch.

BREAK BREAK

Scratch scratch

scratch scratch.

BREAK BREAK

Kick kick snare.

BREAK

Scratch kick snare.

BREAK

Snare kick, kick. Kick, snare. Snare

kick. Snare. Snare kick, kick, kick,

kick, kick, kick kick, snare.

Snare kick, kick. Kick, snare. Snare

kick. Snare. Snare kick, kick, kick,

kick, kick, kick kick, snare.

Snare kick, kick. Kick, snare. Snare

kick. Snare. Snare kick, kick, kick,

kick, kick, kick kick, snare.

Snare kick, kick. Kick, snare. Snare

kick. Snare. Snare kick, kick, kick,

kick, kick, kick kick, snare.

Chop and screw it.

BREAK it down beneath labyrinthine

corridors of anguish and despair. The

chamber the bullet travels. Chamber of

commerce. Tunnel vision of the train

over tracks …

CHAPTER 22

Not until you listen to RKM on a rocky

mountaintop have you heard hip-hop.

Extract the urban element that created it

and let an open wide countryside illustrate it.

Riding on a freight train in the freezing

rain listening to Coltrane. My reality went

insane and I think I saw Jesus. He was

playing hopscotch with Betty Carter who

was cursing out in a scat like gibberish for

not saying butterfingers.

And my fingers run through grains of sand

like seeds of time. The pains of man.

The frames of mind which built these frames

which is the structure of our urban super-

structure.

The trains and planes could corrupt and

obstruct your planes of thought so that

you forget how to walk through the woods

which ain’t good ’cause if you never

walked through the trees listening to Nobody

Beats The Biz then you ain’t never heard

hip-hop.

CHAPTER 23

And you don’t stop. And you don’t stop.

And you must stop letting cities define you.

Confine you to that which is brick and cement.

We are not a hard people. Our domes have

been crowned with the likes of steeples.

That which is our being soars with the eagles

and the Jonathan Livingston Seagulls. Yes, I

got wings. You got wings. All God’s children

got wings. So let’s widen the circumference

of our nest and escape this urban incubator.

The wind plays the world like an instrument.

Blows through trees like flutes. But trees won’t

grow in cement. And as heart beats bring

percussion fallen trees bring repercussions.

Cities play upon our souls like broken drums.

We drum the essence of creation from city

slums. But city slums mute our drums and

our drums become humdrum ’cause city slums

have never been where our drums were from.

Just the place where our daughters and sons

become offbeat heartbeats.

Slaves to city streets. Where hearts get broken

when heartbeats stop. Broken heartbeats become

break-beats for NGHs to rhyme on top.

CHAPTER 24

I’m falling up flights of stairs. Scraping

myself from the sidewalk. Jumping from

rivers to bridges. Drowning in pure air.

Hip-hop is lying on the side of the road

half dead to itself. Blood scrawled over its

mangled flesh like jazz. Stuffed into an over-

sized record bag.

Tuba lips swollen beyond recognition. Diamond

studded teeth strewn like rice at karma’s wedding.

The ring bearer bore bad news. Minister of

Information wrote the wrong proclamation. Now

everyone’s singing the wrong song.

Dissonant chords find necks like nooses. That

NGH kicked the chair from under my feet.

Harlem Shaking from a rope, but still on beat.

Damn that loop is tight! NGH found a way to

sample the way, the truth, the light. Can’t wait to

play myself at the party tonight. NGHs are gonna

die!

Cop car swerves to the side of the road. Hip-hop

takes its last breath. The cop scrawls vernacular

manslaughter onto his yellow pad, then balls the

paper into his hands, deciding he’d rather freestyle.

You have the right to remain silent. You have the

right to remain silent. You have the right to remain

silent. And maybe you should have before your

bullshit manifested.

CHAPTER 25

Begin. Demystify the mummy within. If you

ain’t hotep then ho step, I’ll step to your friend.

Parable of the wind. Blew black through to the

end. Endless nights, kicks and fights against time

and her friends.

Slowly day and night blend. Twilight takes form

and then open sky sprouts an eye: solo, singular,

sin. Downward glance, upward grin. Half the

women are men. Children born of the morn grow

until daylight’s end.

Sunset sets on the wind. Blue-black blows once

again. Ever since ever after henceforth happy ending.

Children born of the wind take the night as their

friend. Starlit sky, many-eyed wonder of the within.

Fear: original sin. Death: nowhere near the end. Once

upon break o’dawn’s early Lyte: Paper Thin.

CHAPTER 26

When you say you love me a series of changes

begin to occur. First there is a warmth. The warmth

generates heat. The heat permeates the cold. The ice

melts. Limbs and branches are thawed. Blood

circulates. A feeling of comfort pervades.

The body is oxygenated. It becomes limber. It yearns

to dance, to move about freely and express its newfound

energy. Music is sought through voice or ear. The heart

identifies the rhythm of the song and synchronizes its

pace. A union is formed between the visible and the

invisible.

Song is the invitation from the primordial unseen to

become one with that which is seen. To nod your head

is to agree that the moment is godly: communion. To

dance is to become God. There are many ways of dancing.

Follow your heart.

CHAPTER 27

A circle forms. I enter. Footsteps from side to

side. I am forming figure eights with my feet.

Footwork, centuries old, reconfigured for the

present. NGH WHT: the expression on my face,

the name of the faceless. One hand on the ground,

then the other. Baby swipes. Legwork. Knee spin.

I’m nice with this shit. Hand spin into windmill

into head spin: Revolution. Here and now, NGH.

Who’s next?

CHAPTER 28

In a past life I was a wood-carver’s knife. The

sharpened blade of a woodcutter. The eldest

son of the chief’s brother. A maker of drums.

We scraped the insides of goat hides to find

the hollows where sound resides. Offering

the parts we did not use. To invoke the muse.

Music of the ghettos, the cosmos, the negroes,

the necros: overcomers of death; disciples of

breath. Dissection of drumbeats like Osiris

by Seth.

Breakbeats into fourteen pieces. Dissembled

chaos. Organized noise. A patchwork of

heartbeats to resurrect true b-boys. Be men.

Let’s mend the broken heart of Isis. Age of

Aquarius. Mother Nature is furious. While

you rhyme about being hardcore, be heart-

core. What is it that we do art for?

Metaphor. Meta-sin. It’s an age of healing.

Why not rhyme about what you’re feeling?

Or not be felt. Deal with the cards you’re

dealt.

Calling all tarot readers and sparrow feeders

to cancel the apocalypse. Metaphorically

speaking.

CHAPTER 29

The corner coroner. I smoke for weeks. Dead Pan,

like dead man, through chimney peaks. I streak the

skyline. I blew through bird. High notes. I space

float. I’m lost for words.

The storefront preacher. The Sunday best. The

dangling cross between legs, on chest. The country

farmer. The hoedown champ. The rhythmic armor.

The cosmic dance.

The buck and gully. The native son. Bigger and Deffer.

The freshest one. The sewed-in creases. The flavored

twills. The confidence snorted through dollar bills.

The “Fuck I care for?” The boldfaced lie. The been

there and done that. The do or die. The dirty dirty.

The filthy clean. Thugged out and nerdy. No in

between. The blackest berry. The sweetest juice.

That complex NGH born of simple truth.

The solar/polar. The chosen side. The black face

mammy of the bluest eye. The battered woman.

The dream deferred. Now caught up and paid in

full, that’s my word.

The jungle brother. The sly and stone. Rock hard,

NGH. Give a dog a bone. The marrow’s morrow.

The newest breed. The headline merger between

word and deed.

The search for balance. The quest for peace. A

tribe called NGH. NGH WHT, the chief. The

distant lover. The close-up clown. The iced-out

grill with the screw-face frown.

A wealth of violence. A violent wealth. You caught

up, NGH, better watch your health, the beat is dope

though. The junkie nod. The use of breakbeats to

beat the odds.

The odds are even. I paper rocks. Rocks smash

scissors. NGHs trigger Glocks. The blackened

target. The dick-long chain. NGHs kill NGHS

in Jesus’ name.

CHAPTER 30

God and pussy. Objects of desire and ill repute.

Some’d rather seek up high, than dig and grind

that inner truth. The angel of my eye a bit too fly

to substitute with any other form than the messiah’s.

Black Maria, mother ship, grandmother moon

and sea. The wave and form of beauty born

of Eden’s apple tree. And every single atom

stands erect and prays to be the follower she

offers sweet communion.

Holy union. Let me see you wind it, just like

that. Move your hips from side to side. Come

forward, push it back. Let me know firsthand

the land of glory that I lack. I surrender all to

you if you’ll surrender back.

Holy crap. Where’d you learn to squeeze it

tight and then move it slow enough for me

to question everything? You slowly start to

tremble. Heaven’s walls begin to sing.

Tsunami ever after. Cosmic slop on everything.

CHAPTER 31

Shower me with blessings. No second-guessing.

’Cause God, herself, is sitting on the edge of my

bed, slowly undressing. A night symbolic as the

resurrection. I’m about to slide up in the kingdom

of God with no protection.

And I can guarantee a second coming. ‘Cause I

already hear the drummer boy barumpumpum

pumming. A host of angels look at me through

your eyes. My first communion with my hands

on your thighs. You’re catching the spirit, the Holy

Ghost and the fire. Yo, this is wild.

I’m every Jay-Z album played in reverse. I’m

risen from blunt ash and stashed in a purse.

I’m smuggled over borders, contraband, ‘though

I rock. I paper. I scissor. Nah, NGH, no Glock.

CHAPTER 32

I’m the aftermath of five percent you figure

aftermath. One hundred twenty lessons cover

one-third of my path. Two totes of what I spoke

contents hit and system crash. The greenery of

scenery, but essence dark as hash.

Pay me cash. Simply ’cause what money means

to you. Your currency has currently devalued

what is true. When freedom rings through costly

bling, it’s overdrawn, past due. The bankroll of

an empty soul kept vaulted. Code and clues:

NGH WHT, I represent the truth you claim to be.

The hero of the eastern sky, the storm’s eye, westerly.

Rough, rugged, raw, eternal law recited over beats.

Some poetry to oversee the dance floor and the streets.

CHAPTER 33

Feel the beat. Understand the rhythm that you seek.

Let it be your guiding force you speak from when

you speak. Hold your tongue just long enough to

find your path, unique. Then spit the seeds the forest

needs to garner what we reap.

It ain’t deep. As simple as a breakbeat and some

rhymes. Type of shit to nod your head while

chillin with your dime. But hold her tight, ‘cause

she just might read deep between the lines and start

to think the words that she now reads are simply mine.

Give them voice. Spit them over beats. Repeat. Rejoice.

An anthem you can put in your own words or chant.

Your choice. May heaven smile upon your earthly reign

b-girls and boys, as it has upon mine: fancy pens on paper,

poised.

It’s divine. Every page a different sort of kiss. No, not

for everyone. This pen is clenched in a black fist. And if

that ain’t your cup of tea, perhaps, a glass of piss. So hold

your nose and drink it down. Just think of it as Crys-.

But if it is, if you don’t mind the source from whence

I speak, and recognize you can’t disguise the source of

every beat, then nod your head, girl, wind that waist,

bend over, touch your feet. And go ahead and pop that

thang. Yes, yes, cipher complete.

AMETHYST ROCKS

CHAPTER 1

I stand on the corner of the block slinging

amethyst rocks. Drinkin 40’s of mother

earth’s private nectar stock. Dodgin cops.

’Cause Five-O be the 666 and I need a fix

of that purple rain. The type of shit that

drives membranes insane. Oh yeah, I’m in

the fast lane. Snorting candy yams. That free

my body and soul and send me like Shazaam!

Never question who I am. God knows.

And I know God, personally. In fact, he

lets me call him me. I be one with rain

and stars and things, with dancing feet

and watermelon wings. I bring the

sunshine and the moon. And wind blows

my tune.

CHAPTER 2

Meanwhile I spoon powdered drumbeats

into plastic, bags. Sellin kilos of kente scag

Takin drags off of collards and cornbread

Free-basin through saxophones and flutes

like mad. The high notes make me space

float. I be exhalin in rings that circle Saturn.

Leavin stains in my veins in astrological patterns.

Yeah, I’m Sirius B. Dogon NGHs plotted

shit, lovely. But the feds are also plotting

me. They’re trying to imprison my astrology.

Put my stars behind bars. My stars in stripes.

Using blood-splattered banners as nationalist

kites. But I control the wind. That’s why they

call it the hawk.

CHAPTER 3

I am Horus. Son of Isis. Son of Osiris.

Worshipped as Jesus. Resurrected like

Lazarus. But you can call me Lazzie. Lazy.

Yeah, I’m lazy ’cause I’d rather sit and build

than work and plow a field of cash green crops.

Your evolution stopped with the evolution

of your technology. A society of automatic

tellers and money machines. NGH WHT?

My culture is lima beans. Dreams manifest.

Dreams real. Not consistent with rational.

I dance for no reason. For reason you

can’t dance. Caught in the inactiveness

of intellectualized circumstance. You

can’t learn my steps until you unlearn

your thoughts. Spirit/soul can’t be store

bought. Fuck thought. It leads to naught.

Simply stated, it leads to you trying to

figure me out.

CHAPTER 4

Your intellect is disfiguring your soul.

Your being’s not whole. Check your flagpole:

stars and stripes. Your astrology’s imprisoned

by your concept of white, of self. What’s your

plan for spiritual health? Calling reality unreal.

Your line of thought is tangled.

The star-spangled got your soul mangled.

Your being’s angled, forbidding you to be real

and feel. You can’t find truth with an ax or a

drill, in a white house on a hill, or in factories

or plants made of steel.

CHAPTER 5

Stealing me was the smartest thing you ever

did. Too bad you don’t teach the truth to your

kids. My influence on you is the reflection you

see when you look into your minstrel mirror

and talk about your culture.

Your existence is that of a schizophrenic vulture

who thinks he has enough life in him to prey on

the dead, not knowing that the dead ain’t dead and

that he ain’t got enough spirituality to know how

to pray. Yeah, there’s no repentance. You’re bound

to live an infinite, consecutive, executive life sentence.

So while you’re busy serving time, I’ll be in synch

with the moon, while you run from the sun. Life of

the womb reflected by guns. Worshipper of moons,

I am the sun. And I am public enemy number one.

One. One. One. One. One. One. That’s seven. And

I’ll be out on the block. Hustlin culture. Slingin

amethyst rocks.

UNTIMELY MEDITATIONS

CHAPTER 1

Time is money. Money is time.

So, I keep seven o’clock in the

bank and gain interest in the

hour of God. I’m saving to buy

my freedom. God grant me wings.

I’m too fly not to fly. Eye sore

to look at humans without wings.

So, I soar. And find tickle in the

feather of my wings. Flying

hysterically over land. Numerically,

I am seven mountains higher than

the valley of death, seven dimensions

deeper than dimensions of breath.

CHAPTER 2

The fiery sun of my passions

evaporates the love lakes of my

soul, clouds my thoughts and

rains you into existence. As I take

flights on bolts of lightning.

Claiming chaos as my concubine

and you as my me. I of the storm.

You of the sea. We of the moon.

Land of the free. What have I done

to deserve this? Am I happy?

CHAPTER 3

Happiness is a mediocre standard

for a middle-class existence. I see

through smiles and smell truth in

the distance. Beyond one dimensional

smiles and laughter lies the hereafter.

Where tears echo laughter.

You’d have to do math to divide a

smile by a tear, times fear, equals

mere truth, that simply dwells in the

air. But if that’s the case all I have

to do is breath and all else will follow.

That’s why drums are hollow.

And I like drums. Drums are good.

But I can’t think straight. I lack the

attention span to meditate. My attention

spans galaxies. Here and now are immense.

Seconds are secular. Moments are mine.

Self is illusion. Music’s divine.

CHAPTER 4

Noosed by the strings of Jimi’s guitar,

I swing, purple-hazed pendulum. Hypnotizing

the part of eye that never dies. Look into my:

eyes are the windows of the soul is fried chicken,

collards, and cornbread is corn meal, sour cream,

eggs, and oil is the stolen blood of the earth, used

to make cars run and kill the fish.

Who me? I play scales. The scales of

dead fish of oil-slicked seas. My sister

blows wind through the hollows of fallen

trees. And we are the echoes of eternity.

Maybe you’ve heard of us.

We do rebirths, revolts, and resurrections.

We threw basement parties in pyramids.

I left my tag on the wall. The beats would

echo off the stone and solidify into the

form of lightbulbs, destined to light up

the heads of future generations. They

recently lit up in the form of: BA BOOM

BOOM OM. Maybe you’ve heard of us.

CHAPTER 5

If not then you must be trying to hear us

and in such cases we cannot be heard. We

remain in the darkness, unseen. In the center

of unpeeled bananas, we exist. Uncolored by

perception. Clothed to the naked eye. Five

senses cannot sense the fact of our existence.

And that’s the only fact. In fact, there are no

facts.

Fax me a fact and I’ll telegram a hologram

or telephone the son of man and tell him he

is done. Leave a message on his answering

machine telling him there are none. God and

I are one. Times moon. Times star. Times sun.

The factor is me. You remember me.

CHAPTER 6

I slung amethyst rocks on Saturn blocks

until I got caught up by earthling cops. They

wanted me for their army or whatever. Picture

me: I swirl like the wind. Tempting tomorrow

to be today. Tiptoeing the fine line between

everything and everything else. I am simply

Saturn swirling sevens through sooth. The sole

living heir of air. And I (inhale) and (exhale) and

all else follows. Reverberating the space inside of

drum hollows. Packaged in bottles and shipped to

tomorrow, then sold to the highest NGH.

I swing from the tallest tree. Lynched by

the lowest branches of me. Praying that

my physical will set me free ’cause I’m

afraid that all else is vanity. Mere language

is profanity. I’d rather hum. Or have my

soul tattooed to my tongue. And let the

scriptures be sung in gibberish. ’Cause

words be simple fish in my soulquarium.

And intellect can’t swim.

CHAPTER 7

So, I stopped combing my mind so my

thoughts could lock. I’m tired of trying

to understand. Perceptions are mangled,

matted, and knotted anyway. Life is more

than what meets the eye and I.

So, elevate eye to the third. But even that

shit seems absurd when your thoughts

leave you third eye-solated. No man is an

island. But I often feel alone. So find peace

through OM.

OM

CHAPTER 1

Through meditation I program my heart

to beat break beats and hum bass lines

on exhalation. BA BOOM BOOM OM.

I burn seven-day candles that melt into

12-inch circles on my mantle and spin

funk like myrrh. BA BOOM BOOM OM.

And I can fade worlds in and out with my

mixing patterns. Letting the earth spin as I

blend in Saturn. NGHs be like spinning

windmills, braiding hair, locking, popping,

as the sonic force of the soul keeps the planets

rockin.

The beat don’t stop when soul-less matter

flows into the cosmos trying to be stars.

The beat don’t stop when earth sends out

satellites to spy on Saturnites and control

Mars.

’Cause NGHs got a peace treaty with Martians

and we be keepin’em up to date through sacred

gibberish like “Sho Nuff” and “It’s on.” The

beat goes on. The beat goes on. The beat goes

OM. BA BOOM BOOM OM.

CHAPTER 2

And I roam through the streets of downtown

Venus tryin’ to auction off monuments of Osiris’

severed penis. But they don’t want no penis in

Venus, for androgynous cosmology sets their

spirits free.

And they neither men nor women be. But they be

down with a billion NGHs who have yet to see that

interplanetary truth is androgynous.

And they be sendin us shout outs through shootin

stars. And NGHs be like, “what up?” and talking

Mars.’Cause we are solar and regardless of how

far we roam from home the universe remains our

center, like OM. BA BOOM BOOM OM.

CHAPTER 3

I am no earthling. I drink moonshine on Mars

and mistake meteors for stars ’cause I can’t hold

my liquor. But I can hold my breath and ascend

like wind to the black hole and play galaxophones

on the fire escape of your soul.

Blowing tunes through lunar wombs. Impregnating

stars. Giving birth to suns that darken the skins that

skin our drums. And we be beatin infinity over sacred

hums. Spinning funk, like myrrh, until Jesus comes.

And Jesus comes every time we drum. And the moon

drips blood and eclipses the sun. And out of darkness

comes the BA BOOM BOOM. And out of darkness

comes the BA BOOM BOOM. And out of darkness

comes the BA BOOM BOOM OM.

1987

CHAPTER 1

Acid wash Guess with the leather patches,

sportin the white Diadoras with the hoodie

that matches. I’m wearing two Swatches and

a small Gucci pouch. I could have worn the

Louis but I left it in the house.

My NGHs Duce and Wayne got gold plates

with their name, with the skyline on it and the

box-link chain. I’m wearing my frames they

match my gear with their tint. And you know

Lagerfeld is the scent.

My NGH Rafael just got his jeep out the shop.

Mint green sidekick. Custom made ragtop. Strictly

Business is the album that we play. “You’re a

Customer,” the pick of the day.

CHAPTER 2

There’s a NGH on the block. Never seen him

before. Selling incense and oils. My man thinks

that he’s the law. But why on earth would this be

on their agenda as he slowly approaches the window.

Uh, uh, I’ve seen you before. I’ve been you and

more. I was the one bearing the pitcher of water. I

rent the large upper room furnished with tidings of

your doom or pleasure, whichever feathers decree.

“Yo, Ralph, is he talking to me?” “No I’m talking to

the sea sons resurrected. I’m the solstice of the

day. I bring news from the blues of the Caspian”

My man laughs. “He’s one of them crazy

MTHRFKRs. Turn the music back up. ’Cause

I’m the E double.” “Wait, but but, I know the

volume of the sea and sound waves as I will.

Will you allow me to be at your service?”

My man Ralph is nervous. He believes his

strange tongue deceives and maybe he’s

been informed that he’s pushing gats, Hidden

in the back beneath the floor mats. “Come on

Jack, we don’t have time for your bullshit or

playin, As Salaam A somethin or another.”

“Wait isn’t Juanita your mother? I told you

I know you. Now grant me a moment.”

CHAPTER 3

“At the gates of Atlantis we stand. Ours

is the blood that flowed from the palms

of his. Hands on the plow, till earth ’til

I’m now. Moon cycles revisited. Womb

fruit of the sun. Full moon of occasion

wave the wolves where they run. And we

run towards the light. Casting love on the

wind. As is the science of the aroma of

sleeping women.”

Lost in his eyes. They soon reflect my

friends are grinning. But I’m a pupil of

his sight. The wheels are spinning. “Yo,

I’ll see y’all later tonight.”

CHAPTER 4

In the beginning her tears were the long

awaited rains of a parched Somali village.

Red dusted children danced shadows in the

newfound mounds of mascara that eclipsed

her face, reflected in the smogged glass of

Carlos’ East Street bodega.

Learning to love she had forgotten to cry,

seldom hearing the distant thunder in her

lover’s ambivalent sighs. He was not honest.

She was not sure. A great grandfather had

sacrificed the family’s clarity for gold in the

late 1800s. Nonetheless, she had allowed

him to mispronounce her name, which had

eventually led to her misinterpreting her

own dreams and later doubting them. But

the night was young.

She, the first-born daughter of water, faced

darkness and smiled. Took mystery as her

lover and raised light as her child. Man that

shit was wild. You should have seen how

they ran. She woke up in an alley with a gun

in her hand. Tupac in lotus form, Ennis’ blood

on his hands.

She woke up on a vessel, the land behind her,

the sun within her, water beneath her, mushed

corn for dinner. Or was it breakfast? Her stomach

turned, as if a compass. She prayed east and lay

there breathless. They threw her overboard for

dead. She swam silently and fled into the blue Si.

CHAPTER 5

La So Fa Me Re Do Si. The seventh octave. I

don’t mean to confuse you. Many of us have

been taught to sing and so we practice scales.

Many of us were born singing and thus were

born with scales.

Myrrh-maids cooks and field hands sang a

night song by the forest and the ocean was the

chorus in Atlantis, where they sang. Those thrown

overboard had overheard the mysteries of the

undertow and understood that down below there

would be no more chains.

They surrendered breath and name and survived

countless as rain. I’m the weather, man. The clouds

say storm is coming. A white buffalo was born

already running. And if you listen close you’ll hear

a humming.

CHAPTER 6

Beneath the surface of our purpose lies rumor of

ancient rain. Dressed in cloud-face, minstrels the

sky. The moon’s my mammy. The storm holds

my eye.

Dressed in westerlies. Robed by Robeson. Ol’

Man River knows my name. And the reason you

were born is the reason that I came.

CHAPTER 7

Then she looks me in the face and her eyes get

weak. Pulse rate descends. Hearts rate increase.

Emcees look me in the face and their eyes get

weak. Pulse rate descends. Hearts rate increase.

Emcees look me in the face and their eyes get

weak. Pulse rate descends. Hearts rate increase.

It’s like “Beam me up, Scottie.” I control your

body. I’m as deadly as AIDS when it’s time to

rock a party.

We all rocked fades. Fresh faded in La Di Da Di.

And when we rock the mic we rock the mic right.

But left’s the feminine side. Ignored the feminine

side.

I presented my feminine side with flowers. She cut

the stems and placed them gently down my throat.

And these tu lips might soon eclipse your brightest

hopes.

SHA CLACK CLACK

CHAPTER 1

I could recite the grass on a hill and memorize

the moon. I know the cloud forms of love by

heart and have brought tears to the eye of a

storm. My memory banks vaults of autumn

forests and Amazon River banks. I’ve screamed

them into sunsets that echo in earthquakes.

Shadows have been my spotlight as I monologue

the night and dialogue with days. Soliloquies of

wind and breeze applauded by sunrays.

We put language in zoos to observe caged

thought and tossed peanuts and P-Funk at

intellect. And MTHRFKRs think these are

metaphors. I speak what I see. All words

and worlds are metaphors of me. My life

is authored by the moon. Footprints written

in soil. The fountain pen of Martian men

novelling human toil.

And, yes, the soil speaks highly of me, when

earth seeds root me poet-tree. And we forest

forever through recitation.

CHAPTER 2

Now maybe I’m too Sirius. Too little here

to matter. Although I’m riddled with the

reason of the sun. A standup comet with the

audience of lungs. This body of laughter is

it with me or at me? Hue more or less? Human,

though gender’s mute. And the punch-

line has this lifeline at its root.

I’m a star. This life’s the suburbs. I commute.

Make daily runs between the sun and earthly

loot. And raise my children to the height of

light and truth.

CHAPTER 3

If I could find the spot where truth echoes,

I would stand there and whisper memories

of my children’s future. I would let their

future dwell in my past so that I might live

a brighter now.

Now is the essence of my domain and it

contains all that was and will be. And I

am as I was and will be, because I am and

always will be that NGH. I am that NGH.

I am that NGH.

CHAPTER 4

I am that timeless NGH that swings on

pendulums like vines through mines of

booby-trapped minds that are enslaved

by time. I am the life that supersedes

lifetimes, I am.

It was me with serpentine hair and a timeless

stare that with a mortal glare turned mortal

fear into stone time capsules. They still exist

as the walking dead. As I do, the original

suffer-head, symbol of life and matriarchy’s

severed head: Medusa, I am.

It was me, the ecclesiastical one, that pointed

out that there was nothing new under the sun.

And in times of laughter and times of tears, saw

that no times were real times, ’cause all times

were fear. The wise seer, Solomon, I am.

It was me with tattered clothes that made you

scatter as you shuffled past me on the street.

Yes, you shuffled past me on the street as I

stood there conversing with wind blown spirits.

And I fear it’s your loss that you didn’t stop

and talk to me. I could have told you your future

as I explained your present, but instead, I’m the

homeless schizophrenic that you resent for being

aimless. The in-tuned nameless, I am.

CHAPTER 5

I am that NGH. I am that NGH. I am

that NGH. I am a negro. Yes, negro

from necro, meaning death. I overcame

it so they named me after it. And I be

spitting at death from behind and putting

“kick me” signs on its back, because,

I am not the son of Sha Clack Clack. I

am before that. I am before. I am before

before. Before death is eternity. After death

is eternity. There is no death there’s only

eternity. And I be ridin on the wings of

eternity, like yah, yah, Sha Clack Clack.

CHAPTER 6

I exist like spitfire which you call the sun,

try to map out your future with sundials. But

tic toc technology can no tic toc me. I exist

somewhere between tic and toc. Dodging it like

double-dutch. Got me living double-time. I was

here before your time. And my heart is made of

the quartz crystals that you be making clocks out

of. And I be resurrectin every third, like tic tic

Sha Clack Clack.

No, I won’t work a nine to five, ‘cause

I’m setting suns and orange moons and

my existence is this … still, yet ever moving.

And I’m moving beyond time. Because time

binds me it can set me free and I’ll fly when

the clock strikes me, like yah, yah, Sha Clack

Clack.

CHAPTER 7

But my flight doesn’t go undisturbed, because

time makes dreams defer. And all of my time

fears are turning my days into daymares. And

I live daymares, reliving nightmares, that once

haunted my past. Sha Clack Clack. Time is

beating my ass.

And I be havin nightmares of chocolate-covered

watermelons filled with fried chicken, like piñatas,

with little pickaninny sons and daughters standing

up under them with big sticks and aluminum foil,

hitting them, trying to catch pieces of falling fried

chicken wings.

And Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben are standing in

the corners with rifles pointed at the heads of the

little children. Don’t shoot the children! I shout.

Don’t shoot the children! But it’s too late. They

start shooting at the children and killing them one

by one, two by two, three by three, four by four,

five by five, six by six …

but my spirit is growing seven by seven. Faster

than the speed of light, because light only penetrates

the darkness that’s already there. And I’m already

there. I’m here at the end of the road, which is the

beginning of the road beyond time, but where my

NGHS at?

CO-DEAD LANGUAGE

Whereas, break-beats have been the

missing link connecting the diasporic

community to its drum-woven past.

Whereas, the quantized drum has

allowed the whirling mathematicians

to calculate the ever-changing distance

between rock and stardom.

Whereas, the velocity of spinning vinyl,

Cross-faded, spun backwards, and re-released

at the same given moment of recorded history,

yet, at a different moment in time’s continuum

has allowed history to catch up with the present.

We do hereby declare reality unkempt

by the changing standards of dialogue.

Statements such as, “keep it real,” especially

when punctuating or articulating modes of

ultra-violence inflicted psychologically or

physically or depicting an unchanging rule

of events, will henceforth be seen as retroactive

and not representative of the individually

determined IS.

Furthermore, as determined by the collective

consciousness of this state of being and the

lessened distance between thought patterns

and their secular manifestations, the role of

men as listening receptacles is to be increased

by a number no less than 70 percent of the

current enlisted as vocal aggressors.

MTHRFCKRs better realize, now is the time

to self-actualize. We have found evidence that

Hip-hop’s standard 85 RPM when increased

by a number at least half the rate of the standard

or decreased by 3/4’s of its speed may be a

determining factor in heightening consciousness.

Studies show that when a given norm is changed

in the face of the unchanging the remaining

contradictions will parallel the truth.

Equate rhyme with reason. Sun with season.

Our cyclical relationship to phenomena has

encouraged scholars to erase the centers of

periods thus symbolizing the non-linear

character of cause and effect.

Reject mediocrity. Your current frequencies

of understanding outweigh that which has

been given for you to understand. The current

standard is the equivalent of an adolescent

restricted to the diet of an infant. The rapidly

changing body would acquire dysfunctional

and deformative symptoms and could not properly

mature on a diet of applesauce and crushed pears.

Light years are interchangeable with years of living

in darkness. The role of darkness is not to be seen

as or equated with ignorance but with the unknown

and the mysteries of the unseen.

Thus, in the name of: Robeson,

God’s son, Hurston, Akhenaton,

Hatshepsut, Blackfoot, Helen,

Lennon, Kahlo, Kali, The Three

Marias, Tara, Lilith, Lourde,

Whitman, Baldwin, Ginsberg,

Kaufman, Lumumba, Gandhi,

Gibran, Shabazz, Shabazz,

Siddhartha, Medusa, Guevara,

Gurdjieff, Rand, Wright, Banneker,

Tubman, Hamer, Holiday, Davis,

Coltrane, Morrison, Joplin, Du Bois,

Clarke, Shakespeare, Rachmaninoff,

Ellington, Carter, Gaye, Hathaway,

Hendrix, Kuti, Dickerson, Ripperton,

Mary, Isis, Theresa, Plath, Rumi,

Fellini, Michaux, Nostradamus,

Neferttiti, La Rock, Shiva, Ganesha,

Yemaja, Oshun, Obatala, Ogun,

Kennedy, King, four little girls,

Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Keller, Biko,

Perón, Marley, Shakur, Those who

burned. Those still aflame. And the

countless un-named.

We claim the present as the pre-sent as the

hereafter. We are unraveling our navels so

that we may ingest the sun. We are not afraid

of the darkness. We trust that the moon shall

guide us. We are determining the future at this

very moment. We now know that the heart is

the philosopher’s stone.

Our music is our alchemy. We stand as the

manifested equivalent of three buckets of water

and a handful of minerals, thus, realizing that

those very buckets turned upside down supply

the percussive factor of forever. If you must

count to keep the beat then count. Find your

mantra and awaken your subconscious. Carve

your circles counter-clockwise. Use your cipher

to decipher coded language, man-made laws. Climb

waterfalls and trees. Commune with nature snakes

and bees.

Let your children name themselves and claim

themselves as the new day for today we are

determined to be the channelers of these

changing frequencies into songs, paintings,

writings, dance, drama, photography, carpentry,

crafts, love, and love.

We enlist every instrument: acoustic, electronic,

every so-called race, gender, sexual preference

every per-son as beings of sound to acknowledge

their responsibility to uplift the consciousness

of the entire fucking world!

Any utterance un-aimed will be disclaimed,

will be maimed. Two rappers slain!

Seven poems. Seven glimpses into an unknown mind with hints and insights into our own. What is a poem but a means of making sense of all that comes through the senses, a senseless dream decoded? What is a dream but a story broken into fragments and scattered, card-like, before a child as a test of memory? What is memory but a warm welcome from a stranger who knows you by name and perhaps a kiss and invitation to board in a larger room with greater storage space and more natural light? But there are also memories that haunt, past moments that we’d rather think of as belonging to past lives. And then there are those stored in books and records for the sake of collective memory: history.

The history of the African American population is a page torn from precolonial African history books and pasted into the scrapbooks of the New World. Enslaved Africans were the original record of a people sampled, chopped, screwed, looped, noosed and used as the repeated hook of a national anthem: a hit record. When a people are cut off from their language, their culture, their religion and traditions they are forced to adopt, adapt and forge new ground over old wounds. Much has been said about the dangers of stripping people from their roots. What we seldom hear is the story of those born naturally into societies that are steeped in age-old traditions that have felt unable to find or pursue their individual paths because the ideologies of their culture have not evolved at the same rate as them. In this sense, traditions can subjugate and restrict the rate of the growth of a people. In some cases, when a people are freed from their past they are given an opportunity to start anew. Hip-hop, like its African American creators, is born of this newfound independence. It is our generation’s opportunity to start from scratch.

Hip-hop is a revisionists’ draft of history. It is a state of mind that refutes all states but its own. In the early days of music videos, Run DMC stood defiantly outside of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame claiming to be the Kings of Rock, without singing and without a band: a statement and gesture as audacious as sticking a national flag on the moon. Their stance typifies the stance of hip-hop. It is a stance that takes and samples elements of its own history and dares to slow it down, speed it up or do whatever is necessary for it to fit into a new conception of the present. It is harder drums added to a popular jazz riff, a guitar solo spun backward and released in even increments over a high-powered kick drum. It is the angry snare of a lion that has been trapped, a final warning before attack. Hip-hop is the most aggressive stance that any people has ever taken at how one can and should relate to his or her history. It samples the past, while at the same time, re-ordering it and declassifying its hidden roots. It is the voice of the newly emancipated as they begin the process of being able to clearly state and declare their independence.

But what if the voice of independence misaligns itself with ideals and values that bespeak more so of enslavement than independence? What if the youth are misguided into believing that money is the ultimate power or that vulnerability is weakness? How does a newfound voice of independence avoid the pitfalls of its predecessors? And what ultimately is the cost, look, and feel of freedom? Can it be bought? African American slaves who bought their freedom still had to avoid interacting with the elements of society that would not acknowledge the papers that certified them as free. There are countless stories of freed men or women simply having their certificates of freedom torn up and finding themselves chained and carried back into slavery. Their money and ability to purchase anything, including property or freedom, was not enough to overrule the prevailing mentality of the times. Are these not the truths that withstand time? What will it take for a people that served at the lowest rung of capitalist hierarchy to not buy into the mentality that originally bought them as slaves? At what point does the power of hip-hop begin to work against itself? At what point does hip-hop reflect more of its American birthplace than its African roots?

The power of the spoken word is very much a part of the power of hip-hop. The emcee stands in direct lineage to the African griot. The African griot/story-teller plays a major part in the history of spoken art forms and the oral traditions of poetry. A tradition that has a much longer and more widespread history than that of the written word. The sport of spoken word, as relates to modern phenomena, such as slam poetry, is not a newfound interest, rather it is a return to ancient rites and gatherings that have been known to have occurred for thousands of years. Ancient poets such as Kabir, Rumi, Hafiz, and even the Greek Homer were known, in their time, for the recitation of their work. Thus, the young poets of today are part of an ancient tradition that is perhaps the eldest in creative expression. The spoken word movement in connection to hip-hop has become a place where the youth have stripped away the beat of the drum to simply focus and sharpen the attention paid to the word. Listening to young poets read in a poetry slam, you are bound to hear them recite their own coming of age stories, which may often be inclusive of the story of their parents, grandparents, or ancestors. Through the simple act of reciting their poem they are adding their voice to the telling of his/story, which was once linear and exclusive of them and the particularities of their story, their perspective. These new poems allow us new insights into the past, which then allows us a broader conception of the present and grants us the ability to re-envision the future. Simply stated, it changes everything.

Most emcees are also concerned about telling their own coming of age stories. Their voices are easily likened to the voices of young poets, often contemplative and introspective to the point of questioning their reality, upbringing, and the society that bore them. Yet, where a special form of attention is paid to crafting a poem or a prayer, it is seldom the same sort of attention used in writing a rhyme. The braggadocio aspects of emceeing are a distinguishing factor. Part of the unique power of hip-hop is its internal sense of competition. Every emcee is automatically pitted against the others. The competitive nature of the art helps create an environment where most are concerned about displaying their skills while at the same time putting down the skills or abilities of others. As in any gladiator-like sport, those involved are most concerned about not leaving themselves vulnerable on any given side. It is this factor that serves to distinguish the emcee from the poet. Whereas an emcee may see displaying his or her vulnerabilities as a weakness, a poet will often see the ability to display vulnerability as a strength. It is when the careful balance between the two is found that hip-hop is at its most powerful.

My experience with these texts has been life-changing, to say the least. I have discovered that there are distinct experiences to be had through reading or reciting them. For instance, the experience of reading the words NGH WHT, spelled with no vowels, as was commonly practiced in spelling the name of God (YHWH) or gods in the written forms of ancient Hebrew and Kemetic languages (KMT is the original name of ancient Egypt), is quite distinct from hearing the commonly used “nigga” or “nigger.” It takes a step further the idea of a term once used to degrade now being used as a term of endearment. In fact, the document brings to question whether it is actually asserting that NGH WHT is the name of God (absurd, I know, but it definitely seems to imply so).

The rhythm of these seven poems is also of great interest. Whether read aloud or to oneself the rhyme patterns are easily decipherable, quite often complex, and seem to cover many distinct styles of emceeing. The complexity of the rhyme patterns of certain chapters seems to correlate to the complexity of the subject matter. Yet, the content of a recited piece, even of great complexity, is much more easily digestible through the use of rhyme and rhythmic patterns.

It has been a great temptation of mine either to footnote or to write a complete companion piece to these seven poems. Yet, I believe that there is more insight to be found by sharing it with as many as possible and allowing people to discover their own references and viewpoints. My opinions on the text and on hip-hop are my own. I can claim no true authority over the art form or the varied voices of our generation. I am one of many. It has been my intention to share these words in their written form for the sake of accomplishing what I have believed to be my personal responsibility since finding them. Regardless of how they reach you, one thing remains clear: Whether hip-hop is the offspring of the streets or a seed planted by ancient African shamans whose foresight allowed them to plant seeds in the hearts and minds of a stolen people, only to blossom four generations after slavery for the sake of expressing the highest ideas of freedom, it’s ours, or in the words of T-La Rock, it’s yours.

PART 2

SEVEN MOUNTAINS:

JOURNAL EXCERPTS 1994–2001

1994

These are, perhaps, some of the greatest moments of my life. I have “been led” or “fallen into” or “happened upon” a series of events, revelations, insights that have brought on some of the most intense feelings and experiences I have ever had. My overall search has been effortful, but these newly acquired insights, sensibilities, and thoughts have been effortless steps toward a greater state of awareness. These past few days I have had several awkward or mystical occurrences, which were almost immediately confirmed as “real” or “valid” in a later moment.

I have been led to adopt new beliefs, which seem to be a prerequisite to existing beyond the mirror. I am very sure that there is much to be experienced beyond the mirrors of this physical realm. By “beyond” I mean seeing past an image or through, within, or behind it. Yet, also seeing it as it is. And I mean “is” in the fullest sense. I am both blessed and burdened. Now that I know, or am at the beginning of knowing, I must act or be eternally un …

I was born today.

Just now.

Just now.

Just now.

Just now.

Just now.

Mixed emotion

Contrived commotion

Natural struggle

Lead-filled sacks

On non-burdened backs

Finding the time to love

In the midst of chaos

It birthed us, nourishes us

We live in it and for it

If we were free

We’d fight for the freedom

To recreate it.

Who’s your master?

Your dreams of disaster

Nightmares of freedom

Fantasies of fantasies

Which you claim we have no time for

Because we’re being choked?

Well, what if time ceased to be time?

How would that affect your tomorrows of freedom?

Where would that leave us, today?

Would you then find the time to inhale and exhale

And wear those hands around your neck

As a necklace, accessorizing your

Newfound suit of

Mixed emotion

Contrived commotion …

… infinity

How can I escape this cycle?

Must I turn with the world

In the direction it dictates?

Am I the wind’s slave?

As instruments come to life with breath

The wind sends my high notes

To indigo communions

With Coltrane’s Favorite Things

This is my body, which is given for you

This is my blood which is shed for you

My love, like the wind, uncaged,

Blows time into timeless whirlpools

Transfiguring fear and all of its subordinates

(possession, fear, jealousy)

into crumbling dried leaves

My love is the winds slave

and, thus, is free

my love is the wind that is shaped

as it passes through the lips of earthly vessels

becoming words of wisdom

songs of freedom or simply hot air

my love is the wind’s song:

if it is up to me, I’ll never die

if it is up to me, I’ll die tomorrow

one thousand times in an hour

and live seven minutes later.

If it’s up to me, the sun will never

Cease to shine and the moon will

Never cease to glow

And I’ll dance a million tomorrows

In the sun rays of the moon waves

And bathe in the yesterdays

Of days to come

ignoring all of my afterthoughts

And pre-conceived notions.

If it is up to me, it is up to me.

And, thus, is my love

Untainted, eternal.

The wind is the moon’s imagination

wandering.

It seeps through cracks, explores the unknown,

Ripples the grass.

My love is my soul’s imagination.

How do I love thee?

Imagine

And will I now forget everything that I have read? Will I not now attempt to actualize the glimpses of a higher reality that I have experienced? What did Siddhartha teach me? And Azaro? And all of the other spirit children? And the insights? Have they not all laid the groundwork for this new de/con/struction of self?

I have learned the importance of stories, the importance of dreams (night and day), the need to look beyond mirrors, the flow of energy, the hindrances of “control dramas,” the inconsistencies of time, the inaction that self-consciousness leads to, the reality of the “unreal,” the universal source of energy, the beauty of all things, the unity of all things, that coincidences aren’t, that love cannot be specified (kinda), the ineptitude of belief, death only comes to those who believe in it, life only comes when you’re not reading, writing, or thinking about it. “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.”

I could inhale your existence

And exhale your dreams

And this room would be filled

With things that only seem

Your mind’s on permanent rewind

Trying to make it fast forward

Press record, listen,

Beyond what you hear

Pre-occupation with time

Is pre-occupation with fear

“Looking at my Gucci it’s about that time”

the tick tock of clocks padlock your mind

capital centered on your left wrist

your reality is twisted, unreal

capital is not center

time is undefined

as soon as you define it it’s a new time

but with unchanging minds

new times become same times

why blame time for bad times or sad times

sometimes I forget time

and exist on my own time

I own time

The concept exists in my own mind

And mind is eternal

That concept defeats time

So I climb …

1995

African - American

Drumbeat - For money

Where I live

Music notes take the form

Of dollar signs

Souls sing backup

While material desires

Sing solo

Somewhere between self-hate and Brooklyn

I sit on a mountain of green-leafed questions

Searching for balance in the mist

I used to rock beats over lunch room tables

Now I’m searching for balance in the midst

And I find bliss in mental tugs of “what for?”

’cause they make me think I’m deep

Raising dead questions like a grammatical visionary

Who can only see the past in the future

Come one come all

I can make the blind walk

“And I run through discotheques like sound.”

Figuring I’m bound to hear something

That I can nod my head to

But everything is “For the killers

And the Hundred Dollar-Billers”

And “Real Niggas who ain’t got no feelings”

I got mad feelings

And stay broke

Too broke to buy a magnum

Or a state of mind

To help my thoughts go platinum

I was discovered by Gold

Mined and marketed as meat

Erased of my memories

So I’d have the freedom to think

I discovered that which discovered me

And then made it my God, mistakenly

I take shots of molasses

So I can slow my existence

And feel the world

Spinning on its axis

I want to feel revolution

For myself

Fuck the Franz Fanon books on the shelf

I mean, really,

I just want to dance

’cause I remember when

We used to back spin and windmill

Breakbeats wouldn’t let niggas stand still

We’d feel the music

Begin to swipe and spin

’til we were dizzy

From revolution

On the dance floor

They call dancing primitive.

They call singing senseless.

Some have forgotten to hum.

They are too busy with the

“how to” and “why.”

My culture will never die.

It lives in the wind.

“… and the very rocks will cry out.”

Skyscrapers will fall

Your lack of understanding

Will crush you down to “primitive.”

Maybe all of us.

We all travel the same road. Alone.

Blinded by the brightness of darkness, I stepped forward into a world where shadows precede breath. I could feel all of my pores opening to the point of being enveloped by openness: a black whole. Being entered by the many colors of darkness, the bows that precede the rain, as humid as the center of a raindrop, I began to orbit my new realm. There was no looking back.

I had no eyes. But language dictated that I saw. I was all eyes just as I was all else. Surrounded by a darkness that held the unmuted intensity of every color in its shadow. We were one and millions.

My name. Somebody was calling my name. I saw no one. Then I realized that that which I was hearing as my name wasn’t, but was the sound of unmuted colors gathered in the wind, swirling against time. The sound of bright resonant darkness. The sound of orphan shadows rejoicing in the light. And that was my name. It was all of our names. And I, too, joined in the calling.

I perform biopsies

On cyclopses

So that I might better understand

My third eye

Dissecting words

May be clever

But I aim to live verbs

To be

Calculating the distance

From here to forever

The square root of me is circular

But such calculations

Are a waste of time

And pre-occupation with time

Is a waste of life

But what am I

Supposed to do

With this calculator?

1996

Too many caged birds

Sing of dreams deferred

Too few chance beyond

The Maya of these hues

Siblings of soil

Soiled and shunned

Gather your seeds

A garden of guns

Armored archaic

Garnished by sun

Guiltlessly growing

A garden of guns

Petalled with passion

Tended by nuns

Target tomorrow

A garden of guns

An un-aimed bullet

Shot in a storm

Maimed the magician’s

Rabbit as he performed

In his dream. In his dreams

He seldom fails. He knows

The magic of the close-eyed

Angels who cast spells on

The nightfall’s descent.

This night was like no other.

All dreams were aimed and blunt.

All children saw the rabbits appear

Out of nothing.

The void of the magicians hat.

Sitting on the steps

Of wood creeks and song

Dust blown and driven

By journeys too long

Ancient decrepit spiders of space

Eight-legged infinity

Webbed wisdoms brown face

Capital trades slave

Manhood’s maroon

Captive of conscience

Freedoms’ buffoon

Maybe at noon

Maybe right now

Never to know

Ancient as sound

Highest vibrations

Unheard untraced

Ghetto’s Gibran

Sneakers unlaced

I am a powerless vessel. A reed of the wind. One of many. There is no genius of my own. Speak through me.

Now, why do wish to be spoken through? Is it so I can receive credit for that which comes through me? If that's the case then I am not ready to be spoken through. Not until it is learned that there is no credit for me to bathe my vanities. I would taint the cleansing waters. Not until I lose all sight of audience for my sake should I have audience for your righteousness never to be forsaken.

I am simply attempting to master the art of losing myself in everything in which I can invest myself

Self evacuation procedures to follow in case of ego:

Yes, the black gold of the sun

Father of Saturn

Descendent of Run

Spoonie not Biggie

Ill beats and bass

You know my case number

1,2,3,4,5,6,7

Father reverend

Mother star

Carlos gypsy

These all who I are

Stars of the sky

In relation to the eye

Third child

Of the mind of Duce

Sketched on the drawstrings

Of a noose

The descendent

Of ill beats and choruses

The llamas be Michaels

The scarabs be Horus’

And if I could Van Gogh these vanities

So that I may display artistically

The hell where I dwell, egotistically

Yo, I’d transcend physically

And become the sun

To make picturesque

This souls arson

Son, you’ll never shine

Until you find your moon

To bring your wolf to a howl

So fetch your cows and spoons

It doesn’t matter

What I say anymore

I am the solstice of a union

U and I verse the world

And I have the power

To bring rain from the sun

And radiance from the moon

Blessed be the womb

Complex theories

To discover simplicity

Abstracted illusions

The problem with chemistry is biology

The problem with biology is physics

The problem with science is metaphysics

Killed by your theories of death …

1997

Prisons be like magnets

Attracting delinquent habits

Maybe that’s why niggas

Steel wheels spinning

To counter the attraction

Spray my name on steel horses

To loosen the reins

Cry the eyes of a thousand storms

Galloping o’er the clouds

Chariots of the morn

Foot soldiers of the wind

Handmaidens of the dawn

The archers are aimed at the unnamed

The rain-bows and arrows

Truth is bloodstained

Yet, Brutus is an honorable man

’Though he has Caesar’s blood on his hands

And he claims that his palms are bleeding

But no doves grace the sky of his eyes

And the sun still must set in the west.

By no means the darkest ray of the sun

A shaman of shadows

Cast your net in my lungs

And reap the dreams of my breath

Of these hymns seldom sung

Black’s the gift

To be young

To be young

Dreams deferred

So Ray-sinned in the sun

I sold clouds in a rainless season

Nickel bags, dimes of rhyme and reason

As if clouds were treason

The warden storms

Through wintered cells

Avalanched rhetoric

Me and reason rebel

My mind’s consciousness in a snowsuit

My third eye strapped in ski boots

They crucified their Lord on snowboards

The iceman cometh

Plug the sun in

A hundred Miles’ trumpets

And runnin

With the music

Loop the drumbeat

Tambourine gone?

Shake your shackles

I’m handcuffed to the sample machine

Shoot the sheriff and throw me the key

Bull’s eye

Blood shot

Matadors of the wind

I’m charged

With possession of illegal substance

But my substance

Makes eagles of the ill

1987?

A story of self-remembering. Season and Claire are connected through many past-life experiences. The old man who approaches Season in the beginning of the poem is Season as an old man. So, Season as a young boy meets Season as an old man, and slowly young Season makes the connection.

Claire (short for Clairvoyance): her great grandfather sacrificed the family’s clarity for gold in the late 1800s.

They are each other’s eternal reflection: reflection eternal.

It is the story of a vortex that opened in 1987 and its effect on 2 people. The story of 2 people who begin to remember their past lives and their relation to history and the future in order to prepare the world for its oncoming destruction/evolution: the rains.

They stood and waited on the seafloor. It had been written that their number would be two score and nine. Dead man float. The living found new life three miles beneath the boat.

He had been drowning for a day or two. He could no longer see the sky he left behind when he looked from whence he fell. He floated in the face of darkness, never noting when that face became his own. He knew the city, still below him, was his birthplace. He held his breath with dreams of living a million deaths from home. He had been told that he would see its sky beneath him, yet he saw no clouds. He took note of the clouded forms through which he drifted. The sleeping woman had been the first. Her resonant purr had been the birth of earthquakes. She floated alone in the darkness …

He drifted deeper.

The faint sound of a drum could be heard.

The city stood in shades of blue, gated by the dreams of those living high above in a world inhabited by those who never knew of the ones that swam beneath them.

He stood facing the wall of dreams, deciphering the master key from the mystery.

She took from the ocean

With wings of water

Sea-feathers flapped weather

Waved worlds blue girls …

And soon the dungeons

Became crystal caves

Where light prisms

Un-prisoned slaves

And we basked in our own reflections

And sought new ways to channel

Our light

A child is born in the ghetto

Only three toes

And a finger nailed

To crosses street to

Avoid trouble

Carries cowries in his knapsack

And a book of things to come

Keeps his soul inside his sneaker

Ties his laces with his tongue

Now I know niggas with triggas

Cocked and ready go gettas

My man got dimed and did time

And all my sons on the shine

Yo son, I got the answer

Lack of melanin is cancer

Melatonin when you’re home and alone

Your cover’s blown

Classified and unknown

Yo, what’s the password?

My old man’s last words labeled as absurd

But my spirit knew

“Yes, the peel ripens to black

But we aim for the blue”

We, the sea sons of Atlantis

Grace the night with our hue….

I am closer to where I want to be than I ever have been and experience more internal doubt than I ever have.

I think I should aim at nothing more than ridding myself of lying, negative attitudes, trying to control how people see me, overconcern about what others think of me, dishonest expression of emotions, trying to possess that which isn’t mine, false humility, lack of discipline: physically, mentally, spiritually and of all that leaves me incapable of giving and receiving love.

Simply, I don’t have to try to be a poet or how I imagine a poet should or would be. I don’t even have to write, as long as I am honest to each moment rather than to my ideas of myself.

I had black coral around my neck

So I could only see the sea

Its salted water in my eyes

Parade as tears

The dancing girls

March down my cheeks

Twirling my fears

But the band

Plays on and on

Despite the years

1998

Every morning

I rise and face

The firing squad

Every morning

There is one

Who holds his fire

His dilemma

Is my system of belief

They fire rounds

But I am seldom

In their circle

A quiet mind

Is labeled “sound”

And colored purple

My little girl

Has not yet learned

To color within lines

Her jumbled diction

Has not yet learned

Our contradiction

We speak of art

With flaming passion

Then do work

Void of compassion

And wonder why reality

Is bleeding fiction

Nigga, you better drink

Half a gallon of Shaolin

Before you pluck the strings

Of my violin

My life is orchestrated

Like London symphony

Concentrated

Niggas waited and waited

I’m birthday wishes, belated

I write in red ink

That turns blue

When the book closes

In 1972

My mother was rushed

From a James Brown concert

In order to give birth to me

My style is black whole

Most niggas simply sound like earth to me

If hip-hop were the moon

I’d be the first to bleed

Cyclical sacraments of self

For all my peers to read

I recite the hues of night

With spots of light

For you to read by

Have you floating

On cloud nine

Without realizing

It’s mind’s sky

And the ground

On which you walk

Is the tongue

With which I talk

I speak the seeds

That root the trees

Of suburbia New York

City streets

Could never claim me

That’s why I never sound like you

All these niggas

Claim the streets

As if paths through the woods

Ain’t true

You better walk your path

You better do your math

’Cause your screw face

Will only make the Buddha laugh

Even if you know your lessons

You don’t know the half

But don’t take it from me

Son, take a bath

I was walking down Fifth Avenue today when Russell Simmons came out of a building and crossed right in front of me.

Is that the same as a black cat?

They are preparing

To introduce me

To their god

I will simply ask him

Whether he’d like to join

Our entourage

“Show him to his room!”

Let him rest

For we rise early

And no god

Is gold enough

To tempt the darkness

From these mines

The universe gives us every opportunity, lays the perfect path of obstacles, that through overcoming them we will have achieved the perfect balance and thus achieve the ultimate alchemical mixture of the God composite.

Dear God,

I wasn’t breast-fed and most of my conversations with men seem to revolve around music. I’m no musician, but the pain has been instrumental. My senses: finely tuned instruments of being lonely, of being loved, of being hue man. I’m no musician, but my life seems to be orchestrated by the likes of women.

Leading a new lover

To the dance floor

Is like taking your intended

To meet your parents

You hope everything works out

That there is no miscommunication

1999

Cancel the apocalypse!

Cartons of the Milky Way with pictures of a missing planet last seen in pursuit of an American dream. This fool actually thinks he could drive his Hummer on the moon, blasting DMX off the soundtrack of a South Park cartoon. Niggas used to buy their families out of slavery. Now we buy chains and links, smokes and drinks. And they’re paying me to record this. Even more if you hear it. Somebody tell me what I should do with the money? Yes, dread, tell me what you think I should do with the money. Exactly how much is it gonna cost to free Mumia? What’s he gonna do with his freedom? Talk on the radio? Radio programming is just that, a brain washed and cleaned of purpose. To be honest, some freedom of speech makes me nervous. And you, looking for another martyr in the form of a man, hair like a mane, with an outstretched hand … in a world of harsh thoughts, reactionary defensiveness and counter-intelligence, what exactly is innocence? Fuck it. I do believe in police brutality. Who do I make checks payable to? How about I pay you in prayers.

A young child stares at a glowing screen, transfixed by tales of violence. His teenage father tells him that that’s life, not that Barney shit. A purple dinosaur who speaks of love. A black man who speaks of blood. Which one is keeping it real, son? Who manufactured your steel, son? Hardcore, based on elements at the earth’s core. Fuck it, I’m gonna keep speaking ‘til my throat’s sore.

An emcee tells a crowd of hundreds to keep their hands in the air. An armed robber steps into a bank and tells everyone to put their hands in the air. A Christian minister gives a benediction while the congregation holds their hands in the air. I love the image of the happy Buddha with his hands in the air. Hands up if you’re confused. Define tomorrow. Your belief system ain’t louder than my car system. This nigga walks down my block with a rottweiler, a sub-woofer, on a leash. Each one teach one. A DJ spins a new philosophy into a barren mind. I can’t front on it. My head’s as if to clean the last image from an Etch A Sketch. Somethin’ like Rakim said. I could quote any emcee, but why should I? How would it benefit me? Karmic repercussions. Are your tales of reality worth their sonic-based discussions?

Suddenly the ground shivers and quakes. A newborn startles and wakes. Her mother rushes to her bedside and holds her to her breast. Milk of sustenance heals and nourishes. From the depths of creation, life still flourishes. Yet, we focus on death and destruction, violence and corruption. My people, let Pharaoh go!

What have you bought into? How much will it cost to buy you out? How much will it cost to buy you out of the mentality that originally bought you, a dime a dozen? Y’all niggas are a dime a dozen.

Puffy’s in the boardroom.

I’m in my room, bored.

Your success made me doubt myself

And the whirling ways of this world.

Man, this love of hip-hop is like investing in a marital relationship, way past its prime, simply for the sake of the children, not realizing that we are actually fucking up their entire conception of relationships. They will be forced to work it out for the rest of their lives, falling in and out of love.

I’ve outgrown you.

I enjoy my memories of you much more than I enjoy our present moments. You allowed yourself to be defined by something less than yourself. But then, I never really stopped loving you. In fact, I love you more and began to love you through your manifestations in others: a breakbeat in a Led Zeppelin song; braggadocio in a Guns n’ Roses song; a breakbeat sped up to twice its speed in a drum and bass song. In my estimation, Portishead is hip-hop. Tricky is hip-hop. Björk is hip-hop. And they are hip-hop in ways that you have failed to be. Perhaps, they are hip-hop’s illegitimate children.

If hip-hop is a parent, it is negligent, not nurturing, and hardly responsible. But I can blame no one but myself. I expected too much of you without making my own contribution. I quit rhyming at the age of seventeen. Maybe my quitting on hip-hop led to hip-hop quitting on me.

Regardless, y’all have succeeded in making my earliest inspiration hardly an art form, hardly the voice of the youth anymore. You guys are boring, predictable. And maybe that’s why I’m working with Rick Rubin now. This is part of his karma.

Brown bags on the corner

Pants cuffed at his shin

Keloid from a razor

Right under his chin

Son’s looking at me

No sign of recognition

Sun shines on my left

No time for superstition

I peep the bulge in his vest

The smell of the cess

The glare of distress

The fear of the rest

The mark of a test

The mark of the beast

The streets of the east

The laws of the west

The flaws of the west

The cause of this mess

The haves and have-nots

The gets who get got

The shots from the cops

And cops who get shot

Innocents getting popped

Got whole blocks down on lock

But son’s looking at me

Yo why you looking at me?

I turn around and look back

Look down and look back

Say a prayer and look back

Yo, why you looking at me?

I wake up with doubt and fear. The first two faces I see in the morning, first cousins of the face of death (which I later found out was only a mask). The first thing I smell is most usually hesitation.

This feels like the kind of slump that is only healed by tragedy … or is that me willing something into existence?

I’d rather be propelled than go by foot.

I want her to call me first. At least that way I can construct a window in this house of fear.

A cardboard box called home.

These are the thoughts of the sinking. My pen man ship is the Titanic.

Maybe I’ve idolized too many dead geniuses. They all wore the same costume to the masquerade party hereafter.

Maintain a safe distance from these ideas. They are simply the many i’s attempting to be your capital. “I” that is.

These ideas float around my head like many little islands around the globe.

I may write something brilliant that I may not be able to read due to poor pen man ship.

See what I mean? That one was smaller than Tahiti.

A volcanic land mass.

Like an open wound.

I bowed to her

And when I rose

Found my head

In my hands

I bore a gift

Yet at the same time

Bore the pain

He was pronounced dead.

Pronounced dead.

Is that all it takes?

I was born at 12:30 in the morning. By 1 AM I was certain I would not remember much of my past. By 1:40 I had forgotten my name. By 2:12 the ancients had bid me farewell. By 2:30 I had swallowed a foreign brand. By 2:40 I had begun to hallucinate. It’s all coming back to me. I met my parents’ spirit guides at 4:30. It was they who told me of the sun. It was not what I expected. It only seemed to hint at light.

By 6:17 I had decided what I wanted to be. At 6:18 I discovered my outer shell. At 6:19 I began the process of dying: piss, shit, and crying, crawling and not flying. At 7 o’clock my mother held me and rocked. The spinning world stopped. She sang, “You’re the one. Indivisible son of sun, ancient mystical spirit come to become our tongue….”

As the rockets’ red

Glare in your eyes

Will you look down

Or glare back

As the one

Who defies?

I am concerned about a repetition of events. History only repeats itself for those who do not know their history. I must learn to accept each situation as a (k)new (unknown) situation, regardless of how much it appears to be a repetition of things that once occurred (yet, with different characters).

New—Knew

Knew—New

I love English. Through its dissection a million things are under/over-stood.

This is a new day.

Believe it or not.

Re-live it or not.

Everyday I am led

Into another room

Of your mansion

How foolish I must sound

Complaining about how wet

God’s kisses are

2000

Mental states

Have physical boundaries

How could you not

Realize the power of word

After being forced

To serve a sentence?

The walking dead

Walking with their own

Solar systems of blood and tissue

Circling around them

We are coming forth by day

And swollen with sway

Once upon a dawn’s early light

The symbols assembled

Crosses of every sort

Emblems of every fort

Phallic and lunar

Mystic and solar

Symbols of civilizations past

Politics and heretics

Of the asterisk

Mathematic symbols

At the cusp of a new age

Gathered on the grains

Of a brown page

I am not a writer

I am the plight

Of unfigured equations:

A stick of cinnamon

A grove a cloves

Cayenne and a bowl of honey

Water and money

And the irony of the evening

Was that only the white DJ

Would spin the record

With the refrain

“Black man know yourself.

Don’t forget your past.”

We cannot forget

Our past because

You will re member it

For us

Collective consciousness

Will there be war

Declared on this soil

In my lifetime?

History tells me, yes.

But I have difficulty

Imagining fighting

Something that ain’t

Invisible.

Can music change the world?

Are these simply songs to be heard

And forgotten?

When JB said, “Say it loud …”

Did that affect a shift in consciousness?

Can the music of a society

Help mold its mental state?

Can a great song affect more than the way

A musician approaches his next song?

How about the way they approach their children.

Their loved ones, their lives?

I believe that I am

A man molded by music

And my intent is to mold

To shape

These are the ways

Of a carpenter

What has become

Of my simple truths?

They have become

Complex lies.

You close your eyes

When the beat swells

Feathers in inkwells

My word is bird

Purple pigeon

Of a street tale

Learned the ropes

Like strange fruit

Cloaked in brown shells

My tongue, the noose

Of untruth

Chants, prayers, and spells

Delegate of the

Unconventional

Member of the

Society-less

Author of the

In between

The graffiti on the

Whitewashed wall

Of the institution,

Now crumbled,

Has become

The cornerstone

Of our compound

Compounded dreams

Distilled vessels, refilled

Belief systems

Will be billed

Payable to

Who you pray to

If you wish

To pay in person

Addresses may vary

According to beliefs

Some will have to die first

Some may have to suffer

And be free from desires

Some may have to purge themselves,

Fast, cover their heads, think less

Of women, beat their children, abstain

From the secular world …

Yet others may simply be

Themselves

And in being and embracing

All aspects of the mother:

Patience, responsibility,

Compassion, open-heartedness

They will find themselves

Provided for, they will find

Their dreams fulfilled, they

Will find their spirits nurtured,

And their hearts healed

Wind washed wonderful

Whirlwinds through water

Welcome to the New World

Where words wind and shadow

Whither and whistle worship

The weather call to the clouds

Walk through the winter

A week of new sounds

We wish for clear water

It’s a wonder her wing-fruit

Seeds smile like my daughter

Whether she will or

Whether she won’t

The wind will still whistle

Through thistles and thorns

Son of the Sun

Friend of the wind

Life of the womb

Reborn once again

May the sun shine through

Your clouded testament

Silent angel

Wingless words

Women who dance

Meaning into shapes

Shapes that are symbols

Of truths to come

The past tense of drum

Is dream

We dance through

Memories, unseen

We are dancing women

The subconscious

Of our ancestors

The contents of feathers

And webs, rewoven

The fabric of a future

Once fable

The legend

Of a legion

Of angels

The only metaphor that

Exists is midwifery

All else is sight specific

Most things are

Hardly more than they are

There is midwifery in poetry

Midwifery in dance

The artistic process is

A process of midwifery

If we do not catch

These falling stars

Then we will experience

No more than a cratered

Wilderness but when truth

And beauty falls into our hands

And we learn how to place it back

Into the arms of the mother …

You finish the thought

The depths of breath

Is all that is left

To breathe shallow

Is to wallow in doubt

Here on the darkened wood

Of this misshapen tree

There is no trace of age

Its rings have been stained

And tarnished

There is no telling

Of ancestry or lineage

It no longer matters

We are here now

Conjurers of the evermore

I cannot invest in these surroundings

For only I am held accountable

And the wages of unwritten pages

Is shallow breath

It is only through this

That we might replant

These forests

Libraries are forests

Replanted….

That which I was born

I am no longer

That which I was born

I have lived well beyond

That which I was born

Yet I am

As an artist

First, I was black.

I wrote with a yearning

To be a leader. I was

Born into a mourning

Race. We mourned

The death of a king.

I awoke to find

My tongue a scepter.

2001

Inner breathlessness, outer restlessness

By the time I caught up to freedom I was out of breath

Grandma asked me what I’m running for

I guess I’m out for the same thing the sun is sunning for

What mothers birth their young’uns for

And some say Jesus’ coming for

For all I know the earth is spinning slow

Sun’s at half-mast ’cause masses ain’t aglow

On bended knee, prostrate before an altered tree

I’ve made the forest suit me

Tables and chairs

Papers and prayers

Matter vs. spirit

A metal ladder

A wooden cross

A plastic bottle of water

A mandala encased in glass

A spirit encased in flesh

Sound from shaped hollows

The thickest of mucus released from heightened passion

A man that cries in his sleep

A truth that has gone out of fashion

A mode of expression

A paint-splattered wall

A carton of cigarettes

A bouquet of corpses

A dying forest

A nurtured garden

A privatized prison

A candle with a broken wick

A puddle that reflects the sun

A piece of paper with my name on it

I’m surrounded

I surrender

All

All that I am I have been

All I have been has been a long time coming

I am becoming all that I am

The spittle that surrounds the mouthpiece of the flute

Unheard, yet felt

A gathered wetness

A quiet moisture

Sound trapped in a bubble

Released into wind

Wind fellows and land merchants

We are history’s detergent

Water soluble, light particles,

Articles of cleansing breath

Articles amending death

These words are not tools of communication

They are shards of metal

Dropped from eight-story windows

They are waterfalls and gas leaks

Aged thoughts rolled in tobacco leaf

The tools of a trade

Barbers barred, barred of barters

Catch phrases and misunderstandings

But they are not what I feel when I am alone

Surrounded by everything and nothing

And there isn’t a word or phrase to be caught

A verse to be recited

A mantra to fill my being

In those moments

I am blankness, the contained center of an “O”

The pyramidic containment of an “A”

I stand in the middle of all that I have learned

All that I have memorized

All that I’ve known by heart

Unable to reach any of it

There is no sadness

There is no bliss

It is a forgotten memory

A memorable escape route

Only is found by not looking

There, in the spine of the dictionary

Words are worthless

They are a mere weight

Pressing against my thoughtlessness

But then, who else can speak of thoughtlessness

With such confidence

Who else has learned to sling these ancient ideas

Like dead rats held by their tails

So as not to infect this newly-oiled skin

I can think of nothing heavier than an airplane

I can think of no greater conglomerate of steel and metal

I can think of nothing less likely to fly

There are no wings more weighted

I too have felt heaviness

The stare of man guessing at my being

Yes I am homeless

A homeless man making offerings to the after-future

Sculpting rubber tree forests out of worn tires

and shoe soles

A nation unified in exhale

A cloud of smoke

A native pipe ceremony

All the gathered cigarette butts piled in heaps

Snow-covered mountains

Lipsticks smeared and shriveled

Offerings to an afterworld

Tattoo guns and plastic wrappers

Broken zippers and dead-eyed dolls

It’s all overwhelming me, oak and elming me

I have seeded a forest of myself

Little books from tall trees

It matters not what this paper be made of

Give me notebooks made of human flesh

Dried on steel hooks and nooses

Make uses of use, uses of us

It’s all overwhelming me, oak and elming me

I have seeded a forest of myself

Little books from tall trees

On bended knee

Prostrate before an altered tree

I’ve made the forest suit me

Tables and chairs

Papers and prayers

Matter vs. spirit

Yo, the mosh pit

Is star lit

I see the light

In your eyes

Find my way

To the amp

And stage dive

Into your lives

I am as ignorant

As I am heaven-sent

My mind’s a circus tent

I ride the elephant

Into the record store

Its foot breaks through the floor

I hear the surface pop

And underneath, the rock

Down in the underground

A more familiar sound

I do a somersault

Into a sonic vault

I’m in the listening booth

On a quest for truth

I nod my head and goof

I shake and move

Everything you see

Tilted to the sea

Everything you touch

Wilted more than once

Everything you know

Melted in the snow

You are all alone

You are all aglow

No one has to know

Future slave narrative

Comparative literature

Sketches of an undeveloped picture

Charcoal star soul

I Ching detected from a bar code

Download mad niggas by the carload

A brief history of timelessness borrowed

King of sorrow/ King pleasure

Buried treasure

Twelfth Night/ Measure for Measure

Paranoid Android

Listen at your leisure

Or beat it, Michael Jackson

Red leather

Disfigured nigga

Inbred communion

Remnants of a resurrected ruin

Pray with your eyes closed

Sleep with your door closed

We want to see those truths that you’re hiding

Bride in a white dress

Cried in her white dress

Salt-water moon daughter

Bled at her ritual

Communion

Same blood

Different visual

Digital ritual

Ritual digital

Binary star

Some cats in a car

Rollin on dubs

Do you know where your kids are?

Rollin with thugs

Drinkin that good shit

Smokin dem drugs

We got you tied up

Brain sleazed and fried up

Eyelids are pried up

You see what I see?

White mothafuckas tryin to be what I be

Black mothafuckas tryin to shop to feel free

I’m waiting to board an airplane in Atlanta when I spot Hype Williams. We greet each other and begin catching up. I ask him if he knows about the long list of songs that was sent to radio programmers, suggesting that those songs not be played. He was unaware. I tell him that no rap songs were on the list, primarily because the vast majority of mainstream rappers are not talking about anything of any political relevance, nothing that might counter the system in any way. In fact, rap radio feeds the economy. He tells me that the rap game is like fast food and that people will always want fast food. He asks me if I listen to hip-hop. I tell him that I study it, but that I cannot listen to it in most cases for the same reason I don’t eat meat: I don’t like how it feels in my system. I tell him that I can’t listen to it because it seems to betray the hip-hop that molded me. He wants to know if I remember Public Enemy, KRS, Rakim … I tell him that I have difficulty listening to contemporary hip-hop because I can’t forget.

“Maybe you should search reality and / stop wishing for beats and steady bass / and lyrics said in haste / if its meaning doesn’t manifest / put it to rest”

“POETRY” KRS-ONE 1987

Hype and I seem to symbolize different worlds with the same last name. He is in first class and I am in economy, in the back (keeping it real?). We are balancing the plane by sitting in our respective seats. Our respective films Slam and Belly came out the same October day three years ago. We are both playing our roles in doing what we feel we were put here to do. The pilot has just announced that we are at 10,000 feet and that the movie will be Cats & Dogs. Funny. This makes me think of the magazine cover I just read that says “DMX: Hip-hop’s Hardest Rapper.” DMX was the star of Belly. If I were to figure into the rap equation, I’d probably be the softest. To most dogs I’m probably a pussy. Back to Hype. Hype is not a rapper, yet I feel he has contributed greatly to what now is represented as hip-hop culture through the media. And I guess even more importantly, young black culture. The question I am posed, as an artist who is very much a critic of hip-hop and popular culture, is whether I am most comfortable preaching to the converted or, more accurately, what would I say if I had the opportunity to sit and talk with a Jay-Z, a DMX, or a rap entity who reaches the mainstream on a regular basis?

One might ask, well, who the fuck am I to criticize, especially when I’m on some poetry shit. Well, actually my love of poetry didn’t happen because I grew up reading poetry but because I grew up with very strong doses of hip-hop and that is the poetry that shaped me and molded me. Through hip-hop I gained my biggest appreciation of myself and my culture. Hip-hop made me proud to be black in ways that my parents could never do by forcing me to read a Langston Hughes poem. And even when I began writing poems in the mid-’90s, while everyone started going on and on about who was producing what (Dre’s beats, Premier’s hooks, etc.), I stepped into the poetry arena, which at the time was synonymous with the underground hip-hop scene, because it felt like lyricism was getting the short end of the stick. I wasn’t being fulfilled lyrically. Thus, the poetry that I began writing was to fill the void between what I was hearing and what I wanted to hear from hip-hop. I simply decided to take the beat away and focus solely on lyricism. And much of my current dissatisfaction comes from the fact that if I now had to look at hip-hop for inspiration or guidance, I feel as if I might be misled. I don’t doubt for a minute that these emcees, with their bandannas and ice, are soldiers. That’s exactly what they are. But I can’t figure out who’s giving the orders, or whether there is any actual order.

So the question remains, what would I say if mainstream rappers were listening? Perhaps I would begin by asking them what would they say, if the whole world were listening? Then I would question whether they were aware of the fact that the world was listening and responding to all that they said….

We are defined by our ability to resonate and shape sounds. Word. Therefore what we say is of the utmost importance. What we say matters (becomes matter). That is why the spiritual communities have always had people recite prayers and mantras aloud, because they know that they will affect global consciousness and reality itself. We seem to have once, subconsciously, known that in hip-hop as well. Our earliest slang, “word,” “word up,” “word life,” “word is bond,” all seemed to revel in this knowledge. As Guru said, “These are the words that I manifest.” We nodded our heads in affirmation and then when Biggie named his first album Ready to Die we all acted surprised when it happened. Word is bond, son. Plain and simple.

How much senseless violence have we spoken of without taking into account the possibility of our calling these things into existence? Emcees, there is a power in words. There is a power in sound vibration. It affects reality. In fact, it determines it. Hip-hop is much more powerful than mere party music. I don’t mean to bring no hateration to the dancerie, but hip-hop, because of its hard drumbeats and conversational chants and rhymes, has the power of any sacred ritual. It is no coincidence that it has reshaped and redefined youth culture, globally. I am not suggesting that we not aim to depict our realities through our music, but we should also realize that we shape our realities as we depict them.

Why is it that if you flipped to BET during the World Trade Center incident it was showing videos when every other station was showing news? It stood out like a metaphoric commentary on the relevance of contemporary black music. Is the latest and most important news in the black community that Jay-Z and Puffy have gotten off free while we remain enslaved to their senseless ideas and lack of ideals. In the latest Bad Boy release there is a lyric that says, “Bad Boy ain’t going nowhere until Tibet is free.” Why would anyone align himself with the type of oppression that keeps the Dalai Lama from being able to return to his homeland? You may ask why I am calling the names of a few rappers, as if they are to blame, I am not placing blame, I am simply raising questions. The fact of the matter is that there are no famous philosophers or thinkers in this day and age. There are merely famous entertainers. Yet we associate with them by their philosophy. If you believe that “bitches ain’t shit,” you know who to listen to. If you’re a hustler or a playa, you know who to listen to. But when we sing along with a song, are we operating off of our highest principles, or are we saying things that we would take back if we thought seriously about it? And what if you don’t take it back? Is word still bond? Are these the words we manifest? Are these the prayers and mantras of our community? Are we determining an unchanging reality by focusing on keeping it real? We are not powerless. We do live and speak with the power of determining our realities and affecting our environment both positively and negatively. Hip-hop at its best was strategic, and the strategy at that time was about a bit more than getting paid. The problem is that we are ignoring the lessons that we learned from KRS, Public Enemy, Rakim, Jungle Brothers, Queen Latifah and other golden age rap groups that revolutionized hip-hop. It has been said that those who do not know their history are bound to repeat it. It seems that hip-hop is in the midst of either relearning or forgetting lessons that have already been taught. But don’t get me wrong. This is not a plea to rappers or whomever to become more conscious of what they say; this is not someone trying to enlighten minds. This is a prediction. If you are in some way affiliated with any of these emcees getting airplay, or polluting your airspace with their lack of insight, I would advise you to begin reading aloud. Your shit will not last. You will manifest your truths and die in the face of them. These are your last days. We are growing tired of you. We love women for more than you have ever seen in them. We love hip-hop for more than you have ever used it for. We love ourselves, not for our possessions, but for the spirit that possesses us. We honor your existence. We honor your freedom. But a freedom that costs, obviously, is not free. Watch what you say. Watch what you value. Planes crash. Bank vaults are airtight, you will suffocate in them. Cars crash. Word life. Word death. Your hit songs hit and run. We are wounded but not dead. And we are coming to reclaim what is ours. The main stream: the ocean. The current. Our time is now. Word is bond.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I acknowledge that I am a vessel pressed against the lips of the Faceless. I am an instrument in a symphony orchestrated by the hands of an electrifying conductor. I am thankful to play my part. I am a part of the plan. Just like you. I acknowledge your presence, kiss your eyes and thank you for being. It’s going to be fun getting to know each other. Let’s have an open relationship. Just kidding. Never more than you and I.

I also acknowledge the hands, hearts, and minds that graced the trail from my hands to yours. They have been instrumental. All parts are equal. We give and take. But those who give of themselves in the name of another are of the highest rank. I thank you with all of my heart. Your devotion to your work and craft has intensified my devotion to my own. Thank you for planning, proofing, laying out, marketing, researching, and outlining a dream now manifest.

Finally, I would like to acknowledge that I am neither here nor there. I am not what you think. Only what you know in your heart. I believe in you and trust you can feel me. But, truly, I’m just that NGH you may cross the street to avoid, invested with love and a nurturing family. Some are not as lucky. All are blessed. Feel me? We use what we got …

My man Kwam told me, “Ain’t no use. NGHs are broken.” Nah man, NGHs ain’t broken. NGHs are broken-hearted. Ain’t no love in the promise land. Ain’t that a BCH! My love told me that she had to learn how to surrender to love again after her divorce. But first she had to allow herself time to heal. NGHs are healin. That’s why some of ‘em be wearin Band-Aids, buying themselves diamonds and speaking of their worth. We were once worthless. Never forget, regardless of how much it breaks your heart or strains your imagination to remember. We served life as if trialed by God: slavery. Capital punishment. Got way too many emcees serving sentences. Word is bond. The source and power of your wordplay is no game. Playas beware. Game recognize truth. I love y’all more than words. I can’t say it enough. Shit, so much I’ve made expressing that love my hustle, my daily bread. And, nah, NGHs may not be broken, but I’ve sure been broke (Big shout out to the heads that be helping me manage my scrilla!). And I acknowledge the wit and savvy of all you hustlers that had to do what you had to do to not be broke. Now, let’s do what we got to do to not be broken. Let’s learn to love again: our mothers, our children, ourselves. And let’s let that love resonate through our music (That doesn’t mean I ain’t goin to check out Three6Mafia tonight, ‘cause I am. Believe it. If Project Pat is there I’m gonna lose it!). Balance. We walk the fine line between now and the eternal. Our journey has the makings of scripture. Which ain’t much more than souped up poetry (yes, of course, inspired by the divine).

What is a poem’s worth? You decide. Recite me off page or know me by heart. I am written. So be it. I acknowledge that I am not the first, nor will I be the last, but I am here and now. And in this moment I acknowledge that we are all much more than ourselves. We are each other. And together we are part of a universe. One verse of a poem that extends beyond before and after. I know nothing of the author except that I love her. I feel kissed by language, let alone by my love.

Dear Creator/Destroyer Dimension, thank you for life and for name. We live our signature to sign your treaty. Feathers in inkwells, we bleed through paper. May our testament fulfill thy will. Hallelujah! Dollar, dollar bill, y’all!

And I’m out.

SAUL WILLIAMS AKA NIGGY TARDUST

Live from Tinsel Town

(Recorded in front of a dead audience.)

October 17, 2005

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