The BreakBeat Poets, page 7
– frosty dips – foamy zouk
drown dem clods in kikongo dollop
bradda tell a rida – holla at yuh fadda
– yu in yuh caddy –
ricochet feed yu – barrington
di seagulls crack clam shells –
sailors – da kine stuffin’ swelled snails
dey navy yard smiles chinky –
cause dey drown dem clods in kikongo dollop
shantay yuh stay – dem – yard fowl – serve
swim in kaiso – hotel drive – milk dem lick mouth – holiday den
assified – technique drop – kikongo dollop – blocka-blocka
erode di pentameter – blocka-blocka
shadows sashay – freak-a-leek
milk dem – hotel drive – bum by – don a dime
– true dat fadda – charge dem clods
shantay yuh thesis – walk tick short tongue
– squint when ya milk shake –
drown dem clods – charge dem clods
seagulls on crack – blocka-blocka
gamin’ gabby
Syraniqua D’Voidoffunk…
trust your fields of prayers won’t summon this earth,
where mountains crash beneath an ocean’s thrust.
lonely words burn still days; you mime breech birth
you flee before the dawn makes jest to trust
what good are rainbows, whispering surprise,
or waterfalls that dine with a tongue’s dreams.
this smile falls mute: all’s left are toys and lies.
this joy flies while showers return dazed screams;
rude boyish nature truth dares hide n seek.
your tag balls merry go’s or building bricks,
this morning, leave my pulse free of fool’s tricks.
a rabbit’s speed, a thousand miles by week.
these eyes awake and hear the sun;
good are flints when the night’s cherub has spun.
Cyré Komaki…
chulo, whining is not for the strong at heart.
you have a vice to sweat the ills when no one is sick.
where are the stars when you sleep all day? what
good are southern memories that keep you sprung? no
one said the text message was an exercise,
so why respond like you vibin’ at length, bitch?
don’t you know it’s ten cents a message, playa?
don’t tease my eyes when you fall short.
I’ll blame my ovaries before I consider again.
my feathers ruffled from yo’ dusty mane,
the moon, the tides, the ripples, the love below!
I’ll give dawn to vanity, smoke you, tag you wack.
your bluff, don’t bother to ring, departure time, the 11th hour.
stay yo’ ass up in Gilroy! the sun mighty nice over yonder.
Cyrona Moonwalker…
baby boy whin’n ain’t workin’
you vizzle ta sweat baseheads. no one itchin’
tha stars? you sleep all day. wizzle
memories, pussy whippin’ son.
text message: thou art has gamed me.
yo’ aim off. beeyotch, ten cents
a messagizzles? say it ain’t so! don’t teaze
mah eyes F-to-tha-izzall, shortie, test mah ovaries.
feathas ruffled; flakeolicious head.
tha moon, tides ripple mah s natch.
gizzy dawn ta vanity. scoot yo’ pizzay.
live n die in Fruitvale, sun poppin’ funkedelic. yonder
eyes awakes n hizzy tha sun.
Syralestine Saint-Savin…
ulochay, iningwhay isway otnay orfay ethay ongstray atway earthay
erewhay ountainsmay ashcray eneathbay anway oceansway’say ustthray
erewhay areway ethay arsstay enwhay ouyay eepslay allway ayday,
ouyay eeflay eforebay ethay awnday akesmay estjay otay usttray
oneway aidsay ethay exttay essagemay asway anway exerciseway
osay ywhay espondray ikelay ouyay’eray ibinvay’ atway engthlay itchbay?
onday’tay ouyay owknay itway’say entay entscay away essagemay?
atwhay oodgay areway ainbowsray, isperingwhay urprisesay
rway aterfallsway atthay ineday ithway away onguetay’say eamsdray
iway’llay ameblay ymay ovariesway eforebay Iway’day onsidercay
againway, ymay eathersfay uffledray omfray oyay’ ustyday anemay
ethay oonmay ethay idestay ethay ipplesray inway ymay atchsnay, iway’llay
ivegay awnday otay anityvay, okesmay ouyay, agtay ouyay ackway
oodgay areway intsflay enwhay ethay ightnay’say erubchay ashay unspay
Mitchell L. H. Douglas (1970)
Hood
In memory of smokestack lighting, red brick wall & wait, graffiti buzz scrawled high & wrong the misspelled misrepresented; in sweet run sour, endless slabs of cement, bath of street lamp, gutter litter, alley to alley end zone, BB gun aim, tree climb, bird’s eye view, calls ignored for lunch, for supper (sorry, too busy in branches); in the wake of Uncle Buddy’s fist & forearm through side door glass, ambulance on our would-be 50 yard line, suture map of fold & tuck, flesh envelope. No need for meds, he thinks, I’m fine (never mind the call to swallow); in contempt of stilted tongue, shuttle black alphabets like lost blood—L&N wind & lash, KY to TN—or skip prattle like hopscotch grids in lime, lemon, pink electric—asphalt body rock—until there is no curb between street & skin—warm, black, waved.
Krista Franklin (1970)
Manifesto, or Ars Poetica #2 *
Give me the night, you beasts hissing over the face of this dead woman, I climb into your eyes, looking. To those who would sleep through the wounds they inflict on others, I offer pain to help them awaken, Ju-Ju,Tom-Toms, & the magic of a talking burning bush. I am the queen of sleight of hand wandering the forest of motives, armed with horoscopes, cosmic encounters & an x-acto knife. My right eye is a projector flickering Hottentot & Huey Newton, my left eye is prism of Wild Style, gold grills, lowriders, black dahlias, blunts & back alleys. At twenty-one, I stood at the crossroad of Hell & Here, evil peering at me behind a blue-red eye. I armed myself with the memories of Pentecostal tent revivals, apple orchards, the strawberry fields I roamed with my mother & aunts in the summer, & the sightings of UFO lights blinking in the black of an Ohio nightsky. I am a weapon. I believe in hoodoo, voodoo, root workers, Dead Presidents, Black Tail, Black Inches & Banjees. I believe in the ghosts of 60 million or more, & black bones disintegrating at the bottom of the Atlantic, below sea level, Not Just Knee Deep. I believe that children are the future: love them now or meet them at dusk at your doorstep, a 9mm in their right hand & a head noisy as a hornet’s nest later. Your choice.
Black, still, in the hour of chaos, I believe in Royal Crown, Afro-Sheen, Vaseline, Jergens & baby powder on breasts, the collective conscious, cellular memory, Public Enemies, outlaws, Outkast, elevations, Elevators & Encyclopedia Britannica. Under my knife, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz laughs with Muhammad Ali, a Lady named Day cuddles with a Boxer named Mister after traumatically stumbling on strange fruit dangling from one of the most beautiful Sycamores evah. Under my knife, Marilyn Monroe enjoys an evening out with Ella Fitzgerald, meanwhile, Life shows me a gigantic photo. I am a weapon. I chart voyages of unlove, high on a man called crazy who turns nigger into prince. I believe in Jong, Clifton, Dirty Diana & Dilla, paper, scrilla, green, gumbo, coins, Batty Bois & Video Vixens. I believe that beads at the ends of braids are percussive instruments in double-dutch. In the reflection of my knife, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington & Thelonious Monk argue in a Basquiat heroin nod. I am a weapon. I believe in goo-gobs of deep brown apple-butter, alphabets, Alaga syrup, Affrilachians, A-salaam Alaikum, Wa-Alaikum A-Salaam, & African Hebrew Israelites. I believe in Octoroons, Quadroons, Culluds, Coolie High, Commodores, Krumpin, Krunk & Burn, Hollywood, Burn.
I am Sethe crawling a field toward freedom with a whitegirl talking about velvet. I believe in tumbleweaves, hot combs & hair lyes, Chaka Khan, Shaka Zulu, Mau-Mau, Slum Village & Buhloone Mindstate: “Empty your mind. Be formless, shapeless—like water…” I believe in water. My body is pulp. I bleed ink. I believe in the Fantastic (Vol. 2), Low End Theory, Space Is The Place & The Hissing of Summer Lawns. Tucked in the corner of my right ventricle sprouts a Tree of Knowledge, lives a Shining Serpent, & a middle finger. I’m on a quest for the Marvelous. My face is a mask of malehood, malevolence, one big masquerade. Metaphysically niggerish, I am a weapon wandering the forest of motives, a machete in one hand, a mirror in the other, searching for the nearest body of water.
Preface to a Twenty Volume Homicide Note
(after Amiri Baraka)
Today, I turned Transbluesency over
to the hands of a teenager tussling
with her own words, still trying to decipher
the difference between invention and insipidness.
Meanwhile, you know, the world whips against
our hunched shoulders and McCay’s call to arms
is buried in the graveyards of the poets’ imaginings,
its ghost inhabiting some young soul in Egypt,
rumbling in the heart of Libya. Meanwhile,
America picks the lint from its navel, moonwalks
its way back to antebellum inertia, lulls itself
to sleep with airwave regurgitations of 1970
before music sold its soul for a stripper pole.
At your lecture, we sat in the Amen Corner
and hallelujahed your every word, knowing
over half that room didn’t know Tyner from
Tyson, couldn’t pick Monk out from a mugshot.
Meanwhile, while knee-grows still swallowing
the jizz of the American Dream and south-
side Chicago teens juke Africa in hyper-speed,
we still ain’t caught up where we need to be,
more concerned with how much gold we can
dig out a broke nigga’s pocket, debating the political
incorrectness of the word bitch, and which came
first: the pimp smack or the egging. Baldwin broke
himself writing tomes on black love while chain
smoking and dragging racism out to the streets
by the scruff of its dirty neck, all to be reduced
to “the gay dude?” in the college classroom.
Who’s gonna save us now that all the black heroes
are running from the cops holding their pants
up with dusty fingers they never deigned
to open a book with? Black heroes more concerned
with erasing their records and record deals
than delving into solving the algebra of black agony,
bolt-cutting the inextricable chains of imperialism
that got everybody tied up in knots. Who’s gonna
save us now that all the black heroes are making
it rain in sweatshops where the heroines calculate
payouts in booty-bounce, and the drum got
pawn-shopped for a machine?
*“Manifesto, Ars Poetica #2” is a collage poem that contains lines from poems by Wanda Coleman, Aime Césaire, Amiri Baraka, Tim Seibles, Erica Jong, Lucille Clifton, & Krista Franklin, album titles, movie titles, song titles, book titles & a quote from Bruce Lee.
Adrian Matejka (1971)
Beat Boxing
—for C-Lux
That was the day the breakers started breaking & somebody broke
the radio while snatching a sack of groceries from an old lady.
That was the day the paper sack broke & granny smiths
& dry spaghetti spilled on the street like the words spoking a drunk’s
free style. The inscription on the noodle box: this beat came up
the sidewalk spacewalking the throat’s feedback. This beat
loaned voice muscle instead of bringing the knuckle. The rappers rap
when this shows up. The breakers break
when this show up. This beat huffed
a mad circle of knuckle-ups. It breathed deep in someone else’s crushing
dactylic & blinged hexameter where the handclap should be. This beat
cyphered gunshots into a Kangol dialectic. Empty grocery bags between
handclaps. Old lady’s wig between backslaps. Out of breath,
this beat stutttered without applause like a loan shark on Thursday.
Nobody else breathed as this beat made metronomes from breaths.
The old lady went inside & nobody breathed as a green apple rolled
to a bruising stop. The last beatless day ever. The last circle
of rhymes before cops sirened the block like it was Odysseus.
Robot Music
The 3 fingers pointing back at you are an abacus for all your funky
wants. You’re hydraulics & supersonics on the multi-colored
dance floor. Sergio Valente rocking 3 broke parts. No parking,
baby. You need room to get your back up. You got moves like a dump
truck backing up, a shell toe trying to right itself in the brake light
between sidewalk & broken-arm roboting.
You’re as roly & spunky as a cartoon bomb with a fuse wanting
to be lit. Break beats: the struck match.
Across cutoff sleeves,
past rising sun headbands & patriotic wristbands, leg-sweeping
every pretty momma in sight right before setting the Soul Train
line on stun. Truthfully, you need a bit more hip in your robot
convolutions. You need a chronograph for those windmill
intrusions. That last shudder was like doing community service
on Sunday morning. When you disco pointed at the lady
in the half-top & spandex, 3 fingers pointing back at you were joined
by a thumb, bird-dogging the rhythms of the universe
as you work the dance floor like a B-side’s stepson.
jessica Care moore (1971)
mic check, 1-2.
a duality battle. materials: poem breath & voice.
for Lupe Fiasco
1.
I’m a hip hop cheerleader
carrying hand grenades
and blood red pom poms
screaming from the sidelines of a stage
I built
afraid to part down the middle
for feminine riddles
2.
I was born on the tongue
of the prophets. i was here
before the profit. I never thought
the money would ever stop it.
spirit verses spit. Baraka
versus nonsense.
holocaust versus holocaust
at what cost
whose blood lost
in God the dollar trusts
from Fanon to Fila
Adidas to Allah
we die with prayer beads in our palms
store em in box so the
leather never worn.
walking through our cities
i see so much Red.
I never stop at those lights.
I wrap my son’s imagination
in the blue. indigo child so bright.
eye no purity inside the stars
camouflaged by the night.
1.
raining words of proverbs
of prophets who never get heard
because the microphone is just another phallic symbol
that allows jack to be nimble
jack to be quick
leaving jill with a man who can’t climb
a hill and a bucket of spit
she can’t drink or find her reflection inside
she hides
inside crooked eyes of amber
allows her life to be slandered
if Hip Hop is conscious
we must change the standard
my womb-mate’s been slandered
I planned her arrival
of letters and lyrics never sent to those lovers
who claim that they know her
but still blow her off as a flunky
not a microphone junkie
fiending for a quick fix
not fast cars & hoe tricks
2.
i’m indigenous anti religious
peaceful despite the evil
they clap
lynching as theater
hip hop has turned pathological
in wars they kill the poets first
i don’t know which is worse
