The poem is finished -

A choreographed coincidence as 7 in the magic number. (3 is so last century). For the final draft, I did away with the harsh language, replaced : he “won’t tap, won’t twitch for shit” with “won’t tap for nuthin’, won’t twitch for zilch”. Reason? simply to pander to younger audience and possible publications that may frown at such language… Somewhat redundant through as the poem begins with the use of an illegal substance.

So the reason for the poem:

The imagined silence, the void that hip hop fills, the fear of it.

Hip Hop rules the world. This is as true a statement as the ‘the sun shines’. There has never been a genre of music so malleable, so simple, so marketable, so present, so complex, yet basic as this. Its selling point is to make something out of nothing, to swagger up to a group of hard men, with nothing to show for yourself save your voice. Its romance: to be backed against a wall, still spitting and representing yours, your family, your ends, your truth. Its instruments are simple: Something you can hit, and a voice. That’s it.

I think the world without Hip Hop would be a more repressed place, certainly my life, my voice, in-fact – as hip hop led me to poetry – my work would be of an entirely different nature, or might not exist at all. Fearing that – March Forth.

————————————————————–

March Forth -  for Jay Bernard
(‘jay’ is also slang  for marijuana)

My friend Jay likes her birth date.
She says its a call to action: March 4th.

Her dread locks are loose tower blocks,
forehead for sky, her nose: a shrouded figure,

a dude speeding by, who is back packed with
sketch books and gas masks, jeans patched

more times than he’s matched sticks to spliffs.
He is a loose hoodied slouch with spray cans,

crouched in a train yard, headphoned and
nodding hard to lyrics so deep it digs back

to the African forest where it started, back
to talking drums. Now, they talk in drum

patterns, scattered in urban forests;
rappers pattered tones riff against bars

just like spray cans whiff against walls,
both birth brilliance, coupled in this dark

before radio crackles, and rail guards
mark his presence; it’s clearly time to go

he packs bag and coasts: a winged shadow
floats past yellow lines, glides over railings,

air vents. The clouds cry. A poverty stricken
kitten skips the sprinkled streets, litter

glitters pave-stones, pavement splits into
a doorway, he enters, out breaths a beat,

door shuts with such finality
it stops his existence:

he never pressed a nozzle to colour walls,
the rapper’s vocals never coloured bars;

it’s a blasphemous silence, it unravels
talking drums, jazz, blues, baselines,

black music – never strummed, trapped
in the fingernails of a slave, so stitched,

he won’t tap for nuthin’, won’t twitch
for zilch, and the unplayed guitar riff

like ghost graffiti, leaks
from his heart, and dies.

Jay, I once smoked your name
and glimpsed what might’ve been

had no one courage enough to march forth,
make canvas of walls, and music of bars.

Wisps of it phantom roads in pot holes
and hide in the hush of a rapper’s flow.

I nod to brave such breaks in hip hop
and pray that the beat don’t stop.

© Inua Ellams 12/09

My friend Jay likes her birth date.
She says its a call to action: March 4th.

Her dread locks are tower blocks,
forehead for sky, nose: a shrouded figure

speeding by, back packed with sketchbooks
and gas masks, jeans patched more times

than he has matched sticks to spliffs.
He is a loose hoodied slouch with spray cans,

crouched in a train yard, headphoned and
nodding hard to lyrics so deep it digs back

to the African forest where it started, back
to talking drums. Now, they talk in drum

patterns, scattered in urban forests;
rappers pattered tones riff against bars

just like spray cans whiff against walls,
both birth brilliance, coupled in this dark

before radio crackles, and rail guards
mark his presence; it’s clear – time to go,

he packs bag and coasts – a winged shadow
- floats past yellow lines – glides over railings,

air vents, the clouds cry, a poverty stricken
kitten skips the sprinkled streets, litter

glitters pave-stones, pavement splits into
a doorway, he enters, out breaths a beat,

door shuts with such finality
it stops his existence:

he never pressed a nozzle to colour walls,
the rapper’s vocals never coloured bars;

It’s a blasphemous silence, it unravels
talking drums, jazz, blues, baselines,

black music – never strummed, trapped
in the fingernails of a slave, so stitched,

he won’t tap, won’t twitch for shit, and
the unplayed guitar riff like ghost graffiti

leaks from his heart, and dies.

Jay, I once smoked your name and glimpsed
of what might’ve been had no one courage

enough to march fourth, make canvas
of walls, and music of bars
———————————————————————————–
Flecks of if it frighten me and these roads

they haunt my.. and blah blah

——————————————————————-

So, what am I trying to say here? what is the reason for the poem? I am not sure yet, I fooled around with making it a moralistic ‘so don’t smoke weed‘ tale, or  a meditation on Jay’s face, or try to tease something from the city/the jungle, but I settled on returning to music, to one of the thoughts, questions that sparked the poem? what if black music never existed…

Wole Soyinka writes about consequences. His recent play staged at the National Theatre: Death and the king’s Horseman, is about what happens if a traditional ritual is not completed, followed through. And I am taking a leap from here… the music, the graff work, a bag full of diagrams, movement, song, this is ritualistic, sacred? no?

March Forth.

My friend Jay likes her birth date.
She says its a call to action: March 4th.

Her dread locks are tower blocks,
forehead for sky, nose: a shrouded figure

speeding by, back packed with sketchbooks
and gas masks, jeans patched more times

than he’s matched sticks to spliffs. He is
a loose hoodied slouch with spray cans,

crouched in a train yard, headphoned and
nodding hard to lyrics so deep it digs back

to the African forest where it started, back
to talking drums. Now, they talk in drum

patterns, scattered in urban forests;
rappers rough tones riff against bars

just like spray cans hiss against walls,
they birth brilliance, doubled in the dark

before radio crackles, rail guards arrive ///

——————————————————————————————

I am considering a physical exchange here, a conflict? a back and forth.. dogs maybe? but am fearful it will clutter the boy… nothing has come clear and crisp enough which invites Occam’s razor (also known as Ockham’s razor) the principle that “entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily”, which really is the golden rule of poetry. But we will see. But I do like the movement to the sprinkled streets. This is close.

————————————————————————————-

signalling: it’s time to go, he packs bag
and goes – a winged shadow – floats

past yellow lines, glides over railings,
air vents, the clouds cry, a poverty stricken

kitten skips the sprinkled streets.

————————————————————————————-

Till Friday, Inua.

I apologise, I have had computer trouble of late. Virginia is passing away, in about three months I will have to purchase a new machine, in the mean time.. poetry.

————————————————————-

March Forth.

My friend Jay likes her birth date.
She says its a call to action: March 4th.

Her dread locks are tower blocks,
forehead for sky, nose: a shrouded figure

speeding by, back packed with sketchbooks
and gas masks, jeans patched more times

than he’s matched sticks to spliffs. He is
a loose hoodied slouch with spray cans,

crouched in a train yard, headphoned and
nodding hard to lyrics so deep it digs back

to the African forest where it started, back
to talking drums. Now, they talk in drum

patterns, scattered in Urban Jungles…

————————————————————-

Too harsh? a Cliche? or too blackpowerish? hmmm… it is true though. Communicating with stuttered sound predated Morse code and existed in Africa in the form of talking drums. The beats were messages themselves. And hip hop possibly stemmed from this – as rappers rhyme within beats, and the aim is to flow effortlessly with it. This is a perfect link to the field hand, the inventor of blues mythologized in this poem.

Next hurdle is simple, I am wondering about “Urban jungle”/”urban forest” ‘Jungle is commonly used to describe inner-city areas, so I am leaning towards forest, but I must research to see where a talking drum might have been used.. forest or jungle.

the next step is to link this to the section beginning “a poverty stricken kitten” where the protagonist is chased or disturbed by security guards.

Back and Forth.

My friend Jay likes her birth date.
She says its a call to action: March Fourth.

Her dread locks are limp tower blocks, forehead
for sky, nose, a shrouded figure speeding by,

back packed with sketchbooks and gas masks,
jeans patched more times than he’s matched sticks

to spliffs. He is a loose hoodied slouch
with spray cans, crouched by a

————————————————————-

Still to decide how to link these together, but the question I am fighting with is how to end the poem

———————————————————–

a poverty stricken kitten

skips across the sprinkled streets, glitter litter
crisps the pavement, stone splits into doorway,

out whiffs a break beat as he enters it. Door shuts
with such finality it’s as if he never existed.

Never pressed a nozzle to colour walls,
or the rapper’s vocals never coloured bars…

The silence is blasphemous as the blues
played backwards, un-invented, trapped

in the fingernail of a field hand so straight-
jacketed, so stitched, he won’t twitch for shit,

and the unplayed guitar riff, like ghost graffiti,
reefs over his heart and dies.
———————————————————————

I am not a massive consumer of the green stuff, but have dabbled in it once or twice. I get kicks from discovering its various literary incarnations, at least 50 including ‘grass, weed, green, Mary J, Jamba, Spliff, Ganja, Bud, Blunt, Yay, Joint, Jay,’ or as Black Thought, front man for the Roots calls it, ‘The Tenth Letter’. It is insinuated in this poem… the graffer’s jeans are patched ‘more times than he has matched sticks to spliff’ and I choose to play on with ‘Jay’ as a term for weed, which fits with the slightly surreal nature of the poem as Jay’s face morphs into the city..

————————————

Jay, I once smoked your name and a glimpse
of what I might have been, had I courage

enough to March Fourth, make canvas
of walls, and music of bars frightened me.

Flecks of if it speckle roads like blues riffs,
whiffs off aerosol or faint hip hop beats

But I trapped them in verse and it’s good  for me.

—————————————–

This ending will definitely change.

Back and Forth.

My friend Jay likes her birth date.
She says its a call to action: March Fourth.

Her dread locks are limp tower blocks, forehead
for sky, nose, a shrouded figure speeding by,

back packed with sketchbooks and gas masks,
jeans patched more times than he’s matched sticks

to spliffs. He is a loose hoodied slouch
with spray cans, crouched by a train yard
————————————————————–
In that last post, I talked about wanting to keep the character, the graffer, static and save movement for later. I want him to run from the police / guards / etc which is a classic image in hip hop, someone rebelling against authority, the police specifically.  I see him running through a sleeping city and kinda threw this on the page. I think it needs to be more specific…

…and to bridge the gap to the blues player, I want him to enter a house, and for music to escape from it. When the door shuts. It stops everything. The Poem crashes to a halt. And this is time to throw in something wild, like a obscure link, a jump in time and space.

Reminds of something I think Stephen King said about writing….something along the lines of ‘if you do not know what to do next, let a man with a gun come in’

——————-

a poverty stricken kitten

skips across the sprinkled streets, glitter litter
crisps the pavement, stone splits into doorway,

out whiffs a break beat as he enters it. Door shuts
with such finality it’s as if he never existed.

Never pressed a nozzle to colour walls,
or the rapper’s vocals never coloured bars…

The silence is blasphemous as the blues
played backwards, un-invented, trapped

in the fingernail of a field hand so straight-
jacketed, so stitched, he won’t twitch for shit,

and the unplayed guitar riff, like ghost graffiti,
reefs over his heart and dies.

tomorrow x

Back and Forth.

My friend Jay likes her birth date.
She says its a call to action: March Fourth.

Her dread locks are limp tower blocks, forehead
for sky, nose, a shrouded figure speeding by,

back packed with sketchbooks and gas masks,
jeans patched more times than he’s matched sticks

to spliffs. He is a loose hoodied slouch
with spray cans, crouched by a

——-

TRAIN? train yard? ware house? crumbling walls? where do graffers go to let go? what is the stereotypical location?  A poet friend, Ainsley Burrows has an amazing poem called ‘Black Boy’ which describes a boy who ‘penned his greatest verse on the window of a train, and watched it  slide off into the killing twilight’ Graff artists back in the day wished for their work to be seen across a city and this was how they did it… as the train trundled through a city a hundred thousand people would see it.

But for dramatic purposes and the movement of this poem, it think it is best to keep him and his creation static, in a train yard? perhaps. Now I have to link the poem to the section below. and the bridge is music.  The purpose of the character below is to conjure the idea of the birth of blues… so I see the figure as a slave / field hand trapping his emotions in a guitar.

I’ll need to link graffiti /hip hop to this, to blues, to an African, and I think the image will have to be a drum… in that is it prevalent in hip hop and in African cultures, not just as a means for keeping time, but as a means of communication.

———————

in the fingernail of a field hand so straight-
jacketed, so stitched, he won’t twitch for shit,

and the unplayed guitar riff, like ghost graffiti,
reefs over his heart and dies.

—

stay tuned…

Inua x

Pushing the idea forward… Now that I have introduced Jay at the start of poem, she must be the departure. I freestly in my moleskin to see what comes…

My friend Jay likes her birth date.
She says its a call to action: March 4th.

Her dread locks are limp tower blocks, forehead
for sky, nose, a shrouded figure speeding by,

back packed with sketchbooks and gas masks,
jeans patched more times than he’s matched sticks

to spliffs. He is a loose hoodied slouch
with spray cans, crouched…

It seems to be about hip hop. I am a city boy and I tend to write from this perspective, mix it with the lil philosophy I have dabbled with, and my small time some time wisdom. It makes for interesting parallels, with the jungle, with literature, with the body… this parallel is with graffiti… which I think is a physical manifestation of the art of rhyme: of hip hop..

stay tuned..

Tools of the trade. I work between Moleskin Sketch Pad, My Moleskin Note book and lil back pocket pad, and my Mac That is all you need to know, lets go.

Tools of the trade.

So… I am into the magical realist style of thinking and ways of thought. Most time, I have one foot on earth, the other tweaking out on Saturn and I try to give birth in this position. I like to freestyle with words and see what my subconscious throws up. On a train hurtling back from a week long writers residency in Scotland, I started thinking about who would have loved the experience and the name the bubbled to mind was ‘Jay Bernard’ – a friend and poet, and remembered something she said that tickled me. She said she liked her birthday, March 4th, that it called for action…

And earlier in the day, I considered a world without black music and the shudder that travelled my spine ended with an image I penned into my back-pocket pad… “it is blasphemous as the blues played backwards, reversed, un-invented, trapped in the fingernail of a field hand, so straight jacketed, so stitched, he won’t twitch for shit..”

I want to put the ideas together.
I have a character, a blues-playing field hand.
A Starting point:

‘My friend Jay likes her birthday
she says it’s a call to action: March 4th’

Tune in tomorrow for the update.
x

So, over the next few weeks, I will blog about the creative process, also I will try to sketch what I write, so deliver images and words, simultaneously doodle out poems…

this may be fun, once I get to grips with WordPress

stay tuned.

I. Out.