They're old and unedited. I wrote the descriptions a while ago too.
Headspace.
'Headspace' was written for a spoken word poetry showcase back home at my old high school in Botswana called Verbal Emancipation. It was the first time that I tried to seriously bring in elements of rap (and trap!) into a spoken word piece, and I tried to be as faithful to those genres as possible while adding in some philosophical ideas that I was working over at the time. At the time of writing it, I liked saying that I was making 'intellectual trap', which is both ludicrous and pretentious to say. For me, it felt like a very ambitious undertaking since rapping without a beat is difficult. I also felt at the time that I could not find adequate examples in mainstream hip-hop culture of pieces that dealt with these ideas in the way that I wanted to hear. Also, it's unbearably long. In fact, the piece ended up much shorter than I wanted it to be. I was hoping to eventually make it vaguely symphonic and have different 'movements' with different ways of rapping being used to convey different ideas and pseudo-philosophical struggles. Maybe I'll do that one day. I hope I can do more stuff like it in the future. I'm rather happy with how it turned out, though it isn't easy to perform and one needs a very specific type of audience for it to work as a spoken-word piece. Context: the theme of the show was 'Life Inside My Head'. Also, check out 'Don't Like' by Kanye West, Pusha T, Chief Keef, Jadakiss and Big Sean prod. by Kanye West and Young Chop to get a gist of the type of feeling I was going for, along with T.S Eliot's Four Quartets.
I'm at it again
I'm at it again
Don't really have time for let's-just-be-friends
I go in again
I go in again
No band-aid ever go bandage this pain
I'm at it again
I'm at it again
Pretty clear by now my mind through the bends
I go in again
I go in again
Don't really have time for let's-just-be-friends
Never call me unfocused
No time for that bogus
shhhhhhh- that all the rappers be rappin'
Pretty clear who's trappin'
I just wanna say I made it
Wanna say who's the greatest
Man it's pretty clear who major
It's pretty clear who major
, I
start a conversation with my own mind
'bout living this life, how to be on my grind
but I find, all the time, that this rhy-thm and rhyme
is its own kind of prison- I won't even lie
but that's fine, that's the game, I won't even complain
it's a shame, kinda lame, that I'm 'ready feeling drained
it's deranged; barely even started with this talk
with my brain and I 'ready feel like I should walk
away, and sway, like I walk the walk that I talk to talk
as I balance these thoughts, in this vault:
the proverbial cerebrum in a jar
that with my eyes through a mirror I gaze at from afar
I look at my face and the thoughts that I face
say grace to a God that I know plays games
I pray: if I have a daughter by His grace He may
never in a moment when he floatin' feel like Odin
gas himself up, shoot my neurons up with lightning just to show 'em
a vision, in my cerebrum: go to the mountain
go make an altar and pray at the fountain
of the tears that your daughter Isaac gonna shed
As I lift the knife up and strike her in the head
Though this time, 'cause I ain't no Abraham;
this time, 'cause I have forsaken Him;
this time, no angel be stoppin' the
fulfilment of a prophecy where blasphemous philosophy is
punished;
a hunnit
waters be flowin' and chokin' even the ocean
I barely 'member the motion of showin' that ocean
I know how to breathe
I scream to the heavens and beg for redemption
how many of a Hail Mary I need?
To remember the motion of showin' that ocean
where bodies be floatin' and showin'
I know how to swim,
but heaven replies, know now you will die,
Noah will live and you are not him.
But I jump in the ark of the gaze-at-from-afar
of my eyes through the mirror- my brain in the jar
Jump back from the flooded heathen stream of my thoughts
Just in time for y'all to hear this chorus drop
I’m at it again
I’m at it again
No band-aid ever go bandage this pain
, I
ventured towards the woods one day
looking ahead to find you and say
I haven't forgotten that heat you were droppin'
Before I went looking for new ways to live
I did, mistake the trees for the forest
Though if I made it it would make my honest
I promised, to write you many a letter
You promised too but we didn't know better
I came to the States for the trophy to get it
I'm coming back home so they know that I got it
I tried to be humble but now I'm not confident
You only mumbled that I'm still on top of it
I should admit it: I am a hurricane, not just a zephyr
But if I go live it, I know you go livid, I don't put the effort
to try and remember your name on my mouth
but the truth of it all: your name stuck on my tongue
even if I am up North not the South
This is the problem, this is the paradox
This is my heart, this is the box
that I long put it in, in favour of mind
I have to say sorry if that don't seem kind
But I know that my heartbeat don't follow these lines
of reasoning, that I am reasoning, why I've been reading
and meaning to be leading a nation that be
not so brainwashed by the media, why I just heat it up
with all this debate, and fools I been beating up
in the arena of thought which I know we forgot
where the greatest human spirits lay in our thoughts
yet all we do is
feel without thought,
breathe without thought,
kiss without thought,
dance without thought,
kill without thought,
rape without thought,
rap without thought,
just time for y'all this beat drop
I go in again
I go in again
Pretty clear by now my mind through the bends
, I
drifted apart into more than one piece
hoping that I could find some kind of peace
in these dreams, in these dreams,
in these dreams, in these dreams,
restless all night all because of these dreams-
where the feet of my body aren't firm on the ground
where my mind is my body and I am unbound
but this is not sound because I am bound to snore
myself awake, and make mistakes, I can't retake
the fact that William Blake must paint the shades
of grey away to make his Songs of Innocence,
to make his Songs of Experience, of which I'm inexperienced
but the point is even a vision Romantic as his
is bounded by pages as crumpled as this
attempt at exploration which seeks what can't be found
because even a meditation has my ass on the ground
and even when I wasn't hesitating God wasn't around
to hear me ask Him questions- He didn't make a sound
(God...
That's that sh.... I don't like
That's that ... I don't...)
The silence of the universe isn't anything new to me
The songless Muses of time and space are never in harmony
The gift of the gab isn’t much of a jab to Nature’s Mother
So why I am bothered by one failed Our Father
Who Art in Heaven, Hallowed Be Thy Name
Thy Kingdom Come, Thy Will Be Done
On Earth As It Is In Heaven, Give Us This Day
Our Daily Bread. Not this silence instead.
(God
That's that sh.... I don't like
That's that ... I don't...)
So I went to the Buddha and asked him what's up
Said to him God wouldn't say what what was up
Is there a heaven and is there a hell?
Is there a way that I could tell?
How good is my karma, how bad is my mana?
How do I go and escape this samsara?
I'm tired of thinking, I'm tired of breathing
I'm tired of questions that seem so misleading
Give me an escape without all this debate
Enlighten my soul and relinquish my fate
past the ignorance, past the suffering
tired of feeling like I'm not in motion
tired of feeling like I'm always buffering
waiting for a moment, waiting for Godot
waiting for a way that will lead me home
waiting for even a place I'll call home
cause I left it behind for the trophy to get it
I wanna come back so I show 'em I got it
I wanna write letters to an old friend
and know better this time, that me and my friend
Are not that misguided in all our misgivings
Tell me dear Buddha how should I be living?
Don't tell me that you, don't know the answers
I know that you made it and you are the master
Don't tell me that you, don't know the answers
I know that you made it and you are the master
Don't tell me that you, don't know the answers
I know that you made it and you are the master
What do you mean that I don't understand it?
What do you mean that I don't understand it?
What do you mean that I don't understand it?
What do you mean that I don't understand it?
(GOD that’s sh... that I don’t
That’s that... I don’t
That’s that...I don’t like
That’s that... I don’t
GOD that’s sh... that I don’t
That’s that... I don’t
That’s that...I don’t like
That’s that... I don’t)
GOD- if I don't understand it or like it then I will just rap it:
I'm at it again
I'm at it again
Don't really have time for let's-just-be-friends
I go in again
I go in again
No band-aid ever go bandage this pain
I'm at it again
I'm at it again
Pretty clear by now my mind through the bends
I go in again
I go in again
Don't really have time for let's-just-be-friends
Never call me unfocused
No time for that bogus
shhhhhhh- that all the rappers be rappin'
Pretty clear who's trappin'
I just wanna say I made it
Wanna say who's the greatest
Man it's pretty clear who major
It's pretty clear who major
, I
***
The Romantic Era.
This...was the result of having one person impossibly stuck in my head for nearly the entirety of my first year in America. Often, this was offensive to me. Very often, I didn't even have the space to have my own thoughts without the spectre of this person suddenly appearing and challenging me about my mediocre thoughts on reality. I was further confused as to why said person would re-occur to me in this way so frequently. We weren't even talking then. I think I understand it a bit better now, and I think I'm slightly less scared of it as well. Though she pops up less frequently nowadays (Edit: even less frequently now; I find it difficult to imagine whether or not this is sad or not). I've learned that some people just enter your lives in some simple and violent explosion and you're just not quite the same after living through it. (Edit: This is probably true, but I'm inclined to now think of this as somewhat of an exaggeration). I now regard this as something that's rather beautiful, if not bittersweet. It's pretty cool actually. I think the form of this poem is, well, questionable- but I'm genuinely happy with how packed it is with thought and feeling. Even though dense poems are so very often self-defeating-the point of verse is to make bare the paper, not aggrandize it with endless splatters of paint- I love writing and reading them. So I can't help but have a soft spot for this poem. And for once, just once, I was honest, or almost honest, and that's more than enough for me. One last thing: I'm a dick, so I think that the font changes are clever instead of mean. (Edit: I don't care much for this type of poem anymore to be honest. Poetry without regard for form and structure isn't really poetry at all- it's just typing out your feelings, which is neither novel nor interesting. Even so, I still think that the intention, that pure sensation of feeling of which I'm no longer fond of, as something that was and is beautiful and I suppose that that's enough justification for putting this one up, aside from writer's block. It may not be novel or interesting, but it is still undoubtedly the product of something that I care about. This, I suppose, is enough.)
I knew it.
I knew that I fucking didn't lose my calculator.
It was hiding under the grey coach. I just needed
to pull up the seating cushion to the far-right.
Most hidden things require such actions: pulling
up shit hidden beneath under other shit. And then there's
thoughts of you still clutching my neck after midnight
and I struggle to breathe because those hands around
my neck are really fingers around my heart. Not
clutching, just grasping; entertaining thoughts
that I shouldn't bother having any more: thoughts
that I'm sure should've been piled up under other
shit. Under the grey coach. Under the seating cushion.
To the far right. On another cushion to the far-left
I am holding an essay on the true nature of reality
in my Buddhism class and I write your name down
next to an interesting thought but I scribble it down
lightly because, ironically, I want to respect the notion of you as
something separate from myself. I scribble it down
lightly because I'm afraid you'll become palpable
and I'll finally have to say all the things I've been
meaning to not say. But maybe if I did things would be
different.
You knew it.
You knew that you fucking didn't lose yourself.
It was hiding under a camera filter, a Polaroid,
an Audrey Hepburn poster, a few notes of Ravel;
a few raspy whispers of French under the covers
of your dreams, a few desert sand dunes in the
Middle East, some hilltops of darling tea-leaves
covered under the snow further East from there,
some acacia trees added in for measure somewhere
in the Sub-Sahara; Paris, New York and other foreign
things that aren't foreign anymore; more midnight
mysteries with a boy as stubborn as you are but,
unlike you cannot bother saying the word 'I'
without making it a joke; patterns in the sky,
the sun, the moon, other stars; words, words, words;
a seating cushion on the far right of the grey couch
where I imagined I'd find you when I needed you
but I've checked so many times for you that I never
have until I needed my calculator for the math homework
that I'm not doing now. 'There's this girl..." I say to my friends
and I hesitate to finish my sentence. There's this woman?
What is girl? What is woman? What is she? What are you?
What is a rose by any other name and what is the East
and what is the sun and what do I mean when I say that you and I are
different.
My new Honors Humanities teacher showed us a painting
and played us some music from Pandora on a playlist
titled 'Mozart' but it didn't sound right. There was no
self-righteous dance of structure and the numbers
weren't adding up right: in short, I loved it just as much
as I dislike Mozart: quite a bit. I was shocked at this little glory
of life until I asked my teacher what the name of the Mozart
by Rachmaninov and with that I began my formal study
of the Romantic. Before the snow had begun to melt into Spring
we were studying the great works of the Enlightenment in
Europe and the words of Shakespeare's Hamlet looked too much
like the mirror in my room that I've learnt to artfully ignore.
Whatever: besides the ironies of Hamlet I loved the staunch
beliefs of these Renaissance Men: Man is the great intermediary
between Heaven and Earth, and through our minds we can know
God. The philosophers! The mathematicians! The Michelangelo!
All little glories of life that I love: so why then, can Adam
not touch the index finger of God in the Sistine Chapel paintings?
The Romantics claim that there are some things that we cannot Know.
That this is where the Beauty of the world lies. That the Sublime
is to be discovered in the wondrous spontaneity of life, in the darling
buds of May, in the flights and fantasies of the individual, whose
authenticity of emotion is the Supreme measure of artistic merit:
that it is through this unKnowing that we are to discover our own Truths.
God how I would Love to shake the Wordsworths of the world out of their
silly little heads but during our next class, when I try to talk about
I love the last movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony so much
I struggle to find the words. There is a brief thought of the inexpressible
beauty of the Romantic and how Beethoven was a bridge between
that and the world of the Classic. There is a brief memory of the inexpressible
way in which you both fluttered into and conflagrated my life: And
you always did love the Romantics. I liked to pretend that I didn't;
that it was some mere coincidence that most of my favourite artists
were not interested in dividing the world into bits and pieces of meaningless
intellectualisms in search for some new thing to call God. God
happened to be hiding in a dark theatre one day in Grahamstown
when, on a maroon-lit stage, streams of human bodies become ephemeral
and floated in and out of our consciousness and reality to the steady heartbeat
of Ravel's eternity, perfectly and strangely captured in 'Bolero',
and where there were all sorts of inexpressible dances happening between
our fingertips- which by some mere coincidence were a bridge between
the Classic and the Romantic and between me and you and let us go then,
you and I, when the evening is spread out against the sky- in the theatre
in the everything everywhere everyone everywhen everyhow
encapsulated and clutched between the unioned hands of two teenagers in the dark. God,
was it really that simple?
If so, then I am annoyed. If so, then I am in love.
