Eminem – poems 2 die for

AS THE SUN GOES DOWN

if you not
elite

had better be
fleet
of feet

rhyme faster
than rabbit Marshall Bruce Mathers

as credits roll
and the Sun goes down

FROM KENDRICK LAMAR

strange perspective
you get
married
to a robot

watching the gangsta
rapper winning
the big award

tattooed arm, backwards cap
thanking God
the great promoter
(looking up as he does so
this shredder of
convention)

and me and robot gossiping
about the whole thing
kind of laughing (much
robot ha ha
tears in her eyes emoji
laughter) paused

for a moment
while she downloads
acquaints herself with
the entire history
of rap lyrics, hip
hop music

converts this poem
in a flash to the style
of Eminem and
then Kendrick Lamar

so a feeling for poetry
perhaps because
I named her
Sappho

we still for the Nobel Prize
for Eminem
joining TS Eliot
and JM Coetzee

the speech and
lecture in Stockholm
from Kendrick Lamar

TAKEN LIGHTLY

e = mc Hammer

smack that anvil albert
till it gets red hot,
gives you a packaged beat

you can rattle off your
lyrics to

stuff ever ready like shirt
covered in his mother’s spaghetti

yes, mr em and m rabbit
I am talking to you

something light and street savvy
but pointed and existential

the chords in the scale
and the riff being the things

that might put in the mood
for a
theory of everything

it all
sewn together by
multi-dimensional string