SING ALONG
why write
a poem
when
you can
take
a photograph?
why read
a poem
when
you can
take a nap?
nothing beats
listening
to hip hop
smoking
a cigarette
I have a mind
to ask you
to write and
recite
a rap
on that
but
please don’t ask me
to sing along
HIP HOP
why write
a poem
when
you can
take
a photograph?
why read
a poem
when
you can
take a nap?
nothing beats
listening
to hip hop
smoking
a cigarette
I have a mind
to ask you
to write and
recite
a rap
on that
SEEN
saw a rapper
dissing the monster
at the heart
of the labyrinth
must have had
a tough skin
that minotaur
in order not
just to
survive that barrage
but to thrive
draft a contract
make a deal
get the sharpest royalty
agreement ever seen
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
poems 2 die for