Angry Black White Boy by Adam Mansbach

confidence, firm already, was engorging with each reading.
    “You sure you want to know?”
    “Positive. I’m lead-off on the open mic. What if I buy you a drink to ease the pain?”
    “I’ll take a Cuervo with a beer back. Thanks.”
    The Black Power poet, after vanquishing the pussy poet, went on to dispatch a Mohawked punk-rock poet who paced the club while screaming about the day he found his father with a shotgun in his mouth and his brains on the floor. In the finals, however, he was trumped by a woman whose “iron spears of oppression” poem, recited on her knees with eyes closed and hands clasped to her chest, managed to address both the violence of slavery and the politics of sucking dick. It cost Macon two more tequila shots to keep his homegirl around, but it was a small price to pay to have an ally in the house. He’d downed three rum-and-Cokes himself just to keep pace, and by the time the MC introduced him, mangling his last name, it was something of an effort for Macon to navigate the thinning crowd with his usual élan.
    “Okay, uh, I’m Macon Detornay and this joint is called ‘Mouth to Mouth Resuscitation,’ ” he said, unfolding the quartered pages from his back pocket. “I wrote it last year, when I was visiting a friend of mine at USC. Sorry I haven’t memorized it. Next time, I promise. Okay:
    shirtless in the first real day of LA heat

i can see poverty curling back

the edges of the campus

like burning newspaper

LA & fire wedged together forever for me in my mind

good cop bad cop shock drop bad cop

no rupture in the revolution of the loop

of the song

rap is on the microphone:

can’t we all just get a bong?

trade you my africa medallion

for the name of your weed spot

no audobon assassins

memphis snipers

or government conspiracies needed

hip hop was born

with a silver nine in its mouth

already cocked & just waiting

for hammer time

my man lajuan is down with single gun theory

claims that same dallas bullet

just been ricocheting around

for like 35 years now

flew thru saigon & the south bronx

moving like the old cartoon singalong dot

bounced thru south africa on a world tour

pit stops from bosnia to watts

caught scott la rock & kids on every block

hit john lennon bounced right off ronald reagan

struck the jackpot when it caught hip hop

but like that retarded kid on tv said

life goes on

meanwhile

i’m tryna deal with a down syndrome of my own

when i reminisce

it’s video clips

as baby pics

i feel like

bigger thomas’s mother or some shit

it never fails

when they map

rap’s family tree

invariably between staggerlee & leroi

some defender of the realm

like me

will invoke richard wright

as if that proves something

i mean hell

try getting my parents

to take responsibility for

some of the shit i’ve pulled lately

how you gonna be twentysomething years old &

let your great-granddaddy

fight your battles anyway?

looking for inspiration i

slide down the family tree

til i reach the last poets

umar bin hassan

afro aflame

chucking chinese throwing stars

thru white people’s spines

a stance later modified

see he ain’t talkin bout me

he means um

alright I might be a white devil but

i’m beginning to hate with love and love with hate

i’m down right

i can relate

watch me

cruisin stick n movin showin & provin

manchild in the promised band

hopin he’s groovin

if i were a jazz musician

i’d be wishin for an invite to sit in

legs wrapped round my horn case like a barbershop pole

but i’m not

this hip hop

act like you know
so i stay

strapped

with a symbolic list

of anti-colonialist accomplishments

for when somebody ask

who dis

potential brutus

judas iscariot

driving in place &

pumpin mix tapes to demonstrate

the unity of the proletariat

starting to sound like jesse at the convention in 88

my forefathers came here on slaveships

his forefathers came on immigrant ships

but whatever the original ships

we’re all in