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