Here Comes that Beat!

Effect/affect

I wanted to share another poem from the forthcoming Poems on Poetry: Verbs of Power and Hip Hop Intertextuality (published by Fresh Egg Publications this summer). The book brings together 100 poems in response to reflecting on my first listenings of 100 significant hip hop records released between 1983 and 1992 (for an outline of the methodology, see the previous article, ‘Salsa Smurf’. Here, for the second sample from the forthcoming book, is my response to the superb ‘Here Comes that Beat!’ by Pumpkin and The Profile All-Stars ‘Here Comes that Beat!: Effect/affect’.

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Here Comes that Beat!: Effect/affect

Smashing glass is the only phenomena that sounds

the opposite of what it represents.

Bottles are more intense than panes.

Thick, opaque, tinges of green or brown

residue from labels that stick

and sell

poisonous liquid that lubricates the fragile.

Smashing glass is percussion—

not a sound effect

not a sound to affect

or inflict lacerations

too deep for butterfly stitches.

Smashing glass endures stigma

and carries the shame of a neighbourhood.

Retired men walk Jack Russells

in shoes they say they will die in,

these street signs omit letters

but neglect is convenient evasion.

The king of the beat, though,

captures such texture,

massaging torn ligaments

the suppleness of skin restored

so much so

that no shard of glass

could puncture this nation-state.

The king of the beat is surrounded

by those with previous

histories

that collide as magicians tend to do

with batons of myriad colours

and kaleidoscopic patternation.

The king of the beat is remembered

through percussive tones

that hit hard.

Splendorous they are,

they remain,

they persevere.

The beat—

still due to arrive

yet passed many times

and as it passed on those occasions,

it spoke an admonition

preemptive

of my attentiveness.

I knew then

that this beat was the king—

a sentient thing

not a being, or an object

even

for that would reek of the uncouth.

Like

‘An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump’,

there was a moment of true enlightenment

but as the light reflected

undertones swelled

of the wanton suffering he endured.

The beat is the king.

Smashing glass is sonic texture.

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