To Saul

Dear Saul Williams,

First of all I should thank you, because if Slam poetry is an artform then to be legitimate every artform needs its Louis Armstrong. A talent to blow harder and more passionately then anyone else of his time in a way that leaves everyone after touched by the influence.

Thank you for performing live at Brandeis University, if I hadn't seen that show I wouldn't know the truth. That through the blistering words and hand motions through the metaphors and raps it is a man giving them not a prophet or a god or even a celebrity.

I saw you laugh and stumble, mess up and go back again like we do. It was like seeing Samson pick a wedgie. I was only mad that I could share this with all the other people that know you as MISTER BAD ASS POET SUPREME that memorize your lines and constantly repeat that write their own but are all tied to yours. We're all tied to you and so some of us watch old tapes or read the old poems and say "I find it kind of pretentious now" but I don't know if we believe it. We're writers too scared of losing the past to degrade it too far but never willing to value someone on such a large scale together. It seems weird.

I even bought that weird industrial album you sold over the internet with the cover of u2's Sunday Bloody Sunday..........yeah...I look forward to you moving in new directions.

Some of us aren't as in love with the industrial sound as you are.

It's so scary that after all these years your still the face of us, so much work so much progress and we can't get away from that. SHA-CLACK CLACK I WAS BEFORE THAT!!!!

Thanks Saul

the kid

My memories are balls of yarn they tangle up into each other over time so things are hard to differentiate. I have to start at the start. When we first started performing at the North Star Cafe we couldn't believe we noticed this kid behind the counter and strangely enough he would sign up and perform at the end of the night. Poets don't like people so a lot of us grumbled and to us he was "one dimensional" with too much "gun talk" but Wil liked the kid.

Everytime Wil and the kid worked together that next week he come out even better then before even more determined. The kid's name is Sean and he was 17 at the time, Wil and him started hanging out and since I hang out with Wil I got to see him work. He worked harder and better and faster then any of us ever anticipated so we kept pushing him. Little by little everyone got excited I think all for different reasons.

The night that all this introduction wraps into is the night Sean got his own full feature at the North Star Cafe on our night. He had gone from background to best kept secret to feature and he represented all of us on that night. Everything he did right we had encouraged and pushed him so we all won with him. I have never seen the North Star that packed. I remember seeing people looking in from the windows, not smoking just drawn in by him. I wish I could describe it right and I tried, Wil and I wrote dueling introductions for him and read them one after another on that night. I still have mine here it is.

I'd call him Kid Kinetic if i had to throw a nicknamethe type of dude that's loud even in a moment of silence
Eighteen going on thirty, fuck an old soul his is just worldly
like it got popped with shots and got up off the gurney
The kid is in motion learning as he goes that's the scariest part of it.
When i see him suck all the air out of the room i'm thinking fuck, he's not even at his peak.
Not even trying to spit game just lace every line with enough slick shit to incite sickness he can't make the blind see but he makes loud people quiet
uses dramatic pauses like pro players use balco to cheat I should tell you the kid is dope in its pure form Hot in a snow storm I'd call him that cause ain't shit more valuable then dope thats why you can flip it The same adverbs from my hand to his get hotter now that's pushing hard weight in a serious way The best part is his best work is what he just finished so every pen stroke marks a new day for me I'm watching one man develop exponentially and behind the icy delivery and firm tone there is a great tragedy in the background of each poem It's what makes you think why is this young man so old? The triumph over adversity that you can hear verbally and the pain that comes through wordlessly its perfectly poetic accuracy cause you can personally know him as well as anyone by just listening.

He went on after Wil and I did the introduction and his sisters were there and everyone was spellbound, by the quiet shy swagger of this project kid. A kid that never smiled enough on this day was all white teeth exposed. Outside he hugged Wil and I and said "That was soooo Thorough. " I hope it was, I hope its somewhere near as thorough as we all pictured ourselves being not to get attention from people but for the advancement and betterment of others. We did a small thing for Sean that night that he pays back everytime he takes that microphone. Its a good deal.

Back from the dead like the democratic party

So I was on vacation in Puerto Rico for a week because my job makes me take vacation and I figured if i traveled I could help this flaundering American economy. WORKING LIKE A CHARM by the way, but I'm back and ready to run down memory lane with the people that i force to read this.

It starts at Wil's house just sitting around as a lot of stories start, a lot of us would find ourselves there listening to music and comparing notes. Its like it must have been for old comics starting out where Rodney Dangerfield see's Richard Lewis and says "Hey I got this new one, tell me what you think." We all wanted to know what each other thought before we went on stage and worked it. Reading something for an audience that sucks but you didn't know it sucks until just then really does suck.

Will Antony is kind of a man for all seasons, he can sing like he knows what he's doing, dance the same way, and when he lines everything up he can dance down some amazing poetic notions the one's we've all tried before and he can do them better. Somehow we were talking about the deadliest word in language. The C-word, now if you dont know what i mean by this I am not even allowed to explain it, that is how untouchable this word is right now dont think elliot ness untouchable think lowest class in India untouchable.

One of my friends had written a piece a long time ago where he calls his girl the C-word and then she slams the door in his face. Crowd still wasn't happy, even the exchange of one word for a wood door to the face didn't seem even. I stay away from the word altogether, so does Wil and most of us agreed but working with words as long as a lot of us have...well...having one out there that you know you can't touch...its just unnerving. Will Antony had done it, he leveraged his piece with so much positive uplifting inspiration that by the time he said the C-word he was confident the women in the crowd would unite around. The sentence was "have the nerve to call your woman ho, bitch, C-WORD and then kiss your mother with them lips." So you get the idea, for once scratching our heads like apes we felt we had done it. Or at least he had.

Boy did he deliver, on that tuesday he went up on that stage and belted it out lamenting the poor communications between the sexes and all the time I've got sweaty palms thinking HE IS GOING TO SAY THE C-WORD and god bless him he did and there were about three women in the crowd that cheered like John Lennon came back and sang the most beautiful song about C-Words ever. He nailed it. They loved him. They still do.

Last time I talked to him I really had begun to feel the deep strange uniqueness of Will Antony everyone I know knows him from somewhere and you know what? They all love him, you just can't help it. He's just someone who likes to end a conversation with a smile and something happy and ends a poem most times the same way.