Versus

[tectak]

This is a verse and not a fucking stanza –
why use six letters when five saves paper?
I’d rather turn plough than stand in a chamber.

Agricultural language suits this bard
and poetry’s but a topiary art:
that’s what I gather from your cutting remarks.
I’m lower case type inhabiting the basement
where jars and saucepans in haphazard placement
create an imperfect kind of enjambment

employed to collect red wine and sushi,
filter and ferment into something fruity –
that’s my trickle-down theory of beauty.

Up in the loft they reach for eternity
while I’m beset by a sense of urgency;
the soles beneath my feet are burning me

as I commit each metre to memory
stamping a legacy in ivory and ebony;
poetic justice now I’m out of energy.

This is a rap. The usual imaginative word use (sometimes cryptic!) works well in this piece just because the art form us so well known. The only real ( and I mean "real" as against gratuitous) problem is the difficulty of instant translation. The third or forth fucking verse or fucking stanza is incomprehensible to me but I do not care. Most rap makes no sense to me and so I have to look for some other attribute like rhythm or more correctly "beat" and this I can do.
If there is a message in the piece it is more of a plea.....I may be wrong, it has been known, but this piece is screaming CRIT ME!!
Well, I know the feeling but have decided that lack of critical comment in any work is very telling. From where I sit, this piece is just below my horizon.....but the world is turning. Can you wait until dawn?
Best,
tectak