by M. K. Asante
“If you can walk, you can dance. If you can talk, you can sing,” the host says. “Poetry is the voice of a sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air.”
One mic, glowing onstage like the most precious jewel in the diamond district. It’s dim, crowded. A spotlight throws a beam around like a lighthouse.
All types of peeps in here: races, styles, vibes. Beautiful brown girls with Coke hips and tribal tats. Backpackers with backward fitteds and notebooks. Divas in dresses, long legs, pointy shoes. Braids, dreads, weaves, perms, baldies, everybody nappy, happy.
The host spots Black Thought, ?uestlove, and the band. “The legendary Roots crew from Philadelphia!”
It’s an open mic. Anybody can go up and rip it. A blur of underground talent blesses the stage. Poets Black Ice, Ursula Rucker, Post Midnight, Just Greg rip it. Emcees Bohemian Fifth, Suga Tongue Slim, and King Syze rock the mic. Then this lady, Jill Scott—“Jilly from Philly” they call her—sings, brings the damn house down, and gets a standing O.
Nia sings “Tell Him” by her favorite singer, Lauryn Hill. Her lips glow as she sings. People ad-lib: Get it girl, get it … tell him … uh-huh, don’t stop … work, girl.
“Now if you don’t like that,” the MC says, “then something is wrong with your eardrum, your anvil, and your damn hammer!”
“Next up to the stage … Malo,” the MC calls out. Nia must have written down my name. She smiles and claps for me to go up.
BALDWIN: “Your crown has been bought and paid for, all you must do is put it on your head.”
I walk up to the stage. It reminds me of the blank page. I start with the word I wrote in Stacey’s class: Buck.
Young buck, buck wild,
buck shots, buck town
Black buck, make buck
slave buck, buck now
Buck fitty, buck block,
buck down, buck sacred
go buck, buck me,
buck system, buck naked
The drummer from the house band starts drumming a beat for me. I flash a smile at Nia. Over the deep call of the drum, I respond with my story:
G-Town, ’98, me and my mother
and mother-fuck the cops, they knocked my brother
He’s state-roadin it, 23 and 1
Telling time by the shadows of the sun
Sis in psych ward, seeing neighbors
And I stay suspended, fuckin behavior
No savior, just danger
And Pops left so now I got the banger
Man of the house, North Philly to South
And my ol’ heads punched me in my young mouth
They told me to get up—I got up
They told me to hustle—I got my knot up
Outside, pulling my socks up and
Bombing on anybody that’s not us
In Illadel, where they shoot the cops up
Shoot, it’s that, or get locked up
Dreams like ground balls, they don’t pop up
Getting rocked up to get locked down
And where them daddy’s at?
They don’t come around
And where that message at?
(W)rapped underground
Searched the streets for myself
Lost and found
The audience starts clapping, snapping, and nodding to the beat. The whole Five Spot trembles with rhythm.
Uzi in the cage filled with rage
Best friend murdered—all I got is this page
And Pops’ 12-gauge, few options
They on J Street, tossin toxins
Purple rain cuz the pain knockin
But I can’t afford to bug my mind frame
If you saw how far my mind came
And could see how far my mom came
Then you could understand my grind frame
Hustle insane in the Langston Hughes lane
Known rivers, ancient dusky
Known devils too, tryna corrupt me
Get me to sell my soul for a couple dollars
Not knowin I got the mind of a couple scholars
And a few hustlas, child of Black Power,
The move meant to move this, I’m fluent
Shapes and shadows—my angles congruent
Missing student, most times I was tru-ant
Peep the distance
’Tween education and schoolin
See the difference
One frees, one ruins
Most of the audience is on their feet now, throwing adlibs and affirmations onstage, encouraging me.
Auto focus with a Canon lens
Love the hood but I feel like I’m gamblin
Might get lucky, no Peterson
And fuck blind haters who can’t see me win
Love of my life: secret ingredient
Good bruva but always so deviant
Late at night, ridin on the median
And fuck the news—time to ride on the media
I follow nobody just leadin ya
Toothbrush rap, tracks reachin ya
On all cylinders, you numb, you ain’t feelin this
Inauthentic if you can’t see the real in this
Not hit or miss it’s—just hit or hit
Me and cousins in the Bronx in the pits
Tracy Tow brown foul, been a while now
And all the wild childs Rikers Isle pen pals
Come again now? How we get to this?
Generation where we proud of our ignorance?
And common sense ain’t common—just call it sense
Life or death, stop ridin the fence
Killadelphia, Pistolvania
Where they clap at strangers
And spit poetry like a banger
I learned how to play ball on a hanger
They used to cut ya balls off when they hang ya
Balls like these so rare they endangered
So I’m ready, armed and deadly
My mind is my sword—I’m edgy
I polish these odes to conquer my Foes
Break the beat down, demolish the flow
On the road, driving fast
Young King, free at last … So
Miss me with the bullshit, like how them
Shells missed me when that tool spit
Lunar eclipse, I’m moonlit
Wasn’t headed nowhere, now I’m movin
Wasn’t doing nothin, now I’m doin
Became a doer, dream pursuer, purpose-driven
Past meets the future
In between no longer and not yet
Rise up, young buck, never forget
* * *
* “Don’t See Us,” The Roots, 1999.
† “You Got Me,” The Roots, 1999.
44
Bearing Fruit
Graduation. Birds crisscrossing above our heads. The audience is under a white tent. The graduates, we’re out baking in the loud June sun.
The graduation is laid-back, like everything else at Crefeld. It feels like a picnic or a family reunion. My mom, overflowing with joy, is the star of the show. Her smile, an endless flood of white light, is set in stone.
Present is a gift, that’s why it’s called present
Troubled adolescence had my mom stressin
Now a different story, Doris Lessing
No matter where I go from here, Philly reppin*
My dad sits next to her. It’s the first time they’ve been together, in the same place, since he left. I smile at both of them and inhale summer.
All of my teachers are here: George, Kevin, Debbie, Stacey.
George speaks to our class: “Ralph Ellison once said, ‘I don’t know what intelligence is. But this I do know, both from life and from literature: whenever you reduce human life to two plus two equals four, the human element within the human animal says, “I don’t give a damn.” You can work on that basis, but the kids cannot. If you can show me how I can cling to that which is real to me, while teaching me a way into the larger society, then I will
not only drop my defenses and my hostility, but I will sing your praises and help you to make the desert bear fruit.’ ”
* * *
* Me.
45
Rivers
A scarf wrapped around my head like the locals. No clouds, just 120 degrees of Egyptian sun. It glows above the desert like a giant halo. My Timbs are the color of the pyramids I’m standing in front of.
“Welcome home, my Nubian brother,” the sellers yell, pushing product in my face. It’s all smiles, love, can’t knock the hustle.
“You were born on this continent,” my dad says.
Me and my pops: riding camels with colorful Persian rug humps, kicking up sand in front of the Sphinx at Giza; steering little boats down the Nile while old men with ancient feet and smiles wider than the river watch and laugh from the grassy banks; crawling into limestone to see etchings older than everyone I’ve ever met combined; mazing through huge columns that shoot up into the sky like space shuttles; seeing the dusky black faces on the walls of the history they don’t teach in school; and eating ta meyya and laughing into the night.
I pull Amir’s chain out of my pocket. I see his smoky face in the silver.
SHONAGON: “When you have gone away and face the sun that shines so crimson in the East, be mindful of the friends you left behind, who in this city gaze upon endless rain.”
We end up in Abu Simbel. It’s early morning. The call for prayer goes out and sounds like an ancient song. I think all prayer should sound like a song.
Inject the thesis, spoke to my pops and left him speechless
He saw me sprout, goin through worlds that wore me out*
We walk down a hill, along a mountain, and then turn to face it.
Facing the mountain. Four faces, huge black faces with crowns, cast into an enormous limestone cliff.
A tour guide tells a group in front of us, “These colossal statues were sculpted directly from the mountain, cut from the natural rock of the mountain …”
I think about that: how these bold, brilliant faces were trapped inside the mountain the whole time … waiting to be discovered, waiting to reveal the beauty underneath, waiting to be seen, waiting like an untold story. I see my family in the stone faces.
“The young, handsome face is finely carved. He wears a crown on his head … The line of the smiling lips is more than a meter long,” the guide goes on.
I am the mountain and the sculptor, losing myself, finding myself, revealing what was there all along.
HUGHES: “My soul has grown deep like the rivers.”
We stand there, together, at the peak of one mountain and the foot of another, facing the rising sun.
* * *
* “How Ya Livin,” AZ featuring Nas, 1998.
To all the young bucks.
Much Love
To the Most High and the ancestors.
To my mother and father for their unshakable love.
To my big brother for showing me how to rise and shine.
To Maya, my queen, and Aion, my prince, for their divine light.
To Ben Haaz, Jan Miller, and Lee Steffen for helping make this book a reality.
To my editor, Chris Jackson, for being brilliant. To my publishers Cindy Spiegel and Julie Grau, and Random House for providing a platform for me to tell my story.
To my sister, Eka. To my cousins: Ahmed, Akil, Nikia, and Chris. My aunts: Sylvia and Georgia. My uncles: Howard, Abdul, and John. My nephew Nasir. To the Freelon family.
To my teachers and mentors: Joel Wilson, Kevin Howie, Deb Sotack, Debbie Nangle, Stacey and Dan Cunitz, George Zeleznik, Charles Fuller, Owen Alik Shahadah, Lawrence Ross, Saul Williams, Jim Brown, Kenny Gamble, Walter Lomax, Kofi Opoku, Samuel Hay, Ian Smith, Lee Upton, Maya Angelou.
To my team: Nina-Marie Nunes, Jeff Schuette, David Sloan, Dwight Watkins, Rassaan Hammond, Errol Webber, Ryan Bowens, and Jeffery Whitney.
To my homies: Jon, Dustin, Jordan, King Syze, Shalana, Ted, Scoop, D-Rock, Struggle, and King Mez.
To my extended family all around the world for their support and encouragement.
To my brothers and sisters locked down (they can’t imprison your soul!).
To the voiceless whose voice I evoke through pen strokes.
To Philly, my city. To hip-hop, my sound track.
To you.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
MK ASANTE is an award-winning writer, filmmaker, professor, and hip-hop artist. A recipient of awards from the Academy of American Poets and the Langston Hughes Society, he is the author of the seminal hip-hop text It’s Bigger than Hip Hop and the poetry collections Beautiful. And Ugly Too and Like Water Running Off My Back. He directed The Black Candle, a Starz TV movie he co-wrote with Maya Angelou, who also narrates the prize-winning film. He wrote and produced the film 500 Years Later, winner of five international film festival awards as well as UNESCO’s Breaking the Chains award.
Asante studied at the University of London, earned a BA from Lafayette College, and an MFA from the UCLA School of Film and Television. Asante has lectured and performed in over thirty countries as well as throughout the United States at hundreds of colleges, universities, libraries, concerts, and festivals. He was awarded the Key to the City of Dallas, Texas. His essays have been published in USA Today, the Huffington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, and the New York Times.
Asante is a tenured professor of creative writing and film in the Department of English and Language Arts at Morgan State University.
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