Monday, July 7, 2003

Now THIS is weird. For me, at least, who's more used to technical emails ("how do I get booked at...," "how do I get published...," etc.) than personal ones.

Today, I got two separate emails asking about my poem, Confessions of a Serial Killer. It's an old poem that I wrote back in 1997 and have probably read publicly less than 10 times, and only once in the past four years, at Acentos a couple of weeks ago.

Both emails asked why I wrote it, the first actually asking (jokingly, I hope), "did u really kill biggie smalls?"

My answer to both queries:

When I wrote this poem, back in late-1997, I was at the tail-end of my love affair with hip-hop. The rap part of it, at least. We'd grown up together from the beginning, and though we both strayed at times - me with Queen and New Kids on the Block, hip-hop with MC Hammer and "gangsta" rap - we always had love for each other.

When Tupac was killed, though, we had a falling-out and I blamed his murder on hip-hop's fascination with material things and false appearances. It had lost sight of where it came from, strayed from "its mission as the poetry of the people," and its loved-ones paid the price.

Biggie's death was inevitable by then as hip-hop was too caught up in "the game" to turn around, a game WE encouraged with our wallets, like blood-thirsty Romans screaming for blood on the sidelines. We were
enablers, no different than Gator's mother in Jungle Fever.

The saddest part about their deaths, though, is that we really didn't learn much from it.

That's my opinion, at least. Thanks for asking.


I asked both where they came across the poem as I didn't recognize either email address and it's not exactly a well-known or widely-distributed piece. Not to my knowledge, at least. Curious...

In other news, Day 2 at the gym was unventful, though I did connect with a trainer for my free session. His name's Patch. As in, he has a patch over his left eye! A nice leather one. Looked legit, too. Going to schedule it for this week so I can stop wandering the floor like an idiot, doing random stretches and riding the bike. Need to get some shower shoes, too. Eeewwww!

No comments: