The Semantic Poet
“Hey, baby, hey…” and when I write those words the first few seconds of Funkadelic’s “Mommy, What’s a Funkadelic?” pop into my mind. So listen closely: Hey, baby, hey… “dig”—and when I write the word dig I refer to the ancient, ancestral meaning of study or reading. So dig, “baby”—and baby should always let’s you remember where you come from—that someone raised you—and you have a history—you have ancestors…
So dig: you can see that the kinté space is fundamentally about poetry. And poetry in the rasx() context is not me waiting around for you to tell me how much you “like” my poetry. I’m damn near forty years old! I’ve won my school-boy, competition awards, son! I lived long enough to be concerned about words and meaning itself. And I am not interested in the violence of a “poetry slam”—and having a cute poet girlfriend with a white puffy hat is teenage fantasy because most of the “cute poets” with white puffy hats I have seen were more like out of work actresses than poets. I find that readers are the best “fans” for poets. A poet should get close to a reader of poetry—not another poet who rarely reads and “loves” to perform. So dig, baby…
The poet’s work in the rasx() context is to speak fluently in broken English. Me got to break English in all the right places to get a groove, baby. Nasty? I didn’t make the rules of English,baby. The biggest man you will ever see was once a baby, baby… Go and find the cradle and honor thy mother and thy father… So forget about “cute poets”—try some real woman: “Jaha Zainabu: Journey” and others are here in the kinté space.