Amethyst Rocks - Saul Williams

What I got, come and get some,
get on up, hustler of culture.

I stand on the corner of the block slinging amethyst rocks,
drinking 40s of mother earth’s private nectar stock,
dodging cops, cuz’ 50 be the 666 and I need a fix of that purple rain:
the type of shit that drives membranes insane.
Oh yeah, I’m in the fast lane snorting candy yams
that free my body and soul and send me like Shazaam,
never question who I am. God knows, and I know God personally,
in fact he lets me call him “me,”
I be one with rain and stars and things
with dancing feet and watermelon rings,
I brings the sunshine and the moon,
and the wind blows my tune.
Meanwhile I spoon powdered drumbeats into plastic bags,
selling kilos of kintae skag, taking drags off of collards
and cornbread, freebasing through saxophones and flutes like mad.
The high notes make me space-float,
I be exhaling in rings that circle Saturn,
leaving stains in my veins in astrological patterns.
Yeah I’m serious B, doggone niggers plotted shit lovely,
but the feds is also plotting me,
they’re trying to imprison my astrology,
put my stars behind bars, my stars and stripes,
using blood-splattered banners as nationalist kites,
but I control the wind, that’s why the call it the hawk.
I am Horus, son of Isis, son of Osirus, worshipped as Jesus,
resurrected like Lazarus, but you can call my Lazzy, lazy,
yeah I’m lazy because I’d rather sit and build
and work on top of a field and worship the
daily yield of cash green crops,
your evolution stopped the evolution of your technology:
a society of automatic tellers and money machines.
Nigga’ what, my culture is lima beans and tambourines,
dreams, manifest dreams real, not consistent with rationale,
I dance for no reason, for reason you can’t dance,
call me an activist of intellectualized circumstance,
you can’t learn my steps until you unlearn your thoughts,
spirit, soul, can be store-bought, fuck thought,
leads to naught, simply leads to you trying to figure me out,
your intellect’s disfiguring your soul,
your being’s not whole, check your flagpole,
stars and stripes, your astrology’s
imprisoned by your concept of white, of self,
what’s your plan for spiritual health? Calling reality unreal,
your line of thought is tangled, the star
spangled got your soul mangled, your being’s angled,
forbidding you to be real and feel, you can’t find truth
with an axe or a drill in a white house on a hill or
in factories or plants made of steel. Selling us was the
smartest thing you ever did, too bad you don’t teach the
truth to your kids. My influence on user reflection you
see when you look in your minstrel mirror and talk about
your culture, your existence is that of a schizophrenic
vulture who thinks he has enough life in him to prey on the dead,
not knowing that the dead ain’t dead, that he ain’t got enough
spirituality to know how to pray. Yeah, there’s no repentance,
you’re bound to live in infinite consecutive executive life sentence.
So while you’re busy serving time I’ll be in sync with the
moon while you run from the sun. Life of the moon,
reflected by guns, worship of moons, I am the sun,
and I am public enemy number one, one one one, one one one,
that’s seven. And I’ll be out on the block, hustling culture,
slinging amethyst rocks.

©2003, Saul Williams

Are you going to follow in your fathers footsteps?

Q. Are you going to follow

in your Fathers footsteps?

A. My fathers footsteps

lead to my Mothers bed

where I spent most of my childhood.

Why return where I have already been?

--

Saul Williams.

Said the shotgun to the head.

your priests and presidents

no longer matter

only you and I, my love

[…]

throw away your map

and swallow

this cratered pill

pull it from the sky

and let it dissolve

under your tongue

it is only a matter of time

before we are timeless

Out of my mind, there's no love in there I move on, move on

I don't know whether to laugh or cry
And i don't know whether to live or die
I kept my love for her locked deep inside
It cuts like a knife
She's out of my life
Out of my life, out of my hair
Out of my mind, there's no love in there
I move on, move on
Dear god, i wasn't breast fed
And most of my conversations with men seem to revolve around music
I'm no musician but the pain has been instrumental
My sense finally tune the instruments of
Of being lonely, of being lost, of being loved, of being human
Man i could use a metaphor but i can't get beyond this shit
I could use someone to talk to
But most of my conversations with men seem to revolve around music
I am a poet who composes what the world proses
And proses what the world composes
I am a poet who composes what the world proses
And proses what the world composes
Damned indescion and cursed pride
I kept my love for her locked deep inside
And i don't know what to do
To get it through to you
Get out of my life tonight
Get out of my life
Out of my life, out of my hair
Out of my mind, 'cause no lovin' fair
I move on, move on
She had nothing but time on her hands
Silver rings, turquoise stones and purple nails
I rub my thumb across her palm
A featherbed where slept a psalm
Yay though i walked, i used to fly, and now we dance
I watch my toenails blacken and walk a deadened trance
'til she woke me with the knife edge of her glance
I have the scars to prove the clock strikes with her hands
And i don't know what to do
To get it through to you
And i don't know what to do
To get it through
Out of my life, out of my hair
Out of my mind, 'cause no lovin' fair
I move on, move on, i move on

Poetry by Saul Williams, photography by Neil Krug

A common sense of direction

she is the one who said 'fun' sounded like a word of german origin
she thought too much

like me

our time together like summer (concentration) camp
emaciated possibilities lie lifeless

oh this intellect burns
the crematorium below my nose keeps life
above my ears

silence is the star that i shall wear to mark my difference
yet we have so much in common
tonight
that the sun has made light of it
while we contemplate the weight of it all

it is we that are emaciated
our bodies subject to our minds propaganda

forgive the distinction but
intellect fairs moments genocide
and we should have kissed hours ago
you hold you breath when you should hold your tongue
and hold your tongue when you should hold my hand
and i should delegate more authority to myself
but i can't help thinking
that you're thinking
thinking
what is she thinking

"She stuck a bookmark in my heart and walked away."

But he's left footprints on the inside of his sisters eyelids and they've learned to walk without him.

Come back tomorrow for the next instalment!

Who holds a subtle knife that carves through worlds like magic doors

Nah, I wasn't raised at gunpoint and I've read too many books

To distract me from the mirror when unhappy with my looks

And I ain't got proper diction for the makings of a thug

Though I grew up in the ghetto and my niggas all sold drugs

And though that may validate me for a spot on MTV

Or get me all the airplay that my bank account would need

I was hoping to invest in a lesson that I learned

I thought this fool had jumped me just because it was my turn

I went to an open space 'cause I knew he wouldn't do it

If somebody there could see him or somebody else might prove it

And maybe, in your eyes, it may seem I got punked out

'Cause I walked a narrow path and then went and changed my route

But that openness exposed me to a truth I couldn't find

In the clenched fists of my ego or the confines of my mind

Or the hipness of my swagger, or the swagger in my step

Or the scowl of my grimace, or the meanness of my rep

'Cause we represent a truth, son, that changes by the hour

And when you open to it, vulnerability is power

And in that shifting form you'll find a truth that doesn't change

And that truth is living proof of the fact that God is strange

Talk to strangers when the family fails and friends lead you astray

When Buddha laughs and Jesus weeps and it turns out God is gay

'Cause angels and messiahs, love, can come in many forms

In the hallways of your projects or the fat girl in your dorm

And when you finally take the time to see what they're about

Perhaps you find them lonely or their wisdom trips you out

Maybe you'll find the cycles end you back where you began

But come this time around you'll have someone to hold your hand

Who prays for you who's there for you who sends you love and light

Exposes you to parts of you that you once tried to fight

And come this time around you'll choose to walk a different path

You'll embrace what you turned away and cry at what you laughed

'Cause that's the only way we're going to make it through this storm

Where ignorance is common sense and senselessness the norm

And flags wave high above the truth and the two never touch

And stolen goods are overpriced and freedom costs too much

And no one seems to recognize the symbols come to life

The bitten apple on the screen and Jesus had a wife

And she was his Messiah like that stranger may be yours

Who holds a subtle knife that carves through worlds like magic doors

And that's what I've been looking for, the bridge from then to now

Just watching BET like, "What the fuck, son? This is foul."

But that square box don't represent the sphere that we live in

The earth is not a flat screen, I ain't trying to fit in

But this ain't for the underground, this here is for the sun

A seed a stranger gave to me and planted on my tongue

And when I look at you, I know I'm not the only one

As a great man once said,

"There's nothing more powerful

than an idea

who's time

has come."

Blackalicious Release

Inner breathlessness, outer restlessness

By the time I caught up to freedom I was out of breath

Grandma asked me what I'm running for

I guess I'm out for the same thing the sun is sunning for

What mothers birth their youngens for

And some say Jesus coming for

For all I know the earth is spinning slow

Suns at half mast 'cause masses ain't aglow

On bended knee, prostrate before an altered tree

I've made the forest suit me

Tables and chairs

Papers and prayers

Matter versus spirit

A metal ladder

A wooden cross

A plastic bottle of water

A mandala encased in glass

A spirit encased in flesh

Sound from shaped hollows

The thickest of mucus released from heightened passion

A man that cries in his sleep

A truth that has gone out of fashion

A mode of expression

A paint splattered wall

A carton of cigarettes

A bouquet of corpses

A dying forest

A nurtured garden

A privatized prison

A candle with a broken wick

A puddle that reflects the sun

A piece of paper with my name on it

I'm surrounded

I surrender

All

All that I am I have been

All I have been has been a long time coming

I am becoming all that I am

The spittle that surrounds the mouth-piece of the flute

Unheard, yet felt

A gathered wetness

A quiet moisture

Sound trapped in a bubble

Released into wind

Wind fellows and land merchants

We are history's detergent

Water soluble, light particles, articles of cleansing breath

Articles amending death

These words are not tools of communication

They are shards of metal

Dropped from eight story windows

They are waterfalls and gas leaks

Aged thoughts rolled in tobacco leaf

The tools of a trade

Barbers barred, barred of barters

Catch phrases and misunderstandings

But they are not what I feel when I am alone

Surrounded by everything and nothing

And there isn't a word or phrase to be caught

A verse to be recited

A man to de-fill my being in those moments

I am blankness, the contained center of an "O"

The pyramidic containment of an "A"

I stand in the middle of all that I have learned

All that I have memorized

All that I've known by heart

Unable to reach any of it

There is no sadness

There is no bliss

It is a forgotten memory

A memorable escape route that only is found by not looking

There, in the spine of the dictionary the words are worthless

They are a mere weight pressing against my thoughtlessness

But then, who else can speak of thoughtlessness with such confidence

Who else has learned to sling these ancient ideas

like dead rats held by their tails

so as not to infect this newly oiled skin

I can think of nothing heavier than an airplane

I can think of no greater conglomerate of steel and metal

I can think of nothing less likely to fly

There are no wings more weighted

I too have felt a heaviness

The stare of man guessing at my being

Yes I am homeless

A homeless man making offerings to the after-future

Sculpting rubber tree forests out of worn tires and shoe soles

A nation unified in exhale

A cloud of smoke

A native pipe ceremony

All the gathered cigarette butts piled in heaps

Snow covered mountains

Lipsticks smeared and shriveled

Offerings to an afterworld

Tattoo guns and plastic wrappers

Broken zippers and dead eyed dolls

It's all overwhelming me, oak and elming me

I have seeded a forest of myself

Little books from tall trees

It matters not what this paper be made of

Give me notebooks made of human flesh

Dried on steel hooks and nooses

Make uses of use, uses of us

It's all overwhelming me, oak and elming me

I have seeded a forest of myself

Little books from tall trees

On bended knee

Prostrate before an altered tree

I've made the forest suit me

Tables and chairs

Papers and prayers

Matter vs. spirit, through meditation

I program my heart to beat breakbeats and hum basslines on exhalation

Release.

This has to be one of my favourite tunes of all time and is definitely one of the most annoying to spell. These lyrics run straight through to my soul.