Rap, Time and Motion

The idea of time is an abomination that overwhelms.

Not time itself, since it doesn’t exist – just the idea.

The booming sound from a small car, in coarse rhyme,

rap and the passion of some eclipsed dominion of hate,

takes time, the arrogance of the moment fills up the space,

and we are witness to a compressed notion of meaning.

The passing beats of what are for some sublime for one moment,

the urge to challenge that moment, challenge its existence

or to worship its tangible force – the booming bass --

the rhythms that dance in a forced meter, trying to mean something,

only succeed in compressing molecules of air

to shapes that may resonate dangerously with the thalamic beat,

therefore lulling one into a faith in sound and time,

that is really a faith in a nihilism of the moment.

Music is a part of life, music tells more than a thousand books.

Music is a language apart from words, and it sings above

the petty nuances of wordy arguments that end only in grimaces.

And yet it can lie as much as a wordy lie, it can convince

as much as Churchillian declamation, simply by its thump

and heart-bound cadence that grabs one like a giant hammer

and becomes a Chinese water torture of possible ideas

bound up in meter, cascaded in rhyme.

So it is the Shaman of the voice, the drum, the rattle

of someone’s supposed truth that booms onto the street

from a passing car  -- a very small car, with a very loud voice.

How is it that I combine rap, small cars passing,

and compressed air into a conglomerate idea of time?

It is because motion, not time, is the master of the universe.

Motion opens the mouths of those disenchanted chanters

and it is motion that mesmerizes the listener – even those

standing on the street waiting for the light to change,

even those old people who are shocked by cacophony

that makes no sense to them, even those who hate it,

who go out of their way to avoid it, who scoff at those

who call it music, believing only Bach and Stravinsky

are masters of the art, they too are carried away

by the thump-thump of the loud bass, since it harkens back

to the primitive swamp where great beasts beat the earth

and the heart was stopped in awe – the motion,

the motion of the heart, controlled by the chants

and the drums from the small passing car.