Some soul from Saul

Tonight I had the honor of listening to a live poetry reading and Q&A by Saul Williams. His words are arrows straight from his heart to yours that explode upon impact.

Here is an excerpt from a book of his poetry called , said the shotgun to the head:

where is that voice from nowhere
to remind us
that the holy ground
we walk on
purified by native blood
has rooted trees
whose fallen leaves
now color code
a sacred list of demands?

Here's another passage I liked:

tithes and offerings
made to the father
have kept buddha laughing
he knows that dharmic needs
are karmic deeds undone

a love supreme
summoned from dreams
fuses now
with the hereafter
as spirit to flesh
is melded by the sun

, said the shotgun... opens with a quote by Paul Robeson saying:

The man who accepts Western values absolutely, finds his creative faculties becoming so warped and stunted that he is almost completely dependent on external satisfactions, and the moment he becomes frustrated in his search for these, he begins to develop neurotic symptoms, to feel that life is not worth living, and, in chronic cases, to take his own life.

Saul then begins by saying, "Have you ever been kissed by God?...Here is a simpler question: Have you ever lost yourself in a kiss? I mean pure psychedelic inebriation. Not just lustful petting but transcendental metamorphosis when you became aware that the greatness of this being was breathing into you. Licking the sides and corners of your mouth, like sealing a thousand fleshy envelopes filled with the essence of your passionate being and then opened by the same mouth and delivered back to you, over and over again - the first kiss of the rest of your life. A kiss that confirms that the universe is aligned, that the world's greatest resource is love, and maybe even that God is a woman...This book is the result of a kiss..."

I'll leave you with one more passage.
Good night and sweetest of dreams,
~meg

i am forced
to disassemble
my being
to fit into your monitor

i hand you my spirit
as i walk through
customs

i am to be reassembled
after that final check point

sorcery of self:
a phrase i coined
and now surrender to you

it's as if i've swallowed
an interior decorator

i like my heart where it is


i cannot make
your past disappear

only rabbits, my love,
only rabbits

depleted memory banks
have grounded our emotional economy

we have been forced
to create a new currency

one that will truly allow us
to love our neighbors
for reasons beyond guilt and pity

i have offered myself
to the inkwell of the wordsmith
that i might be shaped
into new terms of being