Beware: Do Not Listen to this Lifetime Achievement Award Introduction for Ishmael Reed
"tonite, thriller is"
How to tell a lifetime in 3 minutes, which I cannot do and so I choose to do it in 180 seconds, which feels more Reed to me
& of which only 160 remain
I sought for advice Tennessee, two people on the street, a PhD, and, in a dream, my mother
The best I got:
It doesn't matter what you say, it's Ishmael you will likely be wrong.
Beware
the lifetime in this introduction is "legendary”
in 0.24 seconds it returns about 191,000 google search hits
in hip hop Macy Grey records its lyrics and it knows Alicia Keys is on fire
“back off” from the lifetime in this introduction
"it is greedy"
only because there is more laundry to air than 180 seconds can hang
especially since only 116 remain
“Back off” the lifetime in this introduction
Showed you, "Writin’ is fightin'"
Told you, "Writing poetry is the hard manual labor of the imagination."
I see you didn't listen
now the lifetime in this introduction has
you, as my mother used to say, from the roota to the toota
"nobody can hear you"
I’d tell you to “back off” but it’s too late
The lifetime in this introduction told you
"Ethnic life in the United States has become a sort of contest like baseball in which the blacks are always the Chicago Cubs."
The lifetime in this introduction "used to be a discipline problem which caused [it] embarrassment until [it] realized that being a discipline problem in a racist society is sometimes an honor."
The lifetime in this introduction told you
"We learn about one another’s culture the same way we learn about sex: in the Streets."
You see, the lifetime in this introduction "aint got no manners"
but it do got "a generous degree of linguistic intelligence...yoked to considerable personal intelligence" – that’s genius-like stuff
statistic: the US bureau of lifetimes reports that in 1938 was born a person whose lifetime, try as he might, would not fit within a lifetime.
So “Back off”
if Ishmael Reed's lifetime won't even fit within his lifetime, what did you expect me to do in 3 minutes?
Notes: this piece generously uses Reed's poem Beware: Do Not Read This Poem , quotes, and paraphrases Howard Gardner's book Leading Minds
"tonite, thriller is"
How to tell a lifetime in 3 minutes, which I cannot do and so I choose to do it in 180 seconds, which feels more Reed to me
& of which only 160 remain
I sought for advice Tennessee, two people on the street, a PhD, and, in a dream, my mother
The best I got:
It doesn't matter what you say, it's Ishmael you will likely be wrong.
Beware
the lifetime in this introduction is "legendary”
in 0.24 seconds it returns about 191,000 google search hits
in hip hop Macy Grey records its lyrics and it knows Alicia Keys is on fire
“back off” from the lifetime in this introduction
"it is greedy"
only because there is more laundry to air than 180 seconds can hang
especially since only 116 remain
“Back off” the lifetime in this introduction
Showed you, "Writin’ is fightin'"
Told you, "Writing poetry is the hard manual labor of the imagination."
I see you didn't listen
now the lifetime in this introduction has
you, as my mother used to say, from the roota to the toota
"nobody can hear you"
I’d tell you to “back off” but it’s too late
The lifetime in this introduction told you
"Ethnic life in the United States has become a sort of contest like baseball in which the blacks are always the Chicago Cubs."
The lifetime in this introduction "used to be a discipline problem which caused [it] embarrassment until [it] realized that being a discipline problem in a racist society is sometimes an honor."
The lifetime in this introduction told you
"We learn about one another’s culture the same way we learn about sex: in the Streets."
You see, the lifetime in this introduction "aint got no manners"
but it do got "a generous degree of linguistic intelligence...yoked to considerable personal intelligence" – that’s genius-like stuff
statistic: the US bureau of lifetimes reports that in 1938 was born a person whose lifetime, try as he might, would not fit within a lifetime.
So “Back off”
if Ishmael Reed's lifetime won't even fit within his lifetime, what did you expect me to do in 3 minutes?
Notes: this piece generously uses Reed's poem Beware: Do Not Read This Poem , quotes, and paraphrases Howard Gardner's book Leading Minds
Never imagined a dance with Ishmael Reed - so cool!