Saul Williams – Children of the Night

Saul Williams draagt in onderstaande filmpje het gedicht Children of the Night voor.

Ik heb de tekst van wat hij precies zegt hieronder geplakt. Zijn taalgebruik, hoe sprekend deze ook mag zijn, vind ik  namelijk af en toe moeilijk te volgen omdat ik even de tijd nodig heb zijn mythologische metaforen te ontcijferen.

Tegelijkertijd vind ik deze manier van schrijven juist erg aantrekkelijk. Het geeft een bepaalde epische lading aan wat hij verteld. Alsof er een kracht groter dan hemzelf door hem spreekt. Als je naar de woorden van Saul Williams luistert krijg je het gevoel dat we deel uitmaken van een groot verhaal. Groter dan ons eigen individuele leven en groter dan de Zeitgeist waar we nu toevallig in geboren worden.

And out of the sun’s gates come little girls in dresses of fire wearing pigtails of braided smoke which stem from their moon-cratered scalps. The glowing seeds of a nightly garden that will blossom into full moons regardless of the sun. They know the night and the seven names of the wind through the tails of their windblown fathers. Who will father these mothers of light? And what will become of me, Children of the Night?

Only some will star the sky, only believers in death will die. And fathers must feather the wings of women, for the unfeathered masses dangle ridiculous. Carrying crosses to phallics-filled tombs, the future sails silence through blood rivered wombs that ripple with riddles of cows and spoons and births moons and earths suns-centered at noon. She buries her eggs in the soil and plants her feet in the sky. Soil seeds a circus of carrots and clowns and menstrual shows our desires.

And here I stand, court jestering infinity, fetal fisted for revolution, but open hands birth humility. Now what is the density of an egoless planet? Must my spine be aligned to sprout wings? I’m slouched into sling steps and kangoled with gang reps, but my orbit rainbows Saturn’s rings. Mystical elliptical, presto polaris, karmic flamed future with Saturn’s and aries.

And now I’m a fish called father with gills type dizzy, blowing liquid lullabies through the spine of time to tranquilize the nervous system’s defeat. At the feet of forever the children are gathered or rather buried in that mass grave sight of the night. They are the seeds of light planted in the sky, but the nights and skies are meaningless to their unearthly eyes. They are our children!

Playing chess on the sun-burnt backs of one-eyes turtles, check-mating a lifetime slow crawl to enlightenment.
Cashing in their crown and glory for magic and contradiction. The children of fiction. Born of semen-filled crosses thrust in Calvary’s mound with memories of mañana’s millennium. The gravity of the pendulum, the inscription of the grail. The rumors of war and famine, diseases, and storms of hell.

All hail the new beginning! behold the winter’s end. Bring on the puppets and dragons, let the ceremonies begin.
For they have come to shatter time and bring back the dead! newborn, an army of me. Bearing change in the front lines and shadows in the field mines, to wilderness the lights of the city.

I have seen them! a tumultuous army of bastards and beggars, madmen and idiots, witches and harlots, dancers and lunatics, sinners and singers, losers and lovers, students and teachers, poets and priests. Orbiting the realms of the ordinary through the ordinances of those ordained by the beast. These are our children!

Love-laden life lanterns casting shadows that Shepard the flocks, crying wolf in the moons full, as sirens of love’s lull, the offspring of Gibraltar’s rock. Who will deny them and thrice crows the c**k… will it be you, Peter? [Matthew 26:34]

Decked in day mare’s denial masqueraded in matter over mind under trial. Self is the servant to serpents with wings; three is the beginning of all things. Triangles and rectangle your wings. Let vision blur out your deservings; pile stones to unearth ancient learnings; see self as the ghost of your servings. If you’re serving the father there’s no son without mother parent bodies discover water bodies and drown.

Wade me in the water ‘till Atlantis is found. On the sea floors of self I’m starfish and unbound. Heard the name of that mound is Stone Mountain. Underwater volcanoes erupt water fountains of youth, lest this carnal equation cancel out wind and truth. Throw me beyond sometimes, drench me water-proof. Let eve drop forever rain sunsets on my roof.

As I sit on the front porch of my sanity, deciphering hambones to van Gogh this vanity. Oiled egos canvassed and framed, to be reborn unborn unburied unnamed. A reflection through a blood-stained glass window of souls gone yellow round the edges. Carbonated dreams and blurred daily lives, but let family bring focus. Out of swamps blossom lotus. The muddy water blue daughters of infinity, water body bodhisattvas our serenity as we rise with the tides towards divinity.

And she will be raised by wolves! just below the Mason Ree Dixon line, where eagles noose the misuse of Osiris’ sake of papyruses in their claws clenched. So that the vultures of our memories may feast upon the remedies of ancient laws lynched, and flock to the treetops of the forethoughts we have forgotten. Yes! silence will be begotten of the wind. The silver eyes of the darkness are friends; they sometimes plant forever in their dens.

On the mountainsides of sometimes now and then, in-between the rise and set of you and I. May blue visions know the depth of liquid skies. And some ask me if she cries at night; when it’s is the substance of her tears that drenched the days with light. s**t you better hope she do. Because there are women with fur coats and painted faces, dancing on the peripheries of perfection. They eat Chinese apples that stain their teeth red, and they’ll cackle cosmos of chaos.
and in a moments notice the children on the train, selling chocolate with their mothers in the background fundraising their dreams from the dead.

And the authors of order are corresponding catharsis and change the leaves of my needs are in dread. I need fruit and vegetables, for only living things can feed the span of wings and thus she was born and chartered my flight into the blueness of night.

I am the darkness that precedes the light!

A pupil of the sea’s reflective sight!

Notebook in hand I footnote land and write; plot dot dot dot and dot my eyes is right.

And cast my line amongst the children…

And the night.