"Phife"--a Poem by Adam Mansbach

Phife
All we wantedwas abstract                to kick verses that made sense w/o            being made of sense
that sublime slick awkward shituntethered to
        any meaning you could         get arrested for
                    whole steez wasone foot cocked backtibia parallel to earthsole holding up the wallhands folded mid thigh   
screwface-nodding on the snare as if it snapped for no one else

        post melle mel rrraaah          post dmc locked knees         post rakim hurricane eye quiet storm                                                                    we had finally learned to                    let the party come to us
                    we wanted to be abstract & weren’tsweating the other cat
at firstbut yo
true MCsknow
that you can’t rollwithout the pick
or do all that ethereal shitbefore it’s been established that
new york is the town & the team is the knicks
w/o even meaning to wefound ourselveswriting phife lines
lookin forthat perfect half bar metaphor
snatchin names & meaningsout the thin air of pop cultureand sliding them right into the beat’s hip pocket
come to find outthat shit way harder than it look
come to find outthis dude quintessence of MChood likeginsu wordchop hands & getting jerked at shows &
everything ain’t futurism
    words on rhythm    words on rhythm

the boulevard battlersize 8s grippin earth
putting in workfor the love of the sport
all the time, phifeall the time
***
Adam Mansbach is a novelist, screenwriter, cultural critic and humorist. He is the author of the #1 New York Times bestsellers Go the Fuck to Sleep, which has been translated into forty languages, named Time Magazine’s 2011 “Thing of the Year,” and sold over two million copies worldwide, and the 2014 sequel, You Have to Fucking Eat. His novels include Rage is Back, Angry Black White Boy, and The End of the Jews, winner of the California Book Award, as well as the thrillers The Dead Run and The Devil’s Bag Man, and several middle grades titles. He is the co-author, with Alan Zwiebel and Dave Barry, of For This We Left Egypt? A Passover Haggadah For Jews and the People Who Love Them, forthcoming in 2017. He also wrote the screenplay for the motion picture Barry, about Barack Obama’s first year in New York City. Starring Devon Terrell, Anya Taylor-Joy and Ashley Judd and directed by Vikram Ghandi, it will have its theatrical release in late 2016.