The Reluctant Eulogist

© 10 August 2008, The Griot Poet

Like "Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card
I find I am a "Speaker for the Dead"
speaking of endings
and beginnings
in two days having lost
Bernie Mac,
Now Isaac Hayes

"He was a bad mother... shut your mouth!"

He brought style to baldness before MJ,
Chocolate was never as sweet as when he sang,
Back in the day
If you HAD no luck with babes... you played a 45" by Isaac Hayes,
And she, felt gorgeous for his refrain...

He wore chains before Run DMC, Mr. T or gangster wannabe's,
He rapped before Ludacris or Nelly,
He was the foundation for disco, urban contemporary music,
midnight love videos, Marvin Gaye, Luther Vandross and Barry White...

Yes, I am a speaker for the dead,
and something about us is passing fast
into the past,
into oblivion,
into the cloud of witnesses...

I quote myself in the piece "Last Days":

I lament the death of soul music:
born of marches,
riots,
Civil Rights songs.

It was OUR marching music,
the beat of OUR drums,
when we sang out
we gave NEPHESH *
back in spirit-filled medley.

I lament the death of soul music
and the architects of its pentameter,
journeymen and master musicians
as capable of 'da FUNK'
as arranging a Philharmonic Orchestra
without sampling past hits,
shocking lyrics
or "lip sync."

I lament the death of soul music
with the sincerest tears...

In twenty years:

Music that calls our women "hootchies, B's and 'hos,"
Music that calls our men gangsters, N's and thugs,

Lyrics so FOUL as to attain the label "parental advisory"...

will

BE

the oldies!

* NEPHESH - Etymology, Hebrew: "Living soul."
Soul, self, life, seat of the appetites, seat of emotions and passions, activity of mind, activity of the will, activity of the character

Soul Music
Date: 1961
: music that originated in black American gospel singing, is closely related to rhythm and blues, and is characterized by intensity of feeling and earthiness