Your son wants to be a rapper now,
like Eminem – you say Don’t listen to this shit
he has no right to invade your skin
like a razorblade in the morning, cutting prose
to a number 1, shaving words into rotten poetry.
Your wife calls him the soldier of prose,
not one for daisies or orchids, he cuts the weeds from his mind,
she says, despite his lousy living and the Slim Shady crimes.
He’s raised and purged from asphalt trenches,
he’s the king of instinct, trash-terror churning fast turning,
reckless rules of fame upside down.
How he keeps falling rock-bottom to top.
You’re sceptical how he earns his living with rhymes
of bullets and bitches, time after time. You can’t see his rap
music boasting a human shield, the subtle lurking beneath
his misogyny. All you can see is how he overcame the American
Dream, while living it still, with his daughter Hailie.
How he’s sex on legs in sleazy fuck off tattoos,
a Detroit Shakespeare, a word radical and cool romantic
a priest in the ‘hood – you needn’t comb
his home because his arsenal of cussing is plain to see.
There’s only black and white in his world – you repent.
(Your barbed wires rip his fashion by accident.)
But you, you need no loaded guns in your mouth, or violence
in your name. You rap like this: pull up your pants, take off your hood,
sit straight ‘n eat properly. In your house there is order and
pride, the garden’s trim, bulbs set in spring
in semi-circle, the rock garden blooms behind the fountain
feature of your suburban life, lived with ideas
for what’s right. This boy wants to be a good daddy
for his little girl, he says. You choke: but your son’s role model
mows his lawn with obscenities.
© S.Henrici 2003
[*cf Sing For The Moment from The Eminem Show]