dance, int. (interpreted)

Introduction: Rap is poetry, is it not? Poetry set to music! So, here are my second* bars ever to be shared publicly with any seriousness or intentionality in their writing. My goal was to capture the experience of dancing, free of self-consciousness, in words. I wanted to avoid using the word ‘dance’. I wanted to reintroduce the lister/reader to the experience of dance with the imagery and metaphors I used to portray it. In my piece, the depiction of getting swept up on the dance floor is likened to waves and ripples set off in a body of water when someone does a cannon ball. If you are in the water, energy both moves through you and moves you. The initial impact of the person hitting the water represents that first bass drop that jolts your being and lures you to the dance floor. In the end, my poem became a rap. I hope the music and the words move you and bring you unabashed joy expressed in the movement of your own body 🙂

like a cannon ball in summer breaks the surface of a lake:
drip, drip, drip–drop
the bass

like a cannon ball in summer breaks the surface of a lake:
drip, drip, drip–drop
the bass

ripples turning into waves
liquid rhythms undula-ting
first arrested, my chest,
now it can’t help its anima-ting

cells of my body, aquatic
are pushing, pulling hypnotic
floor to ceiling, this sonic
situation’s a tonic
like waves lifting my burdens
out of my head through my body
I let my heart show what’s on it
this is expression embodied

I’m catching crests
and the troughs
shiftin’ me to, fro and around
to start again on the down
beat. Feet—ball to heel—
stomp the ground

Sweat on my skin; I’m glistenin’
sweet syncopated commotion
there go my upper limbs
lower limbs–hips
slide, hook, whine
butterfly

Freeze!

My style’s undefined
Undeterred, unreserved
yeah, I’m unrefined
But I’m not thinking ’bout you
I don’t got the time

this recreation
music’s incarnation
this song’s a libation
created is creatin’–smitten to submission
to the rhythm on this station

Eyyyy!

Melody,
set me free from inside out
Harmony, sway with me
Till the sound runs out
We’re turnin’ ripples to waves
from the inside out
We’re turnin’ ripples into waves
till the stars go down

… that’s a rap! 😉

Copyright © 2021 A.M. Wilsonne