Читать книгу Mr. West - Sarah Blake - Страница 14

JESUS WALKS

This poem could start, “I love you,” instead of ending there.

It could start, “Music.”

The key to this poem is connecting this sentence,

from the lyrics of Kanye’s “Jesus Walks”

to this sentence,

Show ’em the wounds

from a making of video that follows the making of the third music video for “Jesus Walks.”

Kanye said, after the first two videos, “I still felt like I didn’t have the hood, and that’s what Jesus walks for, it’s for the hood.”

I can think, have thought, of great line breaks for that quote. Already had to think of punctuation.

The man who said, “Show ’em the wounds,” is, I imagine, a friend of Kanye’s. But Kanye’s not around for this:

“I’m here with my n****, Romeo, looking smooth and shit. You know what I’m saying. Official, n****. How many times you got shot?”

“Nine,” he’s grinning and lifts up his shirt.

“Nine times goddamnit, and he ain’t even no rapper, bitch.” Pause. “I’m with my other n****,” the man to his left, “how many times you got shot, n****? Tell ’em.”

“Five times.”

“Show ’em the wounds. Show ’em the wounds, show ’em the wounds.” And he adds, “I ain’t never got shot but my n****s did.”

Stars all across my paper. Stars when I look at something blindingly beautiful. When I fall. When I first learn of stars.

Someone on the production crew yells out, “Come on in pigeon holders.” Someone says, “I got dirt and blood standing by.”

Many voices behind Kanye’s repeat, “Jesus walks.”

An actor—the one lit on fire for the video, the one carrying a cross big enough to carry him—says to the camera, “I hope people take it the right way.”