Mr. West (2 page)

Noah and I move to the bedroom soon,
and every night. Noah lets me

bring Kanye in,

knows our life has room for all of it.

CON MOTO

While swallowing a prenatal vitamin before bed, I'm watching an MTV interview

with Rick Ross about how
you taught him to see music in colors.

He calls you
Ye
, pronounced yay, dropping
Kan
.

Musical terms, held onto from Italian, found on printed music, begin with
con

because they begin with
with.

Con espressione, con moto,
become, informally,
espressione, moto, spirito, affetto, dolore, forza, gran, molto, fuoco,
larghezza, slancio, sordino, anima, brio, amore.
Shook free.

And we should love our own sounds.

Feeling, movement, spirit, affect, sadness, force, great feeling, much feeling, fire,

broadness, enthusiasm, muted tone, feeling again, and vigor, and tenderness

or love.

Another connection between you and Italy, between you and music. Another

way to say beautiful things that I have learned tonight.

If bellies stirred before babies were big enough, mine'd be kicking.

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.”

My favorite music video of the three has this man in it.

Maybe for the fire behind Kanye that rises and recedes in that hallway like the breath.

Maybe because when the police cut open a pack of cocaine in the trunk of a car filled with packs of cocaine, a dove comes out, shaking powder from its head. I count at least fifteen flying from the trunk.

A woman sings that she wants Jesus with the fullest lips I've seen in years, a voice like no woman I know.

I believe in her, in Kanye.

But what is it when I believe bullets leave the shapes of stars?

Kanye, if only I could write a poem for you and not about you.

THE WEEK KANYE JOINED TWITTER

We find there are fewer dinosaurs
when we learn how the skulls age.
Shifting horns, bones that thin
and smooth, holes that form like
some desires do. Changes we
couldn't anticipate, knowing mostly
our simple, fusing domes.

You begin tweeting.

I learn about your suits, videos,
jets, pillows, the new words you
picked up overseas. You take
a picture of your diamond
and gold teeth. You make a joke
about a crown so lovely I see
it on nymphs in daydreams.

Sometimes I see

my curly head of hair outlined in
the morning dark and think I'm
the lovechild of actresses and lions.
But today I see the functionality
of my face and not whether
I'm beautiful. I'm so very animal.
I remember and flare my nostrils.

KANYE'S DIGESTIVE SYSTEM

This I taught to a sixth grader—

mouth, esophagus, stomach, small intestine, large
intestine, rectum, anus

—but there's so much more to it than that.

The bile from the liver.

The sections of the small intestine—

duodenum, jejunum, ileum.

The sections of the large intestine—

ascending colon, transverse colon, descending colon
.

And some go so far as to note the
sigmoid colon
.

Wikipedia says,

of this in particular,

“normally lies within the pelvis,

but on account

of its freedom of movement

it is liable to be displaced”

Oh god, the uneasy organs.

All the sphincter muscles (just like the ones in our eyes).

All the peristalsis.

Even a vestigial organ.

I love the digestive system. The bits about how long the small intestine is.

The small intestine in an adult human measures on average
about 5 meters (16 feet), with a normal range of 3–7 meters.

It can measure around 50% longer at autopsy

because of the loss of smooth

muscle tone

after death.

How they will go on to say,

That's the height of a giraffe!

The length of a Humpback Whale calf

at birth!

The length of the letters individually undone in this very book!

The length
of my
cooing for
Kanye!

C
ooooooooooooooooooo
ooooooooooooooooooooo
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
oooooooooooo

Kanye must know, from his year in China, that there,
the heart is not what controls love.

It is the stomach, the gut,

that which moans in the night.

SEEING KANYE

Along the Juniata, the gray stones,
gray squares in the grass,
keep the hills from the road, keep them
where they are.

When we pass the stones,
like the Earth's stitches,
I know we're about to see a rock face
following a bend in the road,
where the strata bend like sound waves.

It's clear God is below the Earth, not above—
his head, giant frame for the planet—
and he makes a sound that makes the Earth.

But first I thought of Kanye's head
singing, singing, singing into that rock.

the fallible face

  
  
  
  
  

KANYE WEST
, “Through the Wire,” line 6 of verse 2

MYTHIC

The world's on the back of a turtle, on the back of a turtle, on the back of a turtle,

on the back of Kanye.

Eve gave Kanye the apple—after Kanye was formed of dust from the ground.

Kanye was raised by a nymph and not eaten by his Titan father.

With a giant axe, Kanye separated the murky Yin and clear Yang.

Kanye once grew from the ocean and reached the clouds in the sky.

And Kanye almost died in a car accident,

so he became a star.

GOD CREATED NIGHT AND IT WAS NIGHT

Let there be Kanye at the wheel of a black SUV.
Let Kanye fall asleep.
Let the SUV hit another car with another man.
Let that man's legs break and be broken.
Let Kanye be trapped in the car.
Let there be the men that cut him out.

And there was evening and there was morning.

Let Kanye's mother and girlfriend arrive.
Let the women take care of him.
Let Kanye see his face.
Let the doctor reconstruct his face.
Let Kanye have the breath of life.
Let Kanye lie that he had not fallen asleep.

And there was evening and there was morning.

Let Kanye tell the truth.
Let Kanye's jaw be wired shut.
Let Kanye write a song.
Let Kanye sing it through that wire.

Let the song reach over all the earth.
Let lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light upon Kanye.

Bring forth Kanye according to his kind.

KANYE'S SKELETAL SYSTEM

206 bones, filled with marrow, connected
by tendons, ligaments, fitted in joints,
divided into axial and appendicular skeletons.

Bones break, fracture. They bruise. Sometimes,
kissing contusions.

The Googled images for this show
scans and x-rays of knees, and couples kissing,
and pictures of Rihanna with Chris Brown.

Oh god, fact-checker.

Kanye has broken his bones.
But no matter how many places the skull
is broken, it's only one bone breaking.

First, a baby will have a skeleton completely
of cartilage.

In the fourth month of pregnancy, it begins to turn to bone.

And then I'll hold onto those bones forever.

Kanye, I could tell you so many more things about the bones.
I could tell you to drink your milk.
I could imagine you in the 80's “got milk?” ads.

That ad campaign began in 1993.

Fact-checker, please.

You're no better. What are you really thinking?

Kanye, did your mother, in her hands,
hold your broken face?

So swollen.
Could she?

THE FALLIBLE FACE

featuring Emmanuel Levinas

1

While firemen worked to get Kanye out,

he talked with his mother on the phone,
apologized for getting himself hurt.

2

The airbag had not deployed and his head had smashed against the steering wheel.

His mother got on a plane.

there is first the very uprightness of the face, its upright exposure, without
defense

He was swollen.

He was indistinguishable.

this gaze is precisely the epiphany of the face as a face

His mother wrote how she controlled her expressions,
how she told his girlfriend how to behave.

the epiphany of the face is ethical

Women are familiar with how not to scare
someone who's in danger.

3

The plastic surgeon was a bit of eye candy
his mother wrote.

the face … formulates the first word

It might be love, or attraction, or
humanity.

4

Kanye, you must have a relationship with your reflection I can't understand.

To structure, to surgery, to form.

in the access to the face there is certainly also an access to the idea of God

How did they put you together again?
How did you feel when someone saw you who didn't know

you had ever looked like someone other
than yourself?

in the access to the face there is certainly also an access to the idea of God

The metal plate in your chin follows the bone.
The metal plate in your chin might ache.

5

Regardless of his face, Kanye is not always treated like a man.

THIS IS NOT THE FIRST TIME I'VE WONDERED

My favorite part of Donda West's
Raising Kanye
is from the chapter “Through the Wire: The Accident,” when she sits at Kanye's bedside contemplating the attractiveness of the doctor, saying even that Billy Dee and Denzel Washington could not compare.

I want to spend my poem smiling.

Billy Dee, Donda? Lando Calrissian of
Star Wars
? Yes!

But all I can think is, where is your father, Kanye?

Where is he?
Where is he?
Where is he?

IN SONG

After the accident, Kanye West wrote, produced, and recorded a song.

“Through the Wire.”

As the title suggests, Kanye rapped every word through his wired-shut jaw.

The first verse says:

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Recently, Kanye compared himself to Emmett Till again.

On one website they explain: “discussing the VMA incident … he compared the backlash he faced to the murder of Emmett Till, the Chicago teenager who was killed for whistling at a white woman in Money, Mississippi.”

People have been outraged, but Kanye must

feel a connection to this boy. And because of Kanye,

Emmett's story is on the internet again and again. 65 years later.

Kanye knows what appropriation is.

SO KANYE TRANSFORMED HIMSELF, PRODUCER TO SUPERSTAR

What do I know about being saved?

In one video game I watch Noah play,
he points his gun at his friend and shoots him to heal him.

My grandfather died despite treatment.
My mother's treatment did everything it should.

And I've never been in danger. I've hardly ever
been on high balconies or rooftops.

But Kanye's been at risk. In an interview, he was asked,

“Given that you had a near-death experience as you recount on ‘Through the Wire,' what are your beliefs on death? Reincarnation?”

He answered, “I feel like I'm here for a reason.”

Why, Kanye? What's the reason?

Kanye said, “I don't believe in reincarnation. Sometimes I wonder if I believe in heaven. I know I believe in Jesus.”