Ode to Sampling (or, Dancing in the Graveyard)

POETRY

by Nate Kenny

Talib Kweli,

From the annals of a jazz club whose stage is bootstamped with Coltranes and Gillespies,

Called it “honoring the ancestors.”

A Tribe Called Quest,

Who saw seven or more ghosts haunt any given song,

Called it “playing the resurrector.”

Both call back to something that came before:

A past trapped in wax coffins

That archaeologists (graverobbers?)

Arrive to reawaken (plunder?).

Spirits haunt these coffins.

Not the spirits of the figures who carved their grooves,

But rather the captured souls of a moment in time.

The spinning, ravined table

Of the séance

Summons the utters of dead years and even deader ways.

These spirits have found their way back into the temple,

Even if some were wrested into there,

Squealing and resisting the fresh order,

As most of the dead generally expect to remain so.

The finger scanning the milkcrates is the method of Rapture,

Where the worthy might see the shining gates,

Or the damned might see a glimpse at redemption,

And the needle cutting into a dusty crease

Is with what they are baptized,

And are no longer the spirit they once were.

The honorers and resurrectors use many methods.

Whips, shackles, and hammers,

The more tender salves, keys, and rolls of tape,

But never without the needle.

If something must truly be changed,

You have to break its skin.