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Stole My Stealing from Eliot (Explicit)

from Stole My Stealing from Eliot by Buggy Jive

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All stuff by Buggy Jive. Except the stuff stolen from T.S. Eliot.

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PART 1: TRADITION

We speak of those came before as we deplore their absence.
We speak of those who came before as we condemn their assassins.
The ghosts of poets past,
They hide behind the glass.
They hide between the lines of present day of present-past passions.

In my feelings when I’m telling it
Stole my stealing from Eliot


PART 2: THE INDIVIDUAL TALENT

What came before has more import even though it is changed
So fuck yo feelings fuck yo need to work out your personal shit
Inside a poem, inside a song that don’t even belong to you.
A song belongs to all that came before and has yet to come
Collective mind of art, collective mind of Europe.

In my feelings when I’m telling it
I stole my stealing from Eliot

PART 3: THE WASTE LAND

From “mind of Europe” to mind of Africa.
Oh - do you mind if we talk about the diaspora?
Let’s discuss these “Ethiopian Airs” -
Come, pull up a chair.
Your burnished throne; there.
Welcome to my unreal upstate unreal town.
Now your London ass is sitting down!

Agony of Othello, transmutation;
Tho "haply for I am black,
And have not those soft parts of conversation"
As yo enablers through reverse colonization and
inside-out cultural appropriation.
Is you itching to become more British than the British, son?
Did you just steal it or did they teach you how to fish it, son?

"Son of Man."

"Are the shadows behind you or rising to meet?
I can not know, or guess, for all I can see is
A heap of broken images, and phat beats,
And the Sly Stone, and the dead tree
No water sounds,but a mic drops."

Well then hey, gurl, then come up under the shadow of my soul rock!

Stay with me. Speak to me.
Convince my nerves what you heard about words surrendering personality
Cuz cousin, I ain't surrendering nothing.
Least of all the syntax of my sentences and double negatives and
Akses and the ass kisses from the lips of ghosts of poets past.

Alas: I’mma sho yo fragments against my ruins
Biting from your oeuvre, all up in yo Louvre,
Demanding checks and equity and respect.
2 niggas in 1 museum dropping ethnic intellect.
And suddenly finally only now they got a definition for politically and artistically incorrect?
Suddenly those who take offense at others finding offense are finally offended.
Their order upended.
Their fount of tradition is pissed in.

But Mo' - she aiight widdit
But Mo' - she aint whiling it
Bey and Jay turn to her,
And Mo'? She keep on smiling shit.

I’m gonna keep on telling it
I stole my stealing from Eliot.
I got my game from Baldwin
But I stole my name from Ellison
I stole my artistry from Toni
I stole my harmonies from Joni
I stole my woke from Erykah
Stole my stolen back from America
My stank so funky I know you be smellin it
I stole my stealing from Eliot.

PART 4: THE LOVE SONG

A brotha be dealing with decisions
and indecisions and revisions and choices;
A brotha be doing the po-po in different voices.

And in the room the women come and go,
Talking about Maya Angelou.

credits

from Stole My Stealing from Eliot, released August 31, 2018
All stuff by Buggy Jive. Except for the stuff stolen from T.S. Eliot.

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Buggy Jive Albany, New York

BUGGY JIVE is a soul rock singer-songwriter quietly uploading music from a basement somewhere in Upstate New York.

Equal parts Zeppelin and D’Angelo and Prince and Joni in sound and sensibility, his lyrics often mine the literature of the past to make sense of the present – from Ellison to Morrison to Eliot to Didion.

“Literary Kravitz,” as some say.
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