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[wind noises]

If I could sample the wind, I would loop it

And let my life poem flow over its sacred beats.

Using Kilimanjaro as my djembe I would drum rainbows out of the moonlight and use them as hooks in between verses; verses of little girls spinning ropes in opposite directions, waiting for an opening to jump in.

As the world turns, double dutch, I jump, double time over oceans and back; the water waves and I wave back.

Rippling echoes of "sunshii-ii-iine" - folks get ground in the "sunshii-ii-iine."

But the lightning flaaash three times and its time for the chorus which includes corn bread, candy yams, and all that good stuff, which black folks on Saturn are made of.

As we approach the second verse the roots of trees are plucked from bass lines, which resonate and shake the earth -- devastating everything that's not built in harmony in it.

The second verse is a journey through the ruins of ruined souls; that valued all that was nothing, and nothing of the all-knowing ever flowing wind - which is the undercurrent of this current blowing, the funky drummer from here to eternity.

But even as ruined souls backspin, the wind mills forward and rocks steady 'till the sun hits the fader and the chorus kicks in; then the moon yells "Go!" and we all backspin -- ZULU! As the moonlight shines true blue silvery indigo light my spirit takes flight - because the moonlight is my indigo; indigo ON, to the break of dawn, I rock rock steady steady 'till the early morn, word is bond I'm talking about seeing your nature in nature innate in your nature - New York states of mind did not create ya.

Not until you listen to Rakim on a rocky mountain top have you heard hip-hop.

Extract the urban element that created it and let an open wide countryside let us illustrate it.

Riding in a freight train listening to Coltrane and my reality went insane and I think I saw Jesus; he was playing hop-scotch with Betty Carter who was cursing him out in a scat-like-gibberish for not saying "Butterfingers."

And like the grains of sand, like the seeds of time, the pains of Man, the frames of mind which built these frames which is the structure of my urban superstructure. The trains and planes can corrupt and obstruct your train of thought so that you forget how to walk through the woods which ain't good, 'cause if you never walked through the trees listening to 'Nobody Beats The Biz' you ain't never heard hip-hop.. and you don't stop, and you don't stop, and you don't...

STOP lettin' cities define you, confine you to that which is cement and brick.

We are not a hard peoples, our domes have been crowned with the likes of steeples. That which is our being soars with the eagles, and the Jonathon Livingston seagulls - Yes - I got wings, you got wings, we all got to got wings!

So let's widen the circumference of our nest, and escape this urban incubator -

You see, the wind plays the world like an instrument; blows through trees like flutes but trees don't grow in cement. And as heartbeats bring percussion, fallen trees bring repercussions; cities play upon our souls like broken drums, we drum the essence of creation from city slums - but city slums mute our drums and our drums become humdrum, 'cause city slums have never been where our drums are from - just the place where our daughters and sons become, off-beat heartbeats, slaves to city streets, where hearts get broken and heart beats stop - broken heart beats become break beats for niggas to rhyme on top, but they rhyme about... NOTHIN'.

You don't got nothin' to rhyme about 'cause you've never seen the moon, your styles can't be universal if you're not in tune, with the... [wind noises]

The thumbnail image for this video has been updated - thumbnail added by vaporlock.

I just showed "Indigo On" to my seventh graders in West Branch, Iowa, as we talk about poetry. I had to have the custodian come in to clean because several heads exploded. I hope I changed at least on person forever.