A country fair in rural Connecticut
two weeks ago
Saturday night

There’s a kid
as crew cut and blonde as a farmer stereotype
wearing a side tipped black on black Yankees cap
and this T-shirt that says in white on black

TODAY I DIDN’T EVEN HAVE TO USE MY AK
I GOT TO SAY IT WAS A GOOD DAY

I know where that came from

I pride myself on trying to know
things my friends don’t know
It’s a hipster thing and knowing that line
qualifies me as a hipster
among my graying pals
and like a good hipster I snicker to myself

What could this hick
still wet behind his exposed ears
know about something like that
out here in the fresh air
next to the cider donut stand
under the fireworks in the woods?

I don’t know where that’s coming from

Then tonight
on a late night drive home
from Providence
I hit the preset on the car radio
and pick up a new station
“BSR in the 401 — 88.1
Hitz From Da Left”

Now I know what I know
but I don’t know anything I’m hearing

Here’s a shoutout to “my boys
on lockdown tonight in the ACI”
and “Jacqui sending this out to Rab-dog
wherever he is tonight”

I think I know this piano sample
Think it’s from Curtis Mayfield
but it’s not long enough for me to be certain
And the beats that travel with it
make it hard to hear the past for the present
so I don’t know if I know

Then the announcer cuts in with
“Who’s making rhymes like this these days?

a few seconds go by before he says

“…that’s right — no one’s
making rhymes like this, son
This is twenty years old”

and the words are similar
to something I know
but far enough away to be strange
to ears that think they’ve heard everything
there is to know

(By the way, if you’re sitting there waiting for me
to bust out in some lame replica
of the rhymes I heard
waiting with incipient glee for my failure
may I suggest
you kiss my middle aged
fat round ass

because I know what I know
and I know when I’m licked
and I’m licked so hard here
I’m still wet behind the ears)

I’ve never heard this stuff before

and the tracks roll on
like breathing that won’t stop
and I’m trying to breathe like this
but I can’t

I’ve got the window down
with this unknown old school turned up loud
listening
to the wind rush by
until the signal breaks down to static
two miles out of Providence
still thirty miles from Connecticut

I hit another button
and find a few more rhymes
a little farther on
I recognize this stuff
and can almost follow the words
but this time when Ice Cube drops
I shut the hell up

because I know what I don’t know
and what I know now is that I know shit
except it seems that hip hop’s not something
to be found in the blood
but in the air

and maybe that kid back home
with the buzz cut and the shirt down to his knees
knows something I don’t
or maybe he doesn’t
but I know I don’t know

I know now
what I know
isn’t enough

and because of that
I got to say

today was a good day