Half Mystic Radio, Season II, Episode VIII: I Promise I Exist
Half Mystic Radio is back with Season II: featuring eight brand-new writers & musicians, & guest hosted by poet & comedian Stephanie Dogfoot. Each episode interrogates, lingers with, & puts in conversation & context art by diverse artists in diverse mediums, expanding & redefining narratives of what poetry & music “should” be. This kind of art is what we came for: the wreck, & not the story of the wreck. The thing itself, & not the myth.
A reminder that you can stream Season II (along with all eight episodes of Season I, hosted by myself!), on your favourite podcast platforms: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Soundcloud, Stitcher, & Amazon Music. Or, listen directly on our website.
If you love Half Mystic Radio, you can spread the word with the hashtag #halfmysticspeaks, leave us a rating & review on your podcast platform of choice, or @ us directly on social media—@wearehalfmystic on all platforms! This is the final episode of Season II, so we want to hear your voice as we think about what comes next.
Season II, Episode VIII: I Promise I Exist is out now. Listen anywhere you get podcasts, or right here at Half Mystic:
Episode VIII features Davon Clark’s poems “For Rappers With Colored Beads” & “I Want a God Whose Heaven is Golden” (previously published in South Side Weekly), & Chok Kerong’s song “A Sweeter Sound”.
Davon Clark is a Philadelphia-raised artist who is currently based in Chicago. He uses investigative journalism practices in his camerawork and poetry. His work looks to fill in the gaps left behind in coverage of the worlds that he lives in and peripheral to. His multimedia highlights include work with the Big Ten Network, City Bureau, and Sovereign Magazine. He’s a published international poetry slam champion. His poetry appears on Button Poetry, Write About Now, Poetry Slam, Inc., and more. He’s a 2017 CUPSI champion, 2-time NPS group piece finalist, 2018 Philly Pigeon Slam team member, and 2018 Pushcart Prize nominee. He likes flowers and the little things in life.
Chok Kerong has established himself as one of Singapore’s most versatile talents. He has distinguished himself as an inventive pianist and organist, and has performed at such events as the Tokyo Jazz Festival, Singapore International Festival of Arts and the Melbourne International Jazz Festival. A composer and arranger of remarkable clarity and depth, his growing body of work includes music for big band, string quartet, hybrid ensembles, and more recently, projects that combine songwriting with contemporary music production.
This season of Half Mystic Radio is guest hosted by Stephanie Dogfoot & produced by me, editor-in-chief Topaz Winters. If you’d like to support Half Mystic financially so that we can keep this podcast & other projects free for you, do consider purchasing one of our books or journal issues.
If you so choose, you can read along to each poem in Episode VIII right here. Thank you for tuning into Season II, dear songbirds—& for all your support of our radio project. Half Mystic loves you.
For Rappers With Colored Beads
In the ninth grade, Martin could talk circles around any rap blog
that made a quick buck talking in circles.
He showed me Frank Ocean, Childish Gambino, and the Weeknd in 2010
when they were all still on mixtape marauders on DatPiff,
a full year before any of them had a studio album.
He knew all the songs.
He could make the beats in a bootleg FL Studio with his eyes closed.
He was so good to music
that sometimes didn’t love him back
yet still, we 4/4 bar banged our lunch periods away,
a bunch of wannabe rappers with hair that was too crazy
or eyelashes too long for anyone to think that we wanted to be rappers.
This is for rappers with colored beads who considered suicide when hip-hop wasn’t enuff.
This is for beatmakers who bit a bullet before they had a shot at living in the world they created.
This is for Martin,
and every verse he’s crept into
and every beat I hear today
that sounds like his did so long ago.
Hip-hop has not always held us as well as it does today,
like the Tyler, the Creators screaming about the white boys they love
or the Steve Lacys chatting about the black boys they hate
or the Uzi Verts singing about their edges and their friends.
Martin never had colored beads, but he wore pink before it was cool
and he sent me Frank Ocean’s coming out post on Tumblr. Martin:
every time I see a rapper in pastel joggers
with a bubblegum-bassed background vocal on a track,
I can feel your playful punch on my shoulder.
I know you were ready for hip-hop
when hip-hop wasn’t ready for you.
You freestyled over me singing “Forrest Gump” in Rittenhouse Square,
both of our voices trembling like our wannabe careers depended on it.
We had so many homies die
that we could’ve made songs about, and now look, it’s you:
a tombstone of a stanza,
a shot in the dark,
a beat that faded right before the good part.
I Want a God Whose Heaven is Golden
On my quietest days I’m yellin'
in the back of my head at
anything that doesn’t make me feel real. My
biggest fear is that one day, that’ll be everything.
My mother is an angel of a person,
and even she says I’m lost if I die like how
I’ve imagined I will more times than the man
in me will admit.
I know I sound crazy at times, Mama.
You know I sound crazy at times, Mama,
but we both hear the ghost in me.
When the world around me is at its loudest, things get
easier to believe. In fact, I’ve taken a
liking to noise. Lots of it. The days that have little
going on are ones where myself and I become a bit closer,
and right now, I’m not a person I want to get to know better. I repeat:
give me more noise and I will show you what I can be with some care.
These days, bus rides are heaven. Overly nice and talkative bus drivers
are my guardian angels. I feel the vibrato of a voice pass
through my skin and it’s all the proof I need that I’m still me.
Not that me is a dude I fuck with, but he’s someone I’d like to look up
to one day. Don't
we all just want to see
soft streets paved with gold and reasons all around us to smile? As for me:
that looks like no more work days, and lazy paramedics
that will never have to touch a dead skin cell again. And here I am: I’m talking
of heaven like it’s far away, but I know that just about
everything around me can be what
I think it is. Proof of God. Proof
that he can hold all of this in the air.
I want a God that doesn’t need oxygen,
hunger, anxiety, or gender roles. They
need to let me hug a new good moment. I seem
to do better when I’m incompetent
about the bad things in me that I see
on some days more than others. The consequence
a God gives can tell me all I need to know. I walk
into my mother’s living room when
everything in me wants nothing to do with living, and I can't
figure why, and I hear
bits and pieces of a lecture, like, son,
don’t let them bad thoughts get to you like you crazy or something.
They are all they are, inaudible
demons that you are giving a chance. I got
so many days down behind me and up
in front. I like
to think I’ll see each of them. I gotta
stop calling depression a sin. I gotta
find a God whose heaven is golden and go
to its church. I gotta find the forensics
of a God that doesn’t make me search
all over for blessings. I want every single follicle
on my body to stay at ease. I promise,
if I find a good Bible that loves me back, y'all
will have a good man standing in front of you. I'm not
asking for much. I just don’t want to be a ghost.
I promise
I exist, y'all,
and I want to look
like it, without the halo and wings.
Please, don’t ever let me forget that
there's heaven all around,
there's heaven all around,
there's heaven all around,
there's heaven all around.