Saul Williams

Saul Williams Poems

Saul Williams Biography

Saul Stacey Williams (born February 29, 1972) is an American rapper, singer-songwriter, musician, poet, writer, and actor. He is known for his blend of poetry and alternative hip hop, and for his lead roles in the 1998 film Slam and Holler If Ya Hear Me, a Broadway musical featuring music by Tupac Shakur. The youngest of three children, Williams was born in Newburgh, New York. He attended Newburgh Free Academy, where he wrote his song "Black Stacey". After graduating from Morehouse College with a BA in acting and philosophy, he moved to New York City to earn an MFA in acting from New York University's Graduate Acting Program at the Tisch School of the Arts. While there, he found himself at the center of the New York café poetry scene. He also lived in Brazil as an exchange student from 1988 to 1989. By 1995, Williams had become an open mic poet; in 1996, he won the title of Nuyorican Poets Cafe's Grand Slam Champion. The documentary film SlamNation follows Williams and the other members of the 1996 Nuyorican Poets Slam team (Beau Sia, muMs da Schemer, and Jessica Care Moore) as they compete in the 1996 National Poetry Slam held in Portland, Oregon. The following year, Williams landed the lead role in the 1998 feature film Slam. Williams featured as both a writer and actor on the film, which would win both the Sundance Festival Grand Jury Prize and the Cannes Camera D'Or (Golden Camera).

The Best Poem Of Saul Williams

Untimely Meditations

CHAPTER 1

Time is money. Money is time.
So, I keep seven o'clock in the
bank and gain interest in the
hour of God. I'm saving to buy
my freedom. God grant me wings.
I'm too fly not to fly. Eye sore
to look at humans without wings.
So, I soar. And find tickle in the
feather of my wings. Flying
hysterically over land. Numerically,
I am seven mountains higher than
the valley of death, seven dimensions
deeper than dimensions of breath.

CHAPTER 2

The fiery sun of my passions
evaporates the love lakes of my
soul, clouds my thoughts and
rains you into existence. As I take
flights on bolts of lightening.
Claiming chaos as my concubine
and you as my me. I of the storm.
You of the sea. We of the moon.
Land of the free. What have I done
to deserve this? Am I happy?

CHAPTER 3

Happiness is a mediocre standard
for a middleclass existence. I see
through smiles and smell truth in
the distance. Beyond one dimensional
smiles and laughter lies the hereafter.
Where tears echo laughter.

You'd have to do math to divide a
smile by a tear, times fear, equals
mere truth, that simply dwells in the
air. But if that's the case all I have
to do is breath and all else will follow.
That's why drums are hollow.

And I like drums. Drums are good.
But I can't think straight. I lack the
attention span to meditate. My attention
spans galaxies. Here and now are immense.
Seconds are secular. Moments are mine.
Self is illusion. Music's divine.

CHAPTER 4

Noosed by the strings of Jimi's guitar,
I swing, purple-hazed pendulum. Hypnotizing
the part of eye that never dies. Look into my:
eyes are the windows of the soul is fried chicken,
collards, and cornbread is corn meal, sour cream,
eggs, and oil is the stolen blood of the earth, used
to make cars run and kill the fish.

Who me? I play scales. The scales of
dead fish of oil slicked seas. My sister
blows wind through the hollows of fallen
trees. And we are the echoes of eternity.
Maybe you've heard of us.

We threw basement parties in pyramids.
I left my tag on the wall. The beats would
echo off the stone and solidify into the
form of light bulbs, destined to light up
the heads of future generations. They
recently lit up in the form of: BA BOOM
BOOM OM. Maybe you've heard of us.

CHAPTER 5

If not then you must be trying to hear us
and in such cases we cannot be heard. We
remain in the darkness, unseen. In the center
of unpeeled bananas, we exist. Uncolored by
perception. Clothed to the naked eye. Five
senses cannot sense the fact of our existence.
And that's the only fact. In fact, there are no
facts.

Fax me a fact and I'll telegram a hologram
or telephone the son of man and tell him he
is done. Leave a message on his answering
machine telling him there are none. God and
I are one. Times moon. Times star. Times sun.
The factor is me. You remember me.

CHAPTER 6

I slung amethyst rocks on Saturn blocks
until I got caught up by earthling cops. They
wanted me for their army or whatever. Picture
me: I swirl like the wind. Tempting tomorrow
to be today. Tip toeing the fine line between
everything and everything else. I am simply
Saturn swirling sevens through sooth. The sole
living heir of air. And I (inhale) and (exhale) and
all else follows. Reverberating the space inside of
drum hollows. Packaged in bottles and shipped to
tomorrow, then sold to the highest NGH.

I swing from the tallest tree. Lynched by
the lowest branches of me. Praying that
my physical will set me free ‘cause I'm
afraid that all else is vanity. Mere language
is profanity. I'd rather hum. Or have my
soul tattooed to my tongue. And let the
scriptures be sung in gibberish. ‘Cause
words be simple fish in my soulquarium.
And intellect can't swim.

CHAPTER 7

So, I stopped combing my mind so my
thoughts could lock. I'm tired of trying
to understand. Perceptions are mangled,
matted, and knotted anyway. Life is more
than what meets the eye and I.

So, elevate eye to the third. But even that
shit seems absurd when your thoughts
leave you third eye-solated. No man is an
island. But I often feel alone. So find peace
through OM.

Saul Williams Comments