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  • The Same Beat
  • Yusef Komunyakaa (bio)

I don't want the same beat. I don't want the same beat. I don't want the same beat used for copping a plea as well as for making love & talking with the gods. I don't want the same beat like a windshield wiper swishing back & forth to the rhythm of stolen pain & counterfeit pleasure. I don't want the same beat when I can listen to early Miles, Prez, Yardbird, Sonny Stitt, Monk, Lady Day, Trane, or the Count of Red Bank. I don't want the same beat as I gaze out at the Grand Canyon or up at the Dogstar in a tenement window or at an eagle who owns the air. I don't want the same beat as the buffoon on the turntable selling his secondhand soul to the organ-grinder's monkey. I don't want the same beat like a pitiful needle stuck in a hyperbolic groove at the end of The Causeway. [End Page 476] I don't want the same beat as only background for the skullduggery of Iceberg Slim on a bullhorn. I don't want the same beat as the false witness, because I know any man with that much gold in his mouth has already been bought & sold. I don't want the                      same beat.                                           I don't want the same beat.                  I don't want the                                           same beat. I don't want the                      same beat.

Yusef Komunyakaa

Yusef Komunyakaa, the subject of this issue of Callaloo, teaches at Princeton University. His most recent book of poems is Taboo: The Wishbone Trilogy, Part I. The numerous prizes, awards and honors he has received for his poetry include a chancellorship with the American Academy of Poets, the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters (Wesleyan University), the William Faulkner Prize (Universite Rennes, France), the Kingsley Tufts Award for Poetry, and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

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