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1-100       Compilations

HH from the Italian Diaspora

Frankie Hi NRG — Verba Manent (1993)

Power to the word (Italian original)
Translation by Virginia Carlsten and Joe Sciorra

Rap
effecting words stacked with metaphors
expressing an absolute and perfect concept,
a well-aimed blow
dealt to the system from the depths of the spiritual ghetto
where they wanted to keep us to drown
in that sea of idel talk mixed up
' with that false and opportunistic morality
that the censors use as defensive weapons, shooting many on sight
— not many believe me — they reject
every form of control initiated by the powerful,
by the "gentlemen" who control opinion,
by those who correct the drafts of the script
called information seen everyday on the screens of an entire nation ...
' This is the poison they want to inoculate us with, for which antidotes don't exist
it's a mental death,
resist, don't be influenced
if you don't want to be reduced to a terminal state
of comatose stasis in which you're incapable of thinking
and prefer to complain if something goes wrong.
To act, to think, to speak, to explore
every hut of the global village,
to fling open windows to personal communication, open the universal canal,
sink the arsenal of suffocating words
coming from the spider webs of an entire silent generation
, this is what I think,
life is my school
and I give power to the word.

Subject, predicate, compliments,
without too many compliments like a punch in the teeth,
silence is for the losers, mutes and smiling,
half-wits without immunity from the attacks of the powerful
who push the masses into the bottom of the ditch
, at the edge of the abyss they seal the coffin from dialogue with nails made from carnations,
repressed shouts in a hoarse clamor
and the cathode megaphone gathers and amplifies transparent gossip
like the wings of horseflies that buzz in the torrid cultural desert
in the middle of the ruins of an age made from ideals never achieved,
you who for lack of perseverance, you who needs good fortune
you who needs courage, you who needs change to change:
this is the moment to take the advantage and move ahead...
This is the message I'm sending you
the sonorous crime that I am perpetrating
violating that unspoken and uncivil code of silence
from which I differentiate myself in how much I testify and pass judgment:
rhythmic the obsessive rhyme and the offensive and persuasive percussion
clears the luminous fog like the sun
because the tongue can strike if the mind wants it to...

I scan the horizon
I see a point of arrival, the finish line
and I go stumbling at breakneck
and falling, I scrape my knees
but I don't mind, I catch my breath
I stand up again, I dive and I look at the swamp
that covers that Eldorado of ideals
that settles like mud covering the depth of the pond where I bathe,
muddy and unhealthy, evryone knows it's like this
muddy and unhealthy repository for sedated stimuli of a distant past
suspended in a limbo of an inhuman silence
broken by a verbal vortex
that penetrates the skin and hurts
but your momemnt as arrived
don't stand there and watch, come on,
scream at the top of your lungs
giving power to the word.

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