I've always been a fan of e.e. cummings, because his poetry is so song-like; you can hear the music in this quote from his poem "somewhere i have never traveled":(i do not know what it is about you that closesand opens; only something in me understandsthe voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands Generally, I'm not a big fan of spoken-word, or poetry with music... except for Laurie Anderson's work, because she's so good at it. Of course as in the song "O Superman, but for me especially in the song "John Lilly", where in a micro-poem, she manages to compress more meaning and emotion than there is in many a novel. Here's the lyrics, but go listen to the song: John Lilly, the guy who says he can talk to dolphins, said he was in an aquarium and he was talking to a big whale who was swimming around and around in his tank.And the whale kept asking him questions telepahtically.and one of the questions the whale kept asking was:do all oceans have walls?Songs that really are poems with music function in a different way than songs that are, well, songs... if they are good, there's an element of revelation, and re-evaluation. Like with that Laurie Anderson song, you're listening to the lyrics, wondering what is going on, and then the very last line opens up the whole story and gives the previous lines so much more meaning. The hook is the lyrical meaning and the emotion, not the vocal or beat... and to hear it again you have to replay the whole song, because it doesn't repeat because it doesn't have a verse/chorus structure.So the idea behind "Dubmarine" (from the chill-out side of the "Sonorous Susurrus" CD by K.I.A.) is to have what seems to be an ambient instrumental suddenly open up lyrically, with the vocals occuring only in the middle of the song, and then drifting away. The lyrics are these two haikus (that is with a 5/7/5 syllable structure, and a concrete image in the third line that brings together the meaning of the previous two lines), sung by the reggae singer Prince I: carry us alongtake us down till we drown inan ocean of songnothing disturbs usadrift with grace, breathing bassunder dub's surface Why the haiku structure? For one it enforces brevity (it's the antithesis of a blog) and the compression I was talking about... and two, I think it's kinda interesting having a singer from Jamaica performing lyrics written in a traditional Japanese poetry style. Just kinda continuing exploring the Shinjuku Zulu cultural/temporal themes..."Dubmarine at iTunes":http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=30919350&s=143441&i=30919261