The Gettysburg Address

Who thinks the language of texting is hard to understand? Oh, yeah? Try this version of the Gettysburg Address written in the vernacular of the sixties known as "Beat". You can thank Lord Richard Buckley, an American stage performer and hip poet who died in 1960.

Now there's different kind of cats, you see. Now, like this here cat sittin' over there, he probably a George Washington cat, you see. He dig George making it across the stream with the ice and stompin' soldiers and all that. And that cat over there he probably a Benny Franklin cat, he probably - he's with Benny Franklin.

But myself, I'm a Lincoln cat. That's me. I dug sweet old swingin', non-stop, heavy-headed sweet Abe. Used to call him Lanky Linc. That's what they called the cat back in them days, is Lanky Linc.

Four big hits and seven licks ago, before our daddies swung forth upon this sweet groovy land a swingin', stompin,' jumpin', blowin', wailin' new nation. Hip to the cool groove of liberty and solid sent with the ace lick that all the studs, chicks, cats and kitties, red, white or blue is created level in front. In straight talk, the same, dig what I mean?

Now we are hung with a king-sized main day civil drag soundin' of whether this nation or any up-there nation, dig, so hip and so solid sent can stay with it all the way.

We's here to dig this chop-beating session on the site of the worst jazz blown in the entire issue: Gettys-motha-burg! We stomped out here to turn on a small soil stash of the before mentioned hassle site as a final, sweet sod pad for those who laid it down and left it there so this jumpin' happy beat might blow forever more. And we all dig that this is the straightest lick era.

But digging it harder from afar we cannot take no wailin' bows, we cannot mellow, we can not put down the stamp of the Nazz on this sweet sod 'cause the strong non-stop studs both diggin' it and dug under it who hassled here have mellowed with such a wild, mad beat that we can hear it but we can't touch it.

Now the world cats will short dig, you hear what I say -- short dig nor long stash in their wigs what we's beatin' our chops around here. But it can never successfully shade what they vanced here. It is for us, the swingin', to pick up the dues of these fine studs who cut out here and fly it through to Endsville.

It is hipper for us to be signifying to the glorious gig that we can't miss with all these bulgin' eyes. That from all these ace-stamped studs we double our love kick to that righteous ride for which these cats hard-sounded the last 'nth bong of the bell of their bell -- that we here want it struck up straight, for all to dig that these departed studs shall not have split in vain. That this nation, under the great swingin' Nazz, shall ring up a whopper of endless Mardi Gras and that the Big Law, of you straights, by you studs and for your kitties, shall not be scratched from the big race.

And that's why I'm a Lincoln cat.

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Dani Greer is founding member of the Blood-Red Pencil, as well as an editor, writer, artist, and teacher.  She frequently exhibits a slightly warped sense of humor and a fondness for language, past, present, and future.