When non-slammers go wild

This blog will not be original. The issue of Slam in the poetry world has be diagnosed to the depths of Hades well before I even knew what it was. An event occurred last night at a slam here in Columbus in which a respected poet in the community had themselves a Christian Bale type meltdown about how slam was devaluing poetry (right after they pulled themselves out of said slam mind you).

I was not there. I cannot comment to any extent of the person's behavior beyond the blogs, notes and posted items that have appeared since last night, so I won't. But outside of the obvious inclination that you 'just can't do that' and the fact that I've seen this person perform with similar behavior before, I'll say this: Many of us have wanted to do this before.

How many times have you been in a slam, you hear a poem you don't like at all, but then the scores go up and there's high 9s across the board? The first thought that comes to mind is: Fuck, its gonna be like this all night? And some nights it goes that way, so no one is misunderstanding the train of thought that leads to some one exploding at a poetry slam. However, I think the best element of slam is the community aspect of it (hey, didn't Smith create slam to give it back to the people anyway), so if you're up there lambasting peoples work, then you're going against the intent. Also, there's something to be said for seperating a person from their art/talent. You probably think of a ton of poets where you're like, 'great person, ok work' or vice versa. The same way I can say that Ty Cobb and Pete Rose were amazing baseball players, but huge assholes as people. So its cool to think a poem isn't up to snuff, but the second you proclaim to everybody else how bad the poem was, you're dealing with the individual at that point, not the poet.

Ending Black History Month

The Folly in Standing Up

Few things smell like Sunday
Like a boiling pot of red beans in the kitchen
Reginald knows this
The scent pulls his eyes open from his afternoon slumber
He has left the TV on
And it is buzzing like a sunrise
He is not ready to welcome
A high tide of History Channel
Destabilization for a veteran

At 68 years old
Reginald has forgotten about more things
To apologize for
Then times he deserved an apology himself
But the TV is asking 1967 questions
2K Reginald simply doesn’t have answers for
Like why a North Korean sunset tastes metallic
How he could never wash the jungle
From between his toes

The remote control is buried in a tree stump
Three feet away from his rocking chair
But there is a folly in standing up
Like volunteering
Like letting your head be exposed
To the mercy of thick brush
A non-English speaking nightfall
That hates you
Hates you in Lao
Hates you
For fighting for a country that hates you
Traitor
Mutt
That dog don’t hunt
Unless he buried everyone’s shit first
Boy

Reginald can feel the snakes ascending his chair
The venom is mercy
Don’t wanna bleed out in no rice patch
With some Huntsville peckerwood laughing over me
Best bite me now
Lest my squad call you a nigger lover
Keep your head low Re-Re
There’s less armor on the back
Of this helmet
They’ll make your dome blush
Like an ink blot
Tell command that the darkies
Got no sense of direction
Dead negroes can’t pin no tales
On trigger happy donkeys

Keep your head low Re-Re
The ceiling fan ain’t no rescue chopper
Don’t know what’s waiting for me
Back there anyway
Another dead minister
A Doberman extending from the ethos
Of a blue uniform
At least here I got a M16 chance
An AWOL shot at seeing 70
Ain’t you heard the forest fire screams
The scratches the starving natives leave
On my chest trying to eat the ammunition clips
Across my belt
In the land of the Goukes
The porch monkey is king
Keep your rifle dry
And your eyes open when you sleep
Don’t know when one of these good ol boys
Gonna be too high
To tell I ain’t no 14 year old Vietcong
Too ashamed by the time they come down
They gotta hide me
In a murder hole
No thank you
Re-Re don’t do haiku
Too many hung. Casualties. Looks just like Heaven’s. One hand clapping.

The TV is calling its documentary a special
Like there’s anything special about
The smell of charred meat
Where a village used to be
Re-Re wants to stand up
But he can’t
Still trying to roll over
From that pretty girl before the others
Got their turn
Can’t stand up mid stroke
Lest they believe
You’re a faggot over here
Couldn’t understand her
But tears are easy to translate
The numbness of a woman’s befouled body
Only visits you in foxholes
Or letters to home
You sign as Thomas or Jonathan
In case the mail carrier grew up
With Trent Lott
Didn’t have no Casius Clay celebrity
Couldn’t Louisville loudmouth
My way out of coming here

Re-Re counts his days in racial slurs
And epitaphs
Just 284 Nigger watch my back’s
Till he leaves the jungle
Funny how the concrete
Is softer than American irony
How the clouds will always look
Like a napalm sky

Few things smell like Sunday
Like the handle of a semi automatic
Messenger
But Reginald gets it
Gets his rocking chair
Will never be sacred ground
As long as he keeps a memory
Gets that apologies are lost in the winds
Of lands you never plan on returning to
Which is why
He will never ask for the ones
He actually deserves

Forest Fire

If I kissed you
Under this tipsy sky
Could you resurrect me
Before it awakes from its slumber?
Before the clouds get their bearings
And discover my body wrapped in silkweed
With traces of your voice still leaving slight bruises
On my shoulders?
Could you break me
And reshape me as a sun dial
So I am useless
When your light is taken from me
Like the Earth was allergic to my parallel
And refused to let me fall
Like you stored magnets in your cheeks
I could never pull away from your smile
Tell me where the sidewalk ends
Tell me this temple you’ve been building
Has walls made of nothing but the sound of you sleeping
I will rest there like a wounded soldier
With his memory cut out during battle
Sleep under my shield
So I am not devoured by your reflection
I want to draw the ocean
You dream of being rescued from
The scarf you think is much too warm to wear
On most days
And prompts you to expose yourself to the unknown
The wind at your back that reminds you
Nothing can move you
Not a boulder ignorant of gravity
Not a blizzard who only wants to shed himself
Till he is back to the first snowflake he began as

I miss you in a way
A needle misses the inside of forearms
How guitar strings hate to love the notes that leave it
I want to bring a forest fire to your open sky
So you can see
That you are above
Majestic things
Destroying themselves
Shackle your ankles to summits
And watch you move mountains
When you dance
This waltz of volcanoes imploding
Holding in the tears of watching
You paint gods across
The landscape from your footsteps

If I kissed you under this tipsy sky
Would you tell my mourners
I died a hero
That you held me like a noose
When you hung me from your lips
That I refused to step away from your ribcage
When your heart came barreling down the tracks

I want to bleed sand
When you handle hour glasses
My life rests in your hands
When you hold it sideways
And stop time
I can finally rest knowing
I have no more mountains left to climb
No longer falling down the barrel of stop signs
No more words with heartbreak and your name
Left to rhyme

Every night
The sky drinks its own weight in your eyes
And is too drunk by dawn
To fight off the coming day
We are all the numbing the pain
Of losing what we never really deserved to have
Flying kites during thunderstorms
Trying to forget the taste of safety on our tongues

If I kiss you
I want you to carry me home
Though I’m sure
I’ve never been there
Before