Rustbelt '10 Wrap-Up

A lot can happen in a years time.

I had 3 goals in mind for our Rustbelt Team this year:
1)Our Team make Finals
2) Barbara Fant make Indy Finals
3) Kim Brazwell make Indy Finals. We finished 1 for 3, but in retrospect weren't far away from accomplishing all 3.

As for our team, we all expected to do better. We suffered a pretty steep penalty on the first day and never truly recovered from it. I will say, we performed very well all weekend. I definitely feel like we left a huge impression on the rest of the tournament.

Even though I didn't experience the same competitive success this year that I did the year previous, I did have the same amount of fun. Being on a team with Barbara and the Brazwell's is a dream scenario and I would gladly duplicate it, no matter the situation. And for the record, Jason and I sitting next to each other at a slam is a bad idea for EVERYBODY involved. Just straight ignorance

My highlights and otherwise:

*I've gushed about Barb for a few years now, so I won't waste anybody's time repeating what I've been saying for eons. Just that she made me extremely proud this weekend (she finished 3rd overall at Rustbelt) and I'm happy that more people are getting to see what I've been talking about for so long
*T Miller was the single most impressive poet to me all weekend. She performed off her ass every round. Natasha has always been good, but now? Her combination of honesty, hard work and compassion make her something to behold on stages these days.
*Detroit's team OWNED Rustbelt from start to finish. No question. One of the few solaces I can take for my team competitively is that we gave them their closest bout all weekend (.8 differential), but that's about as close as anyone got). Much in the way St. Paul pretty much trampled everybody in West Palm Beach last year. This is poetry slam of course, so it wasn't without a little controversy in the Finals, but we'll get to that in a minute
*Cleveland and Minneapolis are the two teams I had the most fun watching. Tom Noy with his new and young crop of gunners and Wonder Dave imprinting his style and confidence all over his squad too.
*LOGIC did a damn good job. I know he feels like 'his' Rustbelt has some warts on it, but I thought it was pretty good overall. He also accomplished what I felt was a first since I started competing in Rustbelt ('06) in that he provided a very substantial crowd for the Saturday afternoon bouts, which I know is hard as all hell to make happen. There were some delays for bouts, but nothing unreasonable or typical for poetry shows regardless if they were big slams or not (well worth it to get the audiences that we did). Hey, no bouts were ever suspended midway thru and moved to another floor or to another day, so it was all good in my book. Doesn't mean it ran perfect, but he should be pretty proud of product he put on. Especially considering it was pretty just him and Monica putting it together.
**Bouts were ridiculously high scoring. I know, there's only so much you can do. Sometimes it takes ludicrous amount of prep work on a emcee's part to guard against a 30-fest (and even then the returns can be minimal), so I don't blame them. But when the lowest score in a bout is a 27.5 (and 90% of the scores are 28.2 and up), it really does take away from the jubilation of a poet completely destroying their poem when everyone is scoring high. For some perspective, Writing Wrongs got a 29.0, a 30, a 29.8 and another 30 in the second bout and we STILL finished 2nd. By almost a full point. Just one of those things we're kind of helpless to in slam I suppose. But I'm not a fan of 30-fest in the least bit. On Day 1, Barb had the only 30 (minus Jamaal who had a 30, but incurred a time penalty) for both bouts. On Day 2, there were four 30s. In the first bout alone (two of them perfect 50s). So everything seemed a little inflated.
**A little sloppier than I would've liked from the poets perspective. Time penalties EVERYWHERE. Again, Day 1 one was bad, Day 2 was much worst. If you subtract Kalamazoo (who didn't care on the second day and was trying to incur time penalties or rather did the poems they wanted to regardless of time), it seemed like a time penalty was happening every 3 or 4 poets. In Bout 2 of Day 2, I want to say 4 of the first 7 poets that hit the mic got a time penalty. I don't want to harp like TPs are the end of humanity and obviously an individual getting a time penalty isn't responsible for the other 12, but it felt a bit sloppy, like we weren't putting out the best quality product at times. I dunno, my two cents.

So, about that Finals and Detroit thing. I'll just say, first off, Attila the Hun wasn't going to stop Detroit from winning. Whether you call it fate or whatever, they were just steamrolling teams, period. With that being said, there was some chatter raised about a poem performed during Finals. Phenom (Miles) has a poem in which he reads off paper while the poem itself is about reading off paper. Well, he references the paper, several times throughout the poem. As I understand the rules, that's a prop. Again, I said as I understand them, which could be incorrect. El Presidente Woods is much better equipped to answer that as the Prez and a venerable page poet. But I'm pretty sure the combination of those actions make it a prop...by PSI standard. I guess, this is where things get tricky. Rustbelt always operates as a non PSI event obviously, but by 'typical PSI rules.' I have no idea where those technicalities should start and stop. All I know is, if someone actually were to protest, I would've have sided with the protester. But I'm glad no one did. And no was going to, but I guess I'm stating this for those that caught hell (like they were a sore loser or some shit) for pointing out that if protested, it would in deed have qualified as a prop, I think.

Overall, a very good time hanging with very good people and I'm proud of LOGIC for giving us another good reason to all hang with each other. Which makes it a hard act to follow when Rustbelt makes its way back to Columbus in 2011. Jhyea!

6/30 (My first Pantoum, what say sumptin!)

Poseiden

When the thunder claps in her chest
She will not break from the sky
Your voice is not cobweb enough to bind her ankles
Her arms squeezing freedom like a limp balloon

She will not break from the sky
The clouds are a mural of men she never needed
Her arms squeezing freedom like a limp balloon
The sound of chains groaning under her heavy

The clouds are a mural of men she never needed
Painted with a handgun, they were always hungry
The sound of chains groaning under her heavy
They break so easily, as if they were made of thawing lakes

Painted with a handgun, they were always hungry
Their stomachs lust for her obedience
They break so easily, as if they were made of thawing lakes
Drowning in her hair, a comb of collapsed lungs

Their stomachs lust for her obedience
Grown fat on submission and scissor fearing tongues
Drowning in her hair, a comb of collapsed lungs
Each plastic arm, flailing away in the monsoon of her scalp

Grown fat on submission and scissor fearing tongues
Her mouth is an ocean learning the rhythm of intrusion
Each plastic arm, flailing away in the monsoon of her scalp
Tell them, they were not made to swallow her depths

Her mouth is an ocean learning the rhythm of intrusion
The trespassers washing up on the embryonic shore of her palms
Tell them, they were not made to swallow her depths
Lungs collapsed under their hero complexes

Even of eight legs and venom, there is little solace in your volume
Your voice not cobweb enough to bind her ankles
You will pray a weaker lightning has struck you previous
When the thunder claps in her chest

5/30

The Unfortunate Gangbang of Deidra Thomas (or Shawnee State University circa 1997)

When I arrived on campus, my back heavy with short term survival
I made a list of don’ts the length of my hair
before the scissors
Don’t forget to call mother
Don’t engage in anything until the last book
is closed
Don’t bleed at the first cut
at least not when men are watching

Walter, however, is razor blade cute
he makes this girl forget she is legally beautiful on some days
and I wish his smile was more trash pickup
than Phoenix sunrise for my sake
But I smile
I just smile when he passes thru the gym
his roommates flanking him like wings on a fighter jet
Maybe more leg and less yellow dress
I wonder how many women math majors he knows
if he’s ever had a tutor worth staring at

I know, I don’t want my strapless heels to exceed
my gaze. I have a pocket watch in my stomach
the knobs have been fondled by many
but Walter seems like he could wind my insides with his eyes alone
we finally talked last night on the steps of the athlete house
if he owns a sickle, his words would sever all my inhibitions
but he took nothing
just the reluctant post it with my cell number on it
I thought it premature to preselect a ring tone
especially since he hasn’t called
I wonder what offended him more
that the small, two stop light town of Waverly, OH
could produce 16 men that I’ve slept with
or that none of them were black like us
I wonder
if he really cares about such things

There is a party at his house tonight
maybe a size up on the earrings
a size down on the blouse would be appropriate. I’ll have company
at least for the first couple of hours. Walter
is a gentlemen, I feel really good about this

The wicked hour has approached and Walter has not shown
the DJ has wrapped my hips in silk tonight
and this 4th drink is blowing bubbles under my skirt
the dance floor is a beehive and I am the linoleum’s queen
hands and fingers and breath are worker bees falling under my spell
by the time I see the bottom of my 6th bottle
I am a broken heel and a blouse that no longer buttons. I imagine this
to be Walter’s room, the walls covered in men graffiti and light
hoping he is among the collage
then rethinking it. I imagine Walter has seen me prettier than this
when the first one makes himself at home
I stop feeling sexy
I feel illegal, a violation against my own skin. There are centipedes
the size of tigers crawling my neck
I think
I said no
to somebody

I awake to a rough toweling from my roommate. There are bruises, fluid that doesn’t
belong to me. Thread the length of regret spills from my skirt. I wish that were the only drip
we scurry away from ground zero, the owner a mystery to me. Definitely not Walter
definitely not my intention to look like
a car accident when I spent two hours in the bathroom

I haven’t called my mother in 3 weeks. There is the fear that either my brother
or father will answer
and I will freeze like a Polaroid
I scarcely remember their faces, my brother’s Easter suit, my father’s funeral uniform
during his mother’s passing
its how I remember the men during my wake
a plaid shirt
the navy pullover
a yellow polo pulled up to the chest

Walter is a brown sweater when I run into him
he apologizes for being an athlete, a man, for not showing up the night I was buried
he tells me he no longer lives there, that he hopes he can transfer his credits
and not his memories for next quarter
I say nothing
to myself, I compliment his sweater

4/30

Killer

You are not often at peace when you birth a killer
The hands have drawn themselves into

Geisha fans, spread wide like surgery
You can see the life story in the wound

The breeze is not so much a comfort as a reminder
Of what gets toppled in the wind

You would invite the sky to cry moonshine
In the hours when he curses you thru a locked door

You may reserve prayer for the camera crews
The tire marks made in your driveway from the news van

You no longer have a favorite channel
The woman across your screen

Has tears you don’t want to believe in
She will blame the Playstation

She will blame the school and Michael Bay
She will blame the mother for not caring

You swallow the cactus in your throat
It does not go down without scarring

When you stare at his room
The silence and the bolt lock between you

You tidal wave back to the screen
And utter the words, “How dare you?”

3/30

Lies

The first time I lied to a woman was unintentional
my mother’s face a sunset over a dying playground

she found me pitiful, palms and knees searching streetlights
and arcade alibis at one in the morning

the second time was a rehearsed crossbow thru a young girls throat
my hands an earthquake inside her jeans preceded by exaggerated experience

lie seven wrapped its way around my freshman teacher’s neck
my writing assignment, still caught in the jaws of my father’s threats

before such threats had materialized, my happy home a detail
that never made it into my teacher’s view of my floundering work ethic

the seventh time was easy, as second nature as blood
my home has become an attack survived heart with a collapsed stint

there is blood on my collar, my Nike Airs, the book bag I stole
off a kid that used it to sell acid in the school parking lot

yet, I tell my guidance counselor, we are healthy pride in my home
lions that will never develop the taste for each other

number twelve cried for Noah, a flood of my adlib
could not wash away the scent of her classmate

the twentieth lie broke thru my teeth, its razors dripping down my lips
like rain water off an aging roof. Love is at its most vulgar when said in obligation

the truth bounced around her dorm room like an atom
never landing on anything she could hold in her weather torn palms

after succumbing to the weight of her eyes, I confessed to her stomach
her hands clasped behind my neck, a mercy breath away from smothering me against her

she told me to stop counting, the pressure of record keeping my imperfections
would ripen me to a practice I wouldn’t easily let go of

2/30 - From an old prompt, but a new poem

Execute. Command.

During the bloody sunset, my still-born twin told me I come from a sickle blade of executioners. Our hands, large and terminal. Two sets, one visible except to victims. We live in torsos, the hollowed out spines of men born of gallows and mischief. In the throats of liars, the railroad track wrists of thieves, their fingers sprawl out like fleshy firecrackers when bone is kissed by cleaver. The light we see in strangulation cannot be simulated, the growth of a knotted rope from the back of a husband slayer’s neck is a progress few can speak. My heart is a hornets’ nest of moans. A wild dog with a filthy coat, that has learned to forgo the carrot for the swing of the stick. When I speak, you can hear the scythe scraping the back of my teeth, the hardened glaciers in my gums, pinning spirits back onto my tongue. My apologies are always post-mortem, falling upon the ears of those that no longer need them.

NaPoWriMo Challenge 1/30

Cannon

The first time a man is shot out of a cannon, he will not remember the heat
the searing of his elbows against iron walls
He won’t recall the flash of daylight sprinting to his origin
He may not even remember the low end conversation
Of the bang itself. What will stay with him
Is the silence
The absence of anything before his explosion
The way the white sucked at his skin
Like his 9 year old forearms by the vacuum attachment

I never took you for cannon
your mouth a flash of opportunity and reconstruction. I pray the monuments of lesser
are never flattered by your explanations. At your best you are collapsed towers
and brick dust. A concert of open fire hydrants responding to your outburst
I hope to be the white between your words. My name an explosion when it leaves
your iron clad lips. Sing. Please sing me. I have never been chord or wrecking ball