What is the Slam? The Slam is a poetry competition that happens every Wednesday night. Poets compete for a small cash prize, a CD or a book, a spot on the Seattle Slam team (which competes nationally!), bragging rights, and or for the sheer energy of it. There are 3 rounds. The top 5 poets make it to round 2, the top 3 make it to final round. Most slams consist of 8 poets, though last night there were 9. Each poet performs an original work, read or from memory. Poems can sample pop culture, but have to be original and under 3minutes long. There is a grace period of 10 seconds. In the audience there are 5 judges, randomly chosen, each unaffiliated with any of the slamming poets. They have score panels (like the Olympics I guess) and they score poems from 1-10, 10 being the best.
The Slam is my new crush. I think about it all the time and it gives me stomach flutters. Sometimes I get embarrassed about it, but mostly I am just smitten and want to spend every week on the mike...which I just don't have the time to do. So why do I do it? My mom asked me that about a month ago. What is the point?
Well, the easy answers are that it motivates me to keep writing, and that it's a fun way to build community with other writers. And this true. But I am also secretly, or not so secretly ruthlessly competitive. I want to win. There is no real explaining this great desire. It's like those crazy people who climb mountains. They just want to get to the top. I have 0 interest in walking up hill or putting my life on the line to climb up a steep icy cliff...I mean I just got a manicure, it's hard enough not to chip my nails doing mundane shit, let alone trying to claw my way up some granite, but I do understand that yearning.
I want to be outstanding. The first time I ever slammed on the first poem I ever slammed, I got really high scores. My hands were shaking and I had totally flubbed a line and skipped 4 lines, but when I looked out into the audience, they were going insane, and when I looked at the scores, someone had given me a 10. I was elated. It was such a rush. I didn't win that night. I didn't even make it into the final round, but it felt like I had. I was so buzzed. I wrote for days after that. I just felt inspired. Writing for me has always been a personal thing. It is so much easier to just write something down and then put it out there, than it is to read your writing to a room full of people who may or may not know what you're going through. You're present for the responses. They make noise. That doesn't happen when you're just writing. What surprises me, is that despite the fact that I am competitive, I don't get pissed when I hear other poets kicking ass...actually I get excited. When I hear amazing poetry it just makes me want to write harder with more precision. But more importantly it is thrilling to feel like you are connecting with an audience. There is a lot of call and response to it.
I love the slam! And I rocked it last night, if I do say so myself. I felt on. I came in on time and didn't stutter, didn't lose my place. I came in .4 points behind the top 3 and didn't make it to the final round, but I did make some inroads with the other poets and that was cool. A lot of people came up to talk to me afterwards, to tell me how much they liked my work. I feel like I am at the beginning of something special. It's an honor to be a part of this community.
What I slammed:
Beauty Burns and Dead Matter (the 2008 revision- originally written in 2006) Score: 25.9
She looked at me
Her brownness mirroring my own
She looked at me as though
I'd cast the first stone.
She looked at me with disbelief
How could I do such a terrible thing?
Turn my back!?
Abandon my beauty!?
Didn't I know that hair is a woman's glory?
She said: "You must be crazy!
Girl, this ain't 1966,
Oh, what are you one those
'Black is Beautiful' feminist chicks?
Oh get a grip,
Just 'cause Jill Scott went there
don't make it hip.
Or are you sick
Poor thing.
Are you recovering from cancer?
'Cause that would explain
why your head is looking
like a natural disaster.
You know, now that it's growing back
you could use a little relaxer."
Um, no Miss.
I don't have cancer
and chemical burns on my scalp
is all I ever got from a relaxer.
It just doesn't seem like an answer,
but rather a misinformed belief
that we must sculpt ourselves
in the mold of someone else's beauty.
But that ain't me...
had to shave my head
to unlock that mystery.
No, never had cancer,
but I did have another kind of disease,
like the throngs of women
always questioning me,
mimicking back those
same throw-back beliefs
that hair, to be good, had to be long and kink free,
because before there was Beyonce,
there was Barbie
UUUUUUUURRRRRGGG
How that little plastic bitch
melted her way into my psyche.
She was my mirror mirror on the wall
She said "Like, you'll never be the fairest of them all."
Something about a genetic downfall,
darker than a paper bag
and hair that's much too tall.
She lied to me everyday
She lied and lied to me in every way
and I believed her!
At least, some part of me,
the black girl that used to be me
always afraid of getting hurt,
afraid to be teased,
'cause sometimes beauty burns,
you don't have to feel the burn to bleed
it's enough to feel the need
to bleach
to perm
to weave
the need to feel alright,
like you're everything
a black woman SHOULD be,
like at a moment's notice,
you could appear on BET.
No, I didn't go bald from chemotherapy,
I just got tired of feeling like phony
and looking like I stole my hair
from My Little Pony.
Happy Hour (slam version-I had to cut a full minute off this poem.) Score: 26.4
Tangeray- Straight up, chilled, no fruit, no vegetables, and no vermouth
in a big glass,
your second.
I pour my own poison.
I drink to you and you to me
and hate it
with the resignation of one more thing
I can’t change,
But in these moments
we are just people,
beautifully flawed
bitter, but laughing
unbound by chronology
uncomplicated by
our history-my entire life
from the dust in your angry eyes
to the day you cut my umbilical cord
and something stronger grew between us
something like iron, or fire,
the holy spirit
something
surpassing understanding
We were both born that morning
me for the first time
and you for the second
twin stars made from the same matter
to spend our lives
forever orbiting one another.
Three drinks into happy hour
and I’m wondering
how long is forever?
Somehow already knowing
that it won’t be enough
the way I counted the days
between spring break to summer,
summer to Christmas and back
holding onto you
through the voice on the phone.
Three drinks into happy hour
and your memories begin
to leak from you
until we’re submerged
in stories of the boy I never knew
who grew up deep south and poor,
mean and crooked and
full of the anger
that poverty breeds
the desperate rage of little black children
taught to be hated and to hate themselves
taught to keep eyes, voices, and dreams
quiet and buried deep
beneath the despair of no choice
In these moments
I know your heart.
I see the seams of the broken fabric
of your disillusion
and know I am the thread
that bound you back together
I was your arrow
and you, the bow, bent to breaking
to aim me higher,
higher and farther than any boundary
that ever contained you,
beyond the limitations of humanity.
Drink four and
you might even sing for me
the lullabies of yester year
the wish list of everything you wanted
for your brown baby
I had the things you never had
I had a father,
I had you
I had a home not in the projects
and books
and safety
I had cold northern winters
and schools full of white children
that stared straight through me
I learned it wasn’t PC to hate me,
But fine to ignore me
to deny me
to objectify me
to consume me
Assume things about me
Tell me who I should be
based on what they’d seen on TV
I learned what we all learn
that the weight of love shooting us up
isn’t always equal to the gravity of oppression
I learned the kryptonite
of depression
Burned with the same steel-taloned rage
snapping out through my eyes
eating me from the inside
I learned to suck it down,
the way you drink yours down
in rivers of chilled gin
drown it out
until only the strongest parts of you
are left to float
in the sea of this melting pot
that only melts our hope
But where is my something to believe in?
I watch you sinking away from me and
I just want a guarantee,
that you’ll be there to get me through this,
but what we have is
happy hour.
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