Oscar Bermeo

the rikers graduationn ceremony was incredible. i reprised my new poem, complete with the references that the line betweeen criminals and everybody else is very blurry, in front of the directors of the freshstart program and the new warden of c76. very tough.

i also know the difference between a poem and a speech cuz the dude that went after me (a communications teacher, no less) gave the most boring speech after me saying the same things i was saying.

seeing the fellas there, reading their poems in front of friends and family was really great. the food after was better! shrimp and chicken with cashew nuts, fresh ceasar salad, chicken cacciatore, grape leaves with snow peas, haricots vert with tomato & dessert– creme brulle with fruit and chocolate gananche with strawberries.

all prepared by the fellas.

i cant wait to do this again next semester

“Back shots proper, the law can’t stop us”

get this call last week from lynne, “can you put a team Acentos together for the bizarro team slam?”

putting the team together was pretty easy since we have some real strong readers on the open mic but my biggest concern was our over proliferation of males so i knew that i wanted jayme (as our most consistent lady) on the squad.

the game plan was pretty simple and i let everybody know the deal… “we are going up against a team that has been rehearsing every week for the last three months and another team of national veterans that dont give a fuck! lets have fun and do our best.”

i needed fish to be first in that his energy is incredible and i wanted something to set the team in a real forward direction. in retrospect, it was a great strategy mobe in that no one else on the urbana squad had the same OOMPH but that was totally coincidental. strategy proved sound as fish scored well with the judges and proved to be the barometer for the rest of the evening with a 27.6, dawn saylor came up next which was an entire 180 and a good strategy but her piece somehow didnt connect with the judges, marty & lynne followed up with a 13 group piece(!) that is real young and will only get better in time for a 27.9

recap– first round and we are still in the mix!

taylor and shappy did another group piece which had shappy talking about ‘de bebies in de billage’ and taylor adding a rib on ed garcia (peligro, peligro) and both taylor and shap ribbin’ marty (look at your hands!!!), rog up next with ‘song for trent lott’ clearly the best i’ve ever seen it done and the crowd exploded (29.4), rich up next with ‘noche buena’ which also tore the roof off. not bad strategizing again as we followed rog’s highly political piece with a more sincere cultural funny poem (again, this is just by chance) rich got a 27.2 and earned much respect from all the poets.

thrid round– rog & lynne do ‘ode to rita marley’ and get some low ass scores. not sure what was going on with the judges. taylor goes with the introspective and drops a poem about his family home and the judges are unfazed hitting him with a 24.0 and here come jayme dropping a fresh brand new poem written just for the night that talks all about my coaxing her to slam (i belive in ya! you are awesome! who will represent the ladues? i need you! you know you want to!) and my guilt trippin’ (if you cant do it i understand -sniffle-sniffle) and the coachin session (excellent! you nailed it perfectly. do the poem just like that and wear a tight shirt… uhmm, ultra feminists can back down, i love jayme to death and have WAY to much respect for her to mean that seriously)

the poem worked perfectly with just enough inside comments to keep it light, enough inclusive to keep it real and a wonderful personal revelation to keep it personal… an amazing poem that let jayme win the whole round with a 27.6 beating out the heavyweights.

and here i come… with my surprise… a fresh, brand new poem dedicated to the graduating class of the riker’s island freshstart program. the poem hit the emotional high note i wanted it to and the judges were kind with a 27.6. more than that though, i felt i had to give back to my team who went out there way to re-do their pieces, take critique and write fresh material. its a lot to do a poem three-four times and stop, restart, adjust, restart and their coach was going to do his old tried and true? hell no!

i had to take a big a chance as they were in order to consider the night a success.

the restis a blur with RAC rippin it and getting an awesome score and then t’ai bringin the ‘bionic ebonics’ and having the whole room freak out to, i believe a 29.8 or somethin ridiculous like that.

slam over, all teams to the stage, and in thrid place– should.a.been.urabana and in second place ACENTOS! and the winners team nyc|union sqaure

man, i cant describe how great it was to share the stage with all those heavyweights and know that i took my team of newbies and represented to the fullest. won a round and kept the level of poetry at a high level with diverse performance and unique perspectives. i am sure that any one would be happy to have a team acentos in their next group slam and that’s all i really wanted.

cue the sportscenter music

Friday Five

1. Do you remember your first best friend? Who was it?

marcos martinez. we met in first or second grade and he lived only three blocks away. his dad was a super which meant marcos lived in the basement and at the age of six that shit is hella.cool… playing tag, handball and wrestling right outside the doorway.

2. Are you still in touch with this person?

nah, marcos moved to florida around the same time i moved to the projects and hit a new school.

3. Do you have a current close friend?

eric is my best friend in the whole world. we met in the fifth grade and somehow clicked. i say somehow since i was a real brat at that age. in seventh grade, eric was the kid i went to talk to when my mom died. we kinda parted in high school but hooked back up when we went to the same college. the rest, for those that know, is history.

nice to say that i have other close firends in fish, the collins brothers, jose. angel and ray.

4. How did you become friends with this person?

see above story

5. Is there a friend from your past that you wish you were still in contact with? Why?

yeah, i really wish i still stayed friends with john p. we were hanging MAD tight for almost a year and then a girl came in my life and i pulled a houdini. the girl turned out to be smoke.and.mirrors.dressed.up.real.fine while john found true love. he married her, bacame a stepfather to her lil girl and they have another boy and girl now.

we tried to keep in touch for a lil bit after but it just never clicked right again and it was all m’fault. on a brighter note, ‘mercy on the battlefield’ is all about him so every time i do it i always think about him.

“What do you see when you turn out the light”

a few changes on the links to yo left.

first and foremost, please go read rich villar’s blog… not because he says many nice things about me (although that is a VERY good reason) but rather because rich has a great head on his shoulders, keen insight and is just starting to get his feet wet with all the madness and love that is nyc poetry. rich is also part of tonight’s team acentos (add myself, fish & jayme to that mix) that will take on team nyc|union square and team (should have been) urbana (taylor, dawn, RAC & shappy). the team had a coaching session yesterday at GK’s that went pretty damn well… of course, i was using all the techniques i was able to pick up from rog when he coached me for the semi-finals this year and i was able to translate that input directly to our team which will have, at the very least, four different personalities displaying four uniquye perspectives on their indivdual cultures, backgrounds and daily trepidations.

fish took the coaching like a pro and in just thirty minutes was able to add some nice nuances to his “headlines” poem by just pointing out the small things in the poem and his delivery that will translate into big bucks on his performance. we were able to get his voice to come “one octave below yelling” for some nice moments in the piece and i hope he enjoys the feedback from the crowd and runs with his new found range in voice.

jayme has a KICK-ASS poem that just needs jayme to be… jayme. she doesnt need to be particia smith or brenda moozey or lisa king or srah jones to make this piece come alive, she just has to be herself which shows how really strong the poem is. we were also able to get her to be “one octave CLOSER to yelling” by having her practice from another room which required her to break out of her whisper shell and attack the mic more.

and rich was just fantastic. his poem is SO good and just the tiniest edits for time purposes was all it took. slam means that all ears are on you and rich will definitely have some heads turning tonight.

as for me, i’ve got a lil surprise i’m working on…

also added to the links:

go to maya’s site and check out a rising star while she still has time in her schedule for nyc cuz this girl will be blowing up. maya, along with christian and ivan, kicked it hard at the rikers showcase last friday and gave all the fellas of the freshstart program the same warmth. intensity and soul she has given at 13, westside rhyme, her birthday jam; meaning, this girl only knows one way to perform and that recipe is going to take her mad places but she also hasnt forgotten where she comes from and that is beautiful.

tony brown has a live journal up. i’m eagerly awaiting his thoughts on his home grown reading series and hope that his thoughts will help me cement some of my ideas for acentos.

emanuel xavier also gave 100% at the rikers showcase but has been a great friend and warm soul ever since i met him at the cd recording for 5past13. his feature at the blue ox is still a high point, performance wise for us.

i have never actually met krystal ashe but i am feeling her gully.ness and no nonsense approach to curating so i’m also hoping her blogging will aid in keeping poetry going strong in the south bronx.

“by the power of greyskull!”

“And even if my house falls down”

so maybe this is the one.. the [cue booming tony brown voice]bad Acentos show [thank you, tony]

contrary to popular myth, the very FIRST open mic i attended was at cafe largo and the very FIRST person i ever heard do a spoken word piece was mariposa… of course, largo was WAY too loud and i barely heard a word and i had an emergency of sorts that required me leaving right after, but thats a story for another day….

thus, i was quite pleased to be able to feature mariposa at acentos and here a whole set from her especially when you consider she is all boogie down and as latina as sofrito con recao. one small problem, she was coming in from chicago and by bus no less, or as guy called it “african american airlines” and what is supposed to be a 13 hour trip turned into 30 hours. i still had hope she would make it and continued the show as if she would. then our break came and she was no where near the bX… is it time to panic yet?

hell no! not when i still have guy and fish in the house add fred feliciano and edward garcia plus myself. the second half came out pretty fine with all of us keeping the flow going and just making fun of the fact that we had no feature. even better was that the house didn’t turn on us and that they all like coming to the blue ox for us and the poetry as opposed to having us live and die on the feature. plus, [make like the guy in “the mummy” and pull out every religous medallion you have and go for it] the blue ox is now fully 100% air conditioned! i cant even imagine what would have happened to my temperamaent without the bliss of freon.

mariposa did eventually make it to the south bronx, but a good 45 minutes after we were done. sometimes it sucks having a venue that actually ends their show on time.

she will be coming back to us in the near future and that should be a real fun show.

and i guess that this is NOT the bad show as it proved that we can survive an emergency and still have a ton of fun. next acentos is cheryl boyce-taylor, the best hug in all of poetry, and one of the most amazingly talented and giving writers i have come across in my travels… so you best be there and learn something.