Author Archives: Oscar Bermeo

nuyo slam

few months back at cornelia for poetically incorrect, fish and i hear one fo the featured readers, al b back. at first, i was unimpressed. al was spitting rhymes to keep the crowd happy and, to tell the truth, it was working. then he closed his set with a poem addressing his search for knowledge. “you kown,” i mention to fish, “if he keeps with that and stops pandering, he’ll be good.”

which is exactly what i tell him afterwards and invite him down to bar13. since then, al has been a fixture on the scene and continues improving.

all this improvement had led him to win a wednesday open slam at the nuyorican poets cafe and an invite to the friday night slam. back to that ol’ two places at one time problem, michele k has a birthday that night as well and it broke my heart to trun down her birthday invite but al has been such a supporter of 13 & acentos and he has taken all the critique the community has shared with him to heart. i couldn’t miss out on his friday slam.

met up with jayme and found rob neill on the line as well. rob has been slammin since ’96 and it was great hearing stories of old nationals and legends of the green mill in chi-town.

in one of those weird movie twists, scheduled slammer, morris stegosaurus, decides not to slam and rob gets his slot in the slam.

so now, it’s al b, rob neill and harlym125 in the line-up. harlym is this ultra-cool cat that came real close to making the nuyo team last year and i was a bit surprised to see him slamming. i also knew that al had some stiff competition. harlym is a bombastic reade rthat flows the narrative, humor and political very well… meaning he is exactly what the nuyo crowd wants to hear.

one of the things i do at 13 is help pick the slam judges (when i am not competing, of course) i look for a diverse group that seemed to be attentive during the open mic & feature. mix of male & female voices and, of course, with no connection to the slammers. i am not sure if that happened last night, one of the judges was sitting right next to the support crew of one of the night’s slammers– 912 and looked quite chummy. that and then there was the ‘i already made up my mind’ judge that is looking for a specific message and look… scores are determined form how close the slammer can hit those pre-conceptions.

basically, al & rob got screwed. i’m saying that as a slam observer not as a friend. harlym did well, as expected. 912 did well even though his second poem lacked rehearsal, his voice cracked many times, he twitched all over the place and fumbled two lines… i’m not saying/i’m just saying. anacona, a new face, did well in scores and had a good poem that needed a good deal of editing and a stronger thread of political purpose followd up by a 50 second poem with a 30 second intro.. that got almost the same score!

funniest part of the night was harlym second poem and how one of the judges, we’ll call her alicia keys, looked like she was gonna jump him right then and there. i kept pointing it out to jayme and she was laughin up a storm. ms keys was pouting her lips and massaging her breast line for all of harlym’s words. my biggest shock of the night was when alicia only gave him a 9.8 but i guess she was playing hard to get.

by the last round, the crowd was dead and i mean dead. to the point that alicia and the ‘we made up our mind’ judges left. first time i see that at the nuyo. anywho, al does his last round poem and does something i’ve been dying to do at the nuyo:

al: who is opposing the war

nuyo crowd: YEAH! clap YEAH! more clap YEAH! whistle, clap…

al: who wants more education for our kids?

nuyo crowd: YEAH! clap YEAH! more clap YEAH! whistle, clap…

al: yeah, thats easy to get ya to do. now here is something different…

my new hero is al b back. he then dropped a very religous poem and left the stage with a 29.8, thunderous applause and a ton of respect from me. especially since he did bad, score wise, in the second round. i thought he was defeated and instead he was resurgent. it was a joy to see.

rob also came back and killed it. got a 29.9 and as a vet was just doing his thing. showed up to enjoy the night and left a conquering hero.

anacona got the only 30 of the night and we wrapped it up. harlym won which was no big surprise but my man al left strong in his words.

and where i will be in a few hours, cornelia for poetically incorrect. it’s all circles, i tell ya, it’s all circles…

face.off

ok, so now the media is going on this big ‘was that really saddam’ angle. why? seems like it will go along the osama lines in that it will take a long (read: till the next elections are over) time until we find saddam. funny that this fake saddam ended his speech with phrases that are easily identifiable and probably well categorized in west va’s sound labs.

‘but he seem so old..’ well, how the fuck you think you would look knowing that THE major super-power is on yo ass and there aint nothing to do but stand and fight. he sure as hell can’t run. if this doesn’t age a motherfucker 20 years in two months then i don’t know what will.

my big question is not in regard o the fake.saddam, i want to know about dick cheyney.

i have not seen hide nor hair of this man for the last two years. where are they hiding his ass?

will the real dick cheyney please stand up, please stand up.

what’s to come

post 9/11 the bronx was a mini-paradise. streets calm and folks moving along their business. few cop cars and when you did see one racing, you knew it was heading to manhattan. you didn’t really know it but that’s how it felt and it felt good to think, even for a few days, that there was a place that cops wanted to rush to and it wasn’t your neighborhood.

months later, we get the yearly police report and find that gun arrests are up and that homicide is once again a problem. during the guiliani administration crime kept shrinking (at least on paper), so what happened? is bloomberg that bad a mayor that he can’t control crime? no, raymond kelly is the police commisioner and most of the tactics used to lower crime during the guiliani age were his measures. when rudy started claiming ALL the credit was when kelly left. so we have the same cops using the same tactics and crime still goes up (at least on paper) why?

what do you think was happening for those three weeks that every camera, reporter & cop were down at ground zero? nothing? yeah right. sure, reported crime stayed low– uncharacteristically low especially considering that the economy was in recession. you know what i think, i think that the powers that be took advantage of the low police presence and brought in all the guns and drugs they needed to secure their respective territories and by the middle of the year we started reading up on the outcome.

why am i bringing this up? because every camera, reporter & cop are on the look out for a terrorist attack & looking to quell any peace rallies that may break out. so what is happening as the gov’t is busy rounding up any one who looks arab and the state patrols are riding trains and cops are arresting those who dare to criticize the administration and cameras are looking for shots of patriots waving flags and reporters are jumping on the chance to interview city officials that tell us everything is ok? the other powers that be, the kind that runs the drug trades, steals scrap metal from ground zero and try to recruit their own soldiers are going to be very busy at work ‘cuz they know it could end by next week and that’s all the time they need… to turn ny into a battlefield the likes of which this administration doesn’t want to be public. next year– it could be operation urban freedom.

like sands through the hour glass

a mysterious figure from the past has resurfaced and wishes to make contact. you know how it goes– open up some old wounds and absolve themselves so that they can make it into heaven or some shit. i, of course, have no desire to meet them but am still left with the old wounds. the look on my face when i put the two and two together was priceless and makes life seem like a fuckin’ sopa opera.