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slam this! indeed

last slam of the season. the bottom half of the standings are real tight so and everybody signing up tonight has already slammed this season. that means anybody that does well tonight can make semi-finals. impressive line-up: seve, omar, ed garcia, ray & dianne roy. all have third round experience and none, except omar, have made the nationals team. add rob neill (who has nationals experience and would love to rep for nyc), al b back (the young upstart is always a threat) and me.

the open mic was fun & tight with new & old voices doing their thing in the style that makes me love coming early to 13.

eric guerrieri rocked as a feature. displaying old work, new pieces, an impromptu group piece with guy, marty, roger & lynne, he got gully when a cell phone rang out (ah, the host in him lives) and ended it in one of the coolest ways ever… “thanks for listening” you know, poetry is sometimes all about simplicity and you can rack your brain for hours coming up with cool catch phrases and over.stylized.word.play when it can all be said just that cool.

so now… the slam. first off, when we did the intricate drawing system to determine the order of the slam– picking up folded pieces of papers with numbers on them. i was really calm and grabbed the paper that fell closest to me and drew 6 out of the field of 8. i think that may be the highest i’ve ever drawn at 13. slammers 1 through 5 went up and the scoring was tight throughout. by drawing sixth, i knew what scores i had to beat to get to the second round.

guy calls my name, i go up and hit the ‘ceviche’ poem. not my finest performance of it, my nervous energy led me to rushing through the piece and i flubbed two points in the poem but i was able to recover nicely. on the plus side, i felt very expressive and thought that my face was also telling the story my voice was generating. came off stage and the scores were good enough to land me into the second round. roger, who was score/time-keeping offered a few comments on the poem but i was lost in my own thoughts and was already going over my second round poem in my head.

round one saw al b (time penalties and first draw), seve (who had mic problems) and rob (also time penalties) not make the cut. in the second round i went with ‘mercy on the battlefield’ and also delivered a sub-par performance. for some reason, i kept having the clock in my head. there was some voice saying “you’re going to do well and lose on time penalties.” this led to another rushed delivery and i also didn’t move as well i usually do when i rock that poem. the judges felt different and awarded me a real good score that almost guaranteed me into the third round. almost. so i had to sit for a second and wait to see what developed.

third round baby! i finally made it and in the #1 slot no less. so now, thoughts of winning this whole thing became very clear. ed and omar also made the third round which insured their inclusion into semi-finals. they both busted their pieces and then i went up with ‘el ultimo canto’ which while going over the piece in my mind came through full circle. this poem is the last song of lavoe, the last song of all those motherfuckers who came through gave their all on stage and lost something big along the way. this poem is a warning and i had the ending that finally expressed that.

i was real calm doing this piece and only flubbed twice but the poem has a mellow tempo to it that allows for me to pause really hard and not make it TOO noticeable. no, i messed up one line entirely but was able to recover very well (big performance tip! unless you tell them by saying ‘i forgot this part’ or do the scrunch face and stop completely… no one will know that you fucked up. NO ONE! so just go through your piece at your pace and feel free to improvise your way through the error and you’ll be aight. trust me, i know)

the final, improvised stanza came through well and was able to let me leave the stage confident and proud.

the scores got tallied and when it was all said and done i lost to ed by a (cue james earl jones voice) tenth of a point (end james earl jones voice) but it was all good. i made the third round of a ‘lil bit louder’ slam, earned two points in the rankings, shared the final round with ed & omar (which gives me unofficial ‘filatino’ status) and i made the god-damn muthafuckin’ semi-finals! normally, i am cool and calm. win some, lose some. and i spent the whole slam trying to be in that calm mode. no matter what was happening inside, i was presenting the same exterior to the crowd. that shit went out the window when guy announced me as a semi-finalist and i was all smiles, hugs and dance right afterwards.

all in all, i am really happy with coming in second. my main goal was to make semis and the second place finish accomplished that. losing to ed is no major crime and it was only by a (insert michael buffer voice) tenth of a point (delete michael buffer voice) so i know i can step it up that half notch to get the full win. especially when i saw ed get handed the ‘book’ (when you win a 13 slam you get a book and $13 bucks, what you thought you get? a def jam contract?), an anthology of mexican poetry. that image is going to stay with me next season when i will be looking for blood onstage and going for full out wins but for now i am very happy with my second place finish and, of course, my chance to show my stuff at semi-finals.

habits

rehearsing for the slam at ray’s house. interesting epiphany: ray performs his poetry as if he was on stage doing music. we are going over his pieces and i keep saying the same things to him. “you’re shoulders are too narrow.”/”you keep holding your hands rigid”/”you keep looking at the ground.”

only after i saw him packing his instruments did it hit me, he looks like hes holding a guitar or playing the keyboards or looking at musical notes. addressing the root of his performance it became pretty easy to give him a tip or two as to how to change it.

me, my big problem is that i hear too much slam poetry. man, i can tell when the three.minute.mark hits. good thing is that it seems to be my natural writing style but i am not interested in having a natural writing style. have to read more shorter work, started with some margaret atwood and will be absorbing some sharon olds as well.

poetically incorrect (btw, the worst name possible for a poetry series) was cool. crowd started thin and packed in later. i did the ‘ceviche’ piece. i could have busted out a political piece(!) i did during my workshop but i don’t know. political pieces at poetry reading is all about preaching to the choir. i did al b’s “who’s against the war?” trick and also threw in my “if you’re a poet, who do you read?” schtick. the crowd ate it up and i was just curious as to who did NOT like that question.

tonight is the slam and i have a strategy worked out and, of course, i have to be ready that the whole sucka could blow up in my face. just have to remember to leave it all on stage and accept the outcome.

also, strikeforce morturi is one of the greatest comic book stories ever done.

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.