Slammin' Poetry

Have you ever been to a poetry slam? It's not for the faint of heart. Enlightening at times, overkill at times. It's basically a meeting of minds and hearts at some little-known tucked away locale where aspiring poets compete with their stanzas for the title of the night - usually a whopping $15 prize. But hey, it's purely for honor and glory - what artist gives a hoot about his winnings?

So creative juices flowing and like-minded prose running for 3 consecutive rounds. And the winner? A guy named "Survivor" who rhymes about his woeful tale of a half-brother (the product of a rape) that shot up all the time until he got AIDS and froze to death on the streets of Jersey in the dead of winter, turned away by his family...including the regretful Survivor. Of lighter fare was a guy that tried to rap like Will Smith in the early 90s about the "greatest day in his life" when every little thing worked in his favor (e.g., his ex-wife got remarried - no alimony; his friend brought over Chinese food and beer; etc.) Cute. But of course, this being NYC, we had many a discourse on being black and growing up in the projects sans a male father figure, living through baby mamma drama, and now respectfully living every day as if it were the last...working hard for your daughter. After the 5th poem in this category, I was ready to jump out a window. Can we get an Asian chick in here talking about studying or SOMETHING else??? Ok, so kudos to Margaret Cho, frankly there ain't no Asian representation anywhere in the arts - comedy or otherwise. Hey, Chinese folk have had plenty of plight, we just have a higher threshold for bigotry and are too seemingly forgiving to express ourselves. Too bad, because the audience at this poetry slam was very diverse. I applaud that. Unfortunately, the performers weren't. But that's cool; maybe in another 100 years we might produce one poetry slammer. I'd be happy with that. =) (Get to it Lynn! ;))