"How to Write a Political Poem" by Taylor Mali

You can bet money you're going to hear a political poem when a white poet starts singing "Amazing Grace," or a black poet begins with a Negro Spiritual tune; they won't finish the song, because, "Stop in the middle of a song that everyone knows and loves / This will give your poem a sense of urgency."

The best tip for anyone who wants to write a political poem is to read and listen to Taylor Mali's "How to Write a Political Poem" ... then not write that way.

A little satire is good for the soul. It makes us better writers.

How to Write a Political Poem
By Taylor Mali

However it begins, it's gotta be loud
and then it's gotta get a little bit louder.
Because this is how you write a political poem
and how you deliver it with power.

Mix current events with platitudes of empowerment.
Wrap up in rhyme or rhyme it up in rap until it sounds true.

Glare until it sinks in.

Because somewhere in Florida, votes are still being counted.
I said somewhere in Florida, votes are still being counted!

See, that's the Hook, and you gotta' have a Hook.
More than the look, it's the hook that is the most important part.
The hook has to hit and the hook's gotta fit.
Hook's gotta hit hard in the heart.

Because somewhere in Florida, votes are still being counted.

And Dick Cheney is peeing all over himself in spasmodic delight.
Make fun of politicians, it's easy, especially with Republicans
like Rudy Giuliani, Colin Powell, and . . . Al Gore.
Create fatuous juxtapositions of personalities and political philosophies
as if communism were the opposite of democracy,
as if we needed Darth Vader, not Ralph Nader.

Peep this: When I say "Call,"
you all say, "Response."

Call! Response! Call! Response! Call!

Amazing Grace, how sweet the—

Stop in the middle of a song that everyone knows and loves.
This will give your poem a sense of urgency.
Because there is always a sense of urgency in a political poem.
There is no time to waste!
Corruption doesn't have a curfew,
greed doesn't care what color you are
and the New York City Police Department
is filled with people who wear guns on their hips
and carry metal badges pinned over their hearts.
Injustice isn't injustice it's just in us as we are just in ice.
That's the only alienation of this alien nation
in which you either fight for freedom
or else you are free and dumb!

And even as I say this somewhere in Florida, votes are still being counted.

And it makes me wanna beat box!

Because I have seen the disintegration of gentrification
and can speak with great articulation
about cosmic constellations, and atomic radiation.
I've seen D. W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation
but preferred 101 Dalmations.
Like a cross examination, I will give you the explanation
of why SlamNation is the ultimate manifestation
of poetic masturbation and egotistical ejaculation.

And maybe they are still counting votes somewhere in Florida,
but by the time you get to the end of the poem it won't matter anymore.

Because all you have to do is close your eyes,
lower your voice, and end by saying:

the same line three times,
the same line three times,
the same line three times.

© Taylor Mali

Taylor Mali is one of the most well-known poets to have emerged from the poetry slam movement and one of the few people in the world to have no job other than that of poet. Eloquent, accessible, passionate, and often downright hilarious, Mali studied drama in Oxford with members of The Royal Shakespeare Company and puts those skills of presentation to work in all his performances. He was one of the original poets to appear on the HBO series Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry and was the "Armani-clad villain" of Paul Devlin's 1997 documentary film SlamNation.

Born in New York City into a family some of whose members have lived there since the early 1600s, Taylor Mali is an unapologetic WASP, making him a rare entity in spoken word, which is often considered to be an art form influenced by the inner city and dominated either by poets of color or those otherwise imbued with the spirit of hip-hop.

Mali is a vocal advocate of teachers and the nobility of teaching, having himself spent nine years in the classroom teaching everything from English and history to math and S.A.T. test preparation. He has performed and lectured for teachers all over the world, and his New Teacher Project has a goal of creating 1,000 new teachers through "poetry, persuasion, and perseverance."

He is the author of two books of poetry, The Last Time As We Are (Write Bloody Books 2009) and What Learning Leaves (Hanover 2002), and four CDs of spoken word. He received a New York Foundation for the Arts Grant in 2001 to develop Teacher! Teacher! a one-man show about poetry, teaching, and math which won the jury prize for best solo performance at the 2001 Comedy Arts Festival.

Formerly president of Poetry Slam, Inc., the non-profit organization that oversees all poetry slams in North America, Taylor Mali makes his living entirely as a spoken-word and voiceover artist these days, traveling around the country performing and teaching workshops as well as doing occasional commercial voiceover work. He has narrated several books on tape, including The Great Fire (for which he won the Golden Earphones Award for children's narration).

What is rhetoric? How to use rhetoric in poetry

Define poetry:
We speak life in the colloquial tongue.
We think life to ourselves in prose.
We feel life in poetry.
Poetry is the captured sincerity of a moment.

We experience all of life's moments in poems. Because they come to us without words, we can experience them in their purity with an unlimited vocabulary.

For instance, there is no word in English or any other human language for the experience of looking through a window into the dawn sky in autumn just after waking on your day off and hoping for whole day of light drizzle because it brings back memories of rainy days during childhood. But we can feel it, envision the image, the feeling of cool air and slight moisture in the air ... but we can put ourselves there.

In poetry, we can pen the lines to reimagine that moment and the feeling of being there.
The poet's wordless feeling --> translated into a poem --> re-imagined by the reader into the wordless feeling

In prose, we can remove the magic a bit, but add the details of specificity. The beauty of the moment is replaced with accuracy. We take the prose into our understanding of language and recreate the image in our skull, effectively:
The author's wordless feeling --> summed up into a collection of poetic images --> translated into prose --> interpreted into imaging the author's specific moment --> re-imagined by the reader into the wordless feeling

In the colloquial, we do the same thing as prose, but with only our limited 1,000 word everyday vocabulary:
The speaker's wordless feeling --> summed up into a collection of poetic images --> conveyed through simple words --> interpreted by the listener --> re-imagined by the listener into the wordless feeling

Poetry is as near as we can come through language to sharing feelings short of telepathy. Poetry is the core of language that prose and everyday language clutter up for the sake of filling space and sound. In short, poetry is the Cliff's Notes of language.

Thus, understanding rhetoric, the study of how to use language most effectively, is paramount to being a good poet and a good slam poet as well.

That being said, I plan on exploring how to use rhetorical strategies in poetry over the next few weeks.

Rhetoric looms! Fear not! It is our ally, our tool, our weapon!
Most people hear "rhetoric" and cringe. That's because "empty rhetoric" has come to stand in for "'real' rhetoric."

However, once you understand the tenets of good rhetoric, you begin to understand that it's effective because it's so rational. Rhetoric is not complicated or bombastic or difficult to incorporate. It is actually quite simple, terse, and honestly beautiful.

Take a line from a film or a historical quote that you find particularly moving due just to the language and it likely incorporates a rhetorical strategy whether conscious or not.

"We shall go on to the end,
we shall fight in France,
we shall fight on the seas and oceans,
we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air,
we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be,
we shall fight on the beaches,
we shall fight on the landing grounds,
we shall fight in the fields and in the streets,
we shall fight in the hills;
we shall never surrender"

-Sir Winston Churchill's
"We shall fight on the beaches" speech from 4 June 1940 employing the rhetorical strategy of "anaphora" or repetition of the same word or group of words at the beginning of successive clauses, sentences, or lines.

We remember certain film quotes, political states, corporate slogans, mnemonic devices, headlines, and romantic phrases because they naturally fit the rules of rhetoric. I started writing poetry at 18 just before college. After I became an English major and began studying rhetoric, I realized that a lot of what sounded "good" in my poetry and the poetry that moved me fit rhetorical patterns whether the poet knew it or not. Rhetoric is naturally pleasing to the ear.

In a previous blog, I analyzed Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address in the context of a poem. It is a beautiful expression of rhetoric in one of its highest form. One of the most obvious lines: "... We can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow ..." Just 12 words, but it uses a plethora of rhetorical strategies. It does not seem artificial in the least, but beautifully poetic. Ta-da! That's the beauty of rhetoric.

Language is essentially a complex mathematical problem. We're trying to express an idea by using a series of words like numbers and grammar like operations to most closely equal it. We use collections of the these sentence equations to add, subtract, multiply and divide from each other to move our audience through a mathematical proof from theory to solution.

The thing is that we often know that certain strategies work in a poem or story but not often why. Rhetoric is the why.

So what is rhetoric?

Plato: Rhetoric is “the art of winning the soul by discourse.”

Aristotle: Rhetoric is “the faculty of discovering in any particular case all of the available means of persuasion.”

Cicero: “Rhetoric is one great art comprised of five lesser arts: inventio, dispositio, elocutio, memoria, and pronunciatio.” Rhetoric is “speech designed to persuade.”

Quintillian: “Rhetoric is the art of speaking well.”

Francis Bacon: "Rhetoric is the application of reason to imagination “for the better moving of the will.”

George Campbell: “[Rhetoric] is that art or talent by which discourse is adapted to its end. The four ends of discourse are to enlighten the understanding, please the imagination, move the passion, and influence the will.”

A. Richards: “Rhetoric is the study of misunderstandings and their remedies.”

Kenneth Burke: “Rhetoric is rooted in an essential function of language itself, a function that is wholly realistic and continually born anew: the use of language as a symbolic means of inducing cooperation in beings that by nature respond to symbols.” “Wherever there is persuasion, there is rhetoric, and wherever there is rhetoric, there is meaning.”

Richard Weaver: "Rhetoric is that “which creates an informed appetite for the good.”

Erika Lindemann: “Rhetoric is a form of reasoning about probabilities, based on Assumptions people share as members of a community.”

Andrea Lunsford: “Rhetoric is the art, practice, and study of human communication.”

Francis Christensen: “Grammar maps out the possible; rhetoric narrows the possible down to the desirable or effective.”
“The key question for rhetoric is how to know what is desirable.”

Sonja and Karen Foss: “Rhetoric is an action human beings perform when they use symbols for the purpose of communicating with one another . . , [and it] is a perspective humans take that involves focusing on symbolic processes.”

Slam Tutorial: Rely on Your Grandma

"Grandma's Got it Going On (Rise and Shine)"
By Shane Koyczan


Every day, Grandma would come into my room and I would hear her say-
Rise and shine, the world has a whole 'nother design, there’s
someone
out there
some where
young man.

So I rose and I shone put on my shoes and I was gone.

See, Grandma bought me my first phone, she said Don't bother calling the people who care, call the people who don’t.

Don't bother calling the people who have taken up the fight, call people who won’t.

And I learned at a very young age where my grandma’s rage came from: The entire congregation of God. Never ask grandma about God.

I'd argue with her everyday and all she'd say was, Go down to the store, buy some light bulbs. And when you run out, buy some more.

Because the light at the end of your tunnel needs to be maintained.

You can't let it be stained by "their beliefs are better than your beliefs" and you can't agree to disagree because they're fucking wrong!

It's not the strong who have gotten lazy, its just your vision is a little hazy- you're not sure what it is you want but what you've got is all you need.

It falls to greed.

For every hypocritical church-goer who won’t walk past beggars because they can't spare a dime, Grandma says fuck them.

I don't speak to God because I think God's a tyrant.

And yeah, it struck me as strange every time I walk past a brother that stops to ask me "Hey, can you spare some change?" because yes I can. You see, I don't carry change around in my back pocket; I don’t wear it around my neck on a chain in some locket.

I keep change on the tip of my tongue so I can climb the rungs of a ladder to a better place; I forgot about saving face, Grandma told me save your grace.

I keep change in the tip of my pen and it seeps out every now and then as bursts of anger that make me think, maybe the writing on the wall could use a little revision.

Grandma told me stop trying to calculate the difference between people, people don't need division. Gotta stick together, gotta love each other, father brother sister mother uncles sons and aunts, forget about the chants the cheers the jokes the tears after two thousand years you'd think we'd know by now!

Grandma said We will only find equality in our number of tears.

And she was right because I don’t know what injustices you've suffered based on size sex race religion or the political pigeon shitting on the shoulders of us versus them like in Bethlehem when a man said Hey, I could be wrong, but why can't we all just get along?

No.

So we nailed him to a tree. See?

Justice isn’t just isn't, it just is.

And I can't change it, you can’t change it, so we just gotta try to rearrange it and if at all this miracle got the chance to work would I see people the way they see me?

Because seeing is believing and if you see what I see you wouldn't want to see anymore. But I’ve got a little surprise in store.

For every man who looks upon me with judgement in his eyes, there’s a woman looks upon me with wetness in her thighs.

I'm the world’s greatest overweight lover.

And you might just laugh and you might just gulp but my bones are big for sticks and stones and names just piss me off and Grandma told me, Young man you cant be concerned with whatever it is that they've got the only reason they think they're beautiful is the same reason they think you're not. And Young man, you have beauty beyond measure you are a treasure entrenched in this earth, you can’t let strangers determine your worth, Rise and shine.

So I rose and I shone, I put on my shoes and I was gone.

See, Grandma bought me my first phone, she said, Young man from time to time I too need to smile, would you do me a favour and keep me on speed dial.

Yes grandma,

I will.

And still to this day I can call her up and can hear her say It’s a game, you play, you win, you play, you lose, you play.

Rise and shine the world has another whole design, there’s someone out there somewhere but young man if you are playing to win the first thing you have to do is apply within.

Slam Tutorial: Confront Your Own Cultural Heritage, Part 2

It's not easy confronting one's history, especially if it has a dark history, like Southern Whites confronting racism.

Greg Nix, my former roommate is proud to be a Georgian (though he was technically born in Albuquerque) and proud of the Southern flag, but he was taught to see it as a political symbol of State's Rights and independence, not racism. Also coming from the "Southern redneck" tradition of Jason Carney, Nix's poem is more a commentary on the non-Southern racist view of the Southern non-racist heritage. It addresses the non-Southerner view of Southern whites as split into two factions: the "enlightened egalitarian" white person - the common stereotype that we non-Southerners attribute to more-or-less racial equality in the South - and the "ignorant redneck" who seemingly hates gays, minorities, always votes Republican and would rather return to Jim Crow segregation if not outright slavery.

Of course, growing up in the 1980s, I will always equate the Confederate flag with "The Dukes of Hazzard" (let's ignore that abortion of a remake in 2005.) I had several toy General Lee cars as a child.

The unnamed roommate (not me, by the way) in Nix's poem misunderstands the political implications of the Confederate flag perhaps out of racism or simply thinking the flag is cool or rebellious.

Most of the (invariably white) people I've met who display the Confederate flag on their vehicle display the flag for provincialism not out of ideology:

like the Texans' Lone Star

or the Arizonans' sunburst and copper star.

I don't know Delawareans who do the same, for obvious reasons.

Both non-Southern and Southern blacks might have different interpretations of the Confederate flag, but as Nix points out, these are not due to the political use of the flag during and after the Civil War but due to the cultural and racial use of it. If the Texas flag had been used instead or another symbol had been used, we might have a far different feeling on the banner.

"Southern Angst"
By Greg Nix

he hung the flag in our stairwell
because, "its cool - you're a Southerner"
I'd heard that line from him so many times
just wanting to plant into his soul
what that means to me
memories of school days when us Boy Scouts would
salute the flag and pledge allegiance to Georgia
studying our state history
lost in marvelment at the sacrifices our Forefathers made in
"The War"

weekends spent at Stone Mountain recalling with pride
Stonewall Jackson, General E. Lee, Nathan Bradford and our esteemable
President Jeff Davis

looking back with wonder at the way our great great granddaddys
went off and fought for us, on behalf of us
in defense of home and hearth because
rich noble men floated in the air such words as
State's Rights. Self-Determination. Freedom.
but it all changed following Defeat and Occupation

a band of disgruntled officers mounted up beneath
the battle colors
rode off to begin our glorious history
whites hats, nooses, crosses burning in the night
the flag my forefathers fought under
fighting for no other reason then why young men always fight
pride.

i was raised to honor that flag in memory of
others who died not for slavery
but in defense of their homes
my ancestor's homes
the homes where my great great great grandmama's
passed forth the next generation in morning cries and tears.
until one day my father explained it better to me
clearing away the cobwebs of yesterday's glorious triumphs

"we never had the battle colors on the state flag
when i was growing up, son,
they put it there when Brown beat the Board of Ed
it was a reminder to 'them.'"

them.
them.
always us 'n' them.
still to this day

my father taught me that being
Southern
means to honor your parents,
love God in devotion
always bear yourself with respect.

i wasn't raised to hate
and yet, being a Southerner i must inherently be
racist, homophobic, and misogynist

this is the expectation

why don't i just go ahead and pop another Pabst
blast the Skynyrd a lil' louder?
fry me up some chicken and
let's go burn us a cross!
praise jay'sus too!

and here that poor damn fool goes hangin' that flag in my home
nevermind that i once believed it stood for something noble
stood as symbol for ideals or homes or in honor of my ancestors
nevermind that that flag stood as stone edifice to the
members of my state
hung and torched, mobbed for being a different color
killed because some asshole officers couldn't take defeat
couldn't accept that their way of life
was changed
because sometimes it must just be easier to hate
than to learn to love

i told my roommate
"lets put it out front!
wave it proud for all the neighbors to see!

we'll stand together and say, 'its
History, not Hate.' its
'Rebellion against Unlawful Authority.' 'its
about Freedom.'"

he never saluted that flag
unknowing what it really meant
how deeply it cut across the grain
my father impressed upon me
or how sick and tired i am of
attempting to explain to others
what mixed feelings i have toward
the Confederate Flag
realizing how others judge me by the
blood soaked into that fabric
turning it from a sentiment once noble
into a symbol of all that
ain't
Southern

and that flag doesn't stand for me
doesn't answer a single question anymore
i won't stand to have it in my presence
won't stand to see the battered and tarnished image
it has become
at the hands of assholes like my old roommate

who think hate is funny
call it hysterical and wonder why i grind my teeth
uncaring of what lies beneath the colors

but i do

i'm Southern
i took it down
i threw it out
he didn't understand.

Slam Tutorial: Confront Your Own Cultural Heritage, Part 1

It's not easy confronting one's history, especially if it has a dark history, like Southern Whites confronting racism.

Jason Carney, who I first met on when I was on tour in Dallas in 2002, has a poem that carries particular resonance for me. In "Southern Heritage," Carney addresses racism from the perspective a white Southerner. As a non-Southerner I was guilty along with many others of splitting white Southerners into two factions: the "enlightened egalitarian" white person - the common stereotype that we non-Southerners attribute to more-or-less racial equality in the South - and the "ignorant redneck" who seemingly hates gays, minorities, always votes Republican and would rather return to Jim Crow segregation if not outright slavery.

Of course, I learned in my later teens that racial issues in the South were far more gray.

This knowledge, however, did not alleviate my own fear of my family's potential history: my grandmother and mother are both from Atlanta, thus, my young mind used to theorize, they must be racist, thus, am I?

I wanted to ignore this "unfortunate" aspect of my history growing up lest I begin to think of myself as someone from a racist bloodline, based perhaps incorrectly on my grandfather's word choices, which I now attribute more to cultural and generational nuances than racist attitudes (in my early 20s I came to the realization that my grandfather's attraction to beautiful women 40 to 50 years younger than him was 100% colorblind, which put me at ease with him in the years before his death).

However, in September 2008, I asked my grandmother about her feelings and history following a speech I wrote for a seminar analyzing Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address as a poem. At the time, it wasn't a question of race but rather politics I was asking for. I learned that my great-grandfather was something of a civil rights leader in his own way, though he probably wouldn't have thought so. Aside from chastising people who used racial epithets in his home, he helped black plumbers get their plumbing licenses, which I found rather cool at the time. I would assume that his choice wasn't one necessarily of self-righteous social equality but more of simple efficient rationality that seems to be the hallmark of my Redfield bloodline: "These guys can do the work, but they can't get licenses because of how they look? That's just stupid. I will help them."

My friend Lee Sullivan told me recently that that was an even more important step toward social equality that I had first suspected.

In the end, I think this sort of Redfield rational thought rather than overt idealism is what helped bring down Jim Crow and end other social inequalities: "This is how it is? This is inefficient and does not get work accomplished. It must change. If no one else does it, I will."

There's a poem in all this, but I haven't found the angle as yet.

"Southern Heritage"
By Jason Carney
Knowledge cures ignorance; if you're in the know, be fucking contagious.
This is for my Mamaw and my daughter, Olivia, the beginning and end of who I am.

My southern heritage lies in the smell of June.
It was my Mamaw.
She was half Choctaw, half snuff, half crazed by the spirit of the wind given her accent.

She called it "a touch" . . . she could . . . see things.

She'd catch a firefly with her tongue.

Rub the swollen fluorescence of their bellies to my forehead, a good vision on my birthday.

And she always told me I would grow to be a man who would always know life by the way it felt.

Alone I walked in the wandering reflection of dreams.
I should stand strong and tall as Papaw cause he was a man who knew life by the way it felt.

And his heart was in my eyes, his soul was in my breath.

My southern heritage lies in their simplicity; poverty and faith, baseball games on an old AM radio and the closeness of my family sharing a Sunday supper.

My southern heritage was Sundays.

Baptist Revivals . . . deacons passing the altar plates, deep voices from the choir urging me to go tell it on the mountain because Jesus Christ is Lord.

And I do love that old hymn . . . but I cant think about those fond memories of childhood anymore without seeing them through the pessimism of these eyes which are of a man, and I have to ask myself what kind of truth those old white baptists found on them mountain tops.

Why couldn't they hear the voices dangling from the branches of the elms when death could have been peeled away into the forgotten generation after generation woven into our skin, into our bones?
All because they were silent.
Practiced at turning their heads.

Their heritage lies in the shades of my skin, it's twisted and scarred, worn by their words "colored", "negro" . . . and "nigger."

So why don't we go find the truth on the mountain that says my southern heritage came clothed in white sheets and allows a rebel flag to hang this very day over the capitol of Mississippi?

My southern heritage spent centuries of time where people are silent . . . and practiced at turning their heads.

So we're the threads of rope that pulled James Byrd to his death along the back roads of Jasper, Texas.
Less than two hundred miles from where I live, ignorance reigns.

My southern heritage spans centuries of time, where people are silent and practiced at turning their heads.

It boils under my skin when my eyes don't have heart, when my soul is not in my breath, see . . . if I'm gonna grow to be that man who knows life by how it feels then these lessons gotta be mine to see the truth of and find the responsibility to teach my little girl.

Cause I don't want her southern heritage to lie in the shades of the skin. She's half Thai . . . half Irish, Choctaw, and snuff.

And I'm gonna catch fireflies with my tongue, rub the swollen fluorescence of their bellies to her forehead, a good vision on her birthday, where she will travel amongst the dead, and learn the lessons of their lives, spill the dust of stars and planets, exist in the deepest reaches of the mind.
She will tell the truth on that mountaintop, she will not succumb to the wounds of her bones.
She will not be silent.
And she will not ever be practiced at turning her head.

Jason Carney is a former skinhead who now uses poetry to continue to reform himself and heal others.

As a young man, Carney was sent to a juvenile detention center after several violent incidents involving gay bashing and racial intolerance. While in the detention center, Carney was roomed with a young gay male who was HIV-positive. A friendship formed from what could have been a volatile situation. The experience changed the way Carney saw people that were different from him. After Carney was released, he tried to look up his new friend only to find that he had lost his battle with the disease.

Carney has made it his life work to heal and help eliminate intolerance.

Slam Tutorial: A Stereotype Hijack

One of the 12 Olympians of Slam, Beau Sia is known for identity poems. He has said that moving to New York at 19 made him conscious of his identity as an Asian-American (he is of Chinese Filipino descent), something that he denied often in his childhood home of Oklahoma City.


A stereotype hijack poem is a subgenre of identity poems, but takes the opposite tack. While many identity poems aim to confront and reverse stereotypes (all of "us" aren't really like what you think of "us"), hijacking a stereotype gives the poet a certain freedom to make light of sillier or absurd aspects while still pointing out that malicious stereotyping destructive. The poet can poke fun at stereotypes that members outside the group can't do in public or mixed company and do so with more weight, yet the poet can still act as an advocate for the identity.

Despite the assumption that this style can only work for ethnic, cultural, religious or sexual minorities if the poet is instead in the majority group but performing for a minority audience (a white poet before a mostly black audience, a straight poet before a mostly gay audience, etc.), the poet can use this poetic style to their advantage with the caveat that they don't make light of the majority's dominance, subjugation or oppression of the minority in question.

Whether the identity in question is an ethnicity, religion, subculture or clique, the stereotype hijack is ripe for a humorous poem because it can take the more outrageous aspects of a stereotype and push them beyond ridiculous.

"Give Me A Chance"
By Beau Sia
www.beausia.com

if there is anyone
in the audience
in the entertainment industry
watching me perform,
I want you to keep in mind
that if you are casting any films
and need a Korean grocery store owner,
a computer expert or the random thug
of a yakuza gang,
i’m your man.
if you’re making Jackie Chan
knock-off films
and need a stunt double,
that stunt double is me.
if you need a Chinese jay-z,
a Japanese eminem,
or a Vietnamese backstreet boy,
please consider me,
because I am all those things and more.
i come from the house that
step n’ fetchit built
and i will broken English my way
to sidekick status
if that’s what’s expected of me
make an Asian different strokes.
i’ll walk around on my knees yelling,
ahso, what you talk about wirris?!
because it’s been 23 months and 14 days
since my art has done anything for me,
and i would be noble and toil on,
i swear i would.
live for the art and the art alone,
and all that crapass.
but college loans are monthly up my ass,
my salmon teriyaki habit is getting way out of control,
and i want some
motherfucking cable!
so you can understand where i’m coming from.
when tight verse
exhibiting dynamics
within the text
falls by the wayside
rejoice in its
pretty, packaged, boygroup,
talentless twats
sent from florida
to make me puke
but i'm not preaching. none siree, boss.
i cannot stress how ready i am
to sell out,
wear jiggy clothes,
and yell from the top of my lungs
any hook i am told to sing.
if you want the caricature
of a caricature,
then i am that caricature.
if you want an exotic dragon lady
like lucy liu,
who fucks like a kama sutra
come to life,
just tell my ass where ya want it,
and i will bend over.
if you need a voice-over artist,
just tell me
where you want the,
hi-ya's! to go
and i will be there,
because i am all that more,
i am a pop culture whore,
i an a co-sponsored world tour,
an i am
an appropriated culture at my core.
i've been noticed, acclaimed, and funny
and now all i want
is a beach front house to paint in
and a range rover
to listen to my music in,
cuz struggling fucking sucks hard
after the ninth package of ramen noodle soup.
i'm beau sia.
give me a chance,
and i'll
change the world.

Beau Sia began performing at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, eventually earning himself a place on the 1996 Nuyorican National Poetry Slam team. That same year, he would be filmed for the documentary SlamNation. The film followed Sia and his Nuyorican teammates (Saul Williams, Jessica Care Moore and Mums da Schemer) as they competed at the 1996 National Poetry Slam. The team would go on to place third in the nation, and have a lasting impact on how people would view slam poetry.
Sia earned two National Poetry Slam Championships in 1997 and 2000 while competing on the NYC-Urbana national poetry slam team. He would also reach second place in the Individual Poetry Slam competition in 2001.
He wrote a parody of Jewel's work, A Night Without Armor, within four hours and published it as A Night Without Armor II: the Revenge in 1998. He wrote different poems with Jewel's original titles, lampooning her earnest lines. It is painfully detailed in its satire, changing the delicate paintings printed in Jewel's book to rough, humorous pencil drawings by Sia. The front and back cover were also painstakingly mirrored.

Slam Tutorial: Favorite Vices: Drinking, Smoking, & Screwing

William “Billy” Collins (born 22 March 1941) is an American poet. He served two terms as the Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003. In his home state, Collins has been recognized as a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library (1992) and selected as the New York State Poet for 2004. He was recently appointed Claire Berman Artist in Residence at The Roxbury Latin School, in West Roxbury, MA. He is a distinguished professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York.

Human beings are nothing if not lead by their vices. The world would be a much better place, more efficient, more productive if were weren't constantly pursuing our favorite vices, such as : drinking, smoking, & screwing.

However, life would be way too dull to even imagine.

And how productive would it really be in the long run? Half the reason we do anything is to afford the time and means to indulge in our habits in the first place, the other half reason is to assuage the guilt for having done them. Remove them both as we'd wind up dying in weeks, like kicked-over houseplants.

Asceticism has its place in the world, but the reason monks, nuns, hermits and priests can afford the time to renounce the world is because those who didn't built the monasteries, nunneries , temples and cloisters while the wealthy and worldly give the food and financial donations to keep them operational.

The anthology "Drinking, Smoking & Screwing: Great Writers on Good Times," assembles excepts by authors including Dorothy Parker, Erica Jong, Mary McCarthy, Vladimir Nabokov, J.P. Donleavy and Henry Miller on our most cherished triumvirate sins.

If you plan to write about your vices keep in mind that the audience can identifying with it. Illicit drug use, binge drinking, chain smoking and attempts to screw anything on two legs (male, female, straight, bi or gay, we all have sex drives) have always had their place in poetry. I guarantee the first poem ever written was by Og writing to Gort about trying to screw Thag after he looked really hot at the mammoth roast.

The Best Cigarette
By Billy Collins

There are many that I miss
having sent my last one out a car window
sparking along the road one night, years ago.

The heralded one, of course:
after sex, the two glowing tips
now the lights of a single ship;
at the end of a long dinner
with more wine to come
and a smoke ring coasting into the chandelier;
or on a white beach,
holding one with fingers still wet from a swim.

How bittersweet these punctuations
of flame and gesture;
but the best were on those mornings
when I would have a little something going
in the typewriter,
the sun bright in the windows,
maybe some Berlioz on in the background.
I would go into the kitchen for coffee
and on the way back to the page,
curled in its roller,
I would light one up and feel
its dry rush mix with the dark taste of coffee.

Then I would be my own locomotive,
trailing behind me as I returned to work
little puffs of smoke,
indicators of progress,
signs of industry and thought,
the signal that told the nineteenth century
it was moving forward.
That was the best cigarette,
when I would steam into the study
full of vaporous hope
and stand there,
the big headlamp of my face
pointed down at all the words in parallel lines.

Slam Tutorial: Using Sign Language

I saw Rives perform this at the 2004 National Poetry Slam in St. Louis.

Poems specifically about body language or sign language offer the poet another tongue with which to speak. I've been told that my use of my arms greatly enhances my performances. Rives uses sign language overtly in this poem to convey his poem.

The play on words between "deaf poetry" "Def Poetry" (a la Russell Simmons, Mos Def and HBO) is also super-nifty.

Sign Language
By Rives

I work sometimes at a high school for deaf kids.
We put on poetry readings and poetry slams.
We call 'em
deaf poetry jams.

One poets poem goes ...

The night we met,
so many moons, were shining down on us so brightly
I thought
"Hey, maybe those moons have mistaken us for their Gods."

Another poet's poem goes ...

I, I, I, me, me, me, my, my, my
Doesn't anybody tell a story anymore?

And another poet's poem goes ...

Last night I dreamt I was little again.
And i could hear back then,
but the silence in my house
was deafening.

See some of the kids only write about being deaf.
Others make a joke.
Some make a mention.
Some ignore the topic altogether.

Not too different from the choices poets make anywhere else
with gender of skin color.
So you get goofy haiku like:

Homework is bullshit.
And inspires out of me
nothing but vomit.

And poems like

I saw on T.V.
that scientists have taught
a gorilla to speak sign language.
Outstanding!
Why don't they
teach the gorilla
how to wipe
it's ass, assholes?

And the words, the signs themselves
are as wonderful for me to watch
as if they were hummingbirds or butterflies.
Words like goosebumps.
Daydream. Giraffe. Sticky-icky-icky.

These are high school students
who never pass notes in class.
They just sign their shit
behind your back.

And they greet each other
in the hallways lately, going ...

Can you hear me now?
No, well I guess-- that's good! That's all.

And they pester me for the
lyrics to hip-hop songs
which they prefer
because they can
feel the music
throbbing through
the speakers we use for speech therapy
And I tell them
Well, that says
"Everybody put your hands in the air."
And they do
Every month, at our little poetry slams,
where the audience never spreads out,
it spreads back so that everyone can
hear those hands.

And it's damn near silent,
and there's never a microphone.

But sometimes the poets do rock their poems,
and when a deaf poet rocks a poem,
it echoes off the walls for these ears alone, like

i was born as deaf and as quiet as a starfish.
But if I had been born a man,
I would pray to the lord above every night
at the top of my fucking lungs,
just to thank him
for giving me
voice.

My memory my be fuzzy, but remember another ending with a bit more theatrics as right after his last line, Rives actually tipped the mic over.

i was born as deaf and as quiet as a starfish.
But if I had been born a man,
I would pray to the lord above every night
at the top of my fucking lungs,
just to thank him
for giving me
voice.

And when deaf poets don't just rock the mic
they knock it the fuck over

Slam Tutorial: Who's Your Hero?

Poets idolize other artists, be it Ludwig von Beethoven, Frida Kahlo, Jimmy Hendrix, Jackson Pollock or Stephen King. A hero poem is a rather simple construction: tell us who your hero is and why. The art is in the telling.

Beethoven
By Shane Koyczan

Listen
his father made a habit out of hitting him
see
some men drink
some men yell
some men hit their children
this man did it all
because I guess all men
want their boys
to be geniuses
Beethoven
little boy
living in a house
where a name meant nothing
living in a house
where mercy had to be earned
through each perfect note
tumbling up through the roof
to tickle the toes of angels
whose harps
couldn’t hold half the passion
that was held in the hands
of a young boy
who was hard of hearing
Beethoven
who heard
his father’s anthem
every time he put finger to ivory
it was not good enough
so he played slowly
not good enough
so he played softly
not good enough
so he played strongly
not good enough
and when he could play no more
when his fingers cramped up
into the gnarled roots of tree trunks
it was
not good enough
Beethoven
a musician
without his most precious tool
his eardrums
could no longer pound out rhythms
for the symphonies playing in his mind
he couldn’t hear the audiences clapping
couldn’t hear the people loving him
couldn’t hear the women in the front row whispering
"Beethoven"
as they let the music
invade their nervous system
like an armada marching through
firing cannonballs
detonating every molecule in their bodies
into explosions of heavenly sensation
each note
leaving track marks
over every inch of their bodies
making them ache
for one more hit
he was an addiction
and kings, queens
it didn’t matter
the man got down on his knees
for no one
but amputated the legs of his piano
so he could feel the vibrations
through the floor
the man got down on his knees
... for music
and when the orchestra played his symphonies
it was the echoes of his father’s anthem
repeating itself
like a brok-broken recor-brok-broken record
it was
not good enough
so they played slowly
not good enough
so they played softly
not good enough
so they played strongly
not good enough
so they tried to mock the man
make fun of the madness
by mimicking the movements
holding their bows
a quarter of an inch above the strings
not making a sound
it was
perfect
see
the deaf have an intimacy with silence
it’s there in their dreams
and the musicians turned to one another
not knowing what to make of the man
trying to calculate
the distance between madness and genius
realizing that Beethoven’s musical measurements
could take you to distances
reaching past the towers of Babylon
turning solar systems into symbols
that crashed together
causing comets to collide
creating crescendos that were so loud
they shook the constellations
until the stars began to fall from the sky
and it looked like the entire universe
had begun to cry
distance must be an illusion
the man must be
a genius
Beethoven
his thoughts moving at the speed of sound
transforming emotion into music

.......

and for a moment
it was like joy
was a tangible thing
like you could touch it
like for the first time
we could watch love and hate dance together
in a waltz of such precision and beauty
that we finally understood
the history wasn’t important
to know the man
all we ever had to do was
listen

Slam Tutorial: The List Poem

The list poem is one of the simplest poetic forms. Essentially, the poet takes a simple theme and pens a list of extended metaphors, similes, narratives, punchlines, twists on cliches and turns of phrase. The art form is not simply listing things, but leading to audience to assume what's coming next, then flipping the expectation on its head.

Shihan's "This Type Love" is a prime example of a list poem. It runs with a number of stereotypical young love themes, but done with colloquial understanding of human nuance:
"I wanted to see how far I could get without calling you, / and I barely made it out of my garage"
"I want to celebrate one of those month anniversaries even though they ain't really anniversaries, but doin' it just cause it makes her happy"

Yet still incorporates a degree of somewhat rational self-interest:
"I want a love that makes me want to cut off all my hair / Well, maybe not all of the hair / maybe just cut the split ends and trim my mustache"

If you choose to incorporate this style of poem into your repertoire, the art is in doing the unexpected, playing with the audience's intentions and expectations, and writing outside the box.

This Type Love
By Shihan

I want a love like me
thinking of you
thinking of me
thinking of you type love,
or me telling my friends more than I've ever admitted to myself about how I feel about you type love,
or hating how jealous you are, but loving how much you want me all to your self type love,
or seeing how your first name just sounds so good next to my last name,
and shit, I wanted to see how far I could get without calling you,
and I barely made it out of my garage.

See, I want a love that makes me wait until she falls asleep then wonder if she dreaming about us being in love type love,
or who loves the other more,
or what she's doing at this exact moment,
or slow dancing in the middle of our apartment to the music of our hearts, closing my eyes and imagining how a love so good could just hurt so much when she not there.
Shit, I love not knowing where this love is headed type love.

And check this, I want to place those little post-it notes all around the house so she never forgets how much I love her type love then not have enough ink in my pen to write all there is to love about her type love.
Hope that I make her feel as good as she makes me feel,
and I want to deal with my friends making fun of me the way I made fun of them when they went through the same kind of love type love.

Only difference is this is one of those real love type loves.
and just like in high school, I want to spend hours on the phone with her not saying shit,
and then fall asleep and then wake up with HER right next to me,
and smell her all up in my covers type love

I want to try to counting the ways I love her, and then lose count in the middle just so that I have to start all over again.
I want to celebrate one of those month anniversaries even though they ain't really anniversaries, but doin' it just cause it makes her happy type love.

And check this, I want fall in love with the melody the phone plays when her number is dialed in to her type loves and then talk to you til I lose my breathe, she leaves me breathless, so with the expanding of my lungs I inhale all of her back into me

I want a love that makes me need to change my cell phone calling plan to something that allows me to talk to her longer because, in all honesty, I want to avoid one of them high cell phone bill type loves.

I want a love that makes me regret how small my hands are I mean the lines on my palms don't give me enough time to love as long as I'd like to type loves,
and I want a love that makes me st-st-st-st-stutter just thinking about how strong this love is type love.

I want a love that makes me want to cut off all my hair ...
Well, maybe not all of the hair
maybe just cut the split ends and trim my mustache, but it will still be a symbol of how strong my love is for her.

And check this, I kinda feel comfortable now, so I can tell y'all this:

I even be fantasizing about walking out on a green light just dying to get hit by a car just so I could lose my memory get transported to some third world country

just to get treated

then somehow meet up again with you so that I could fall in love with you in a different language just to see if it still feels the same type love.

I want a love that's as unexplainable as she is, but I'm married, so she is going to be the one that I share this love with.

Don't forget Billy Collins

William “Billy” Collins (born 22 March 1941) is an American poet. He served two terms as the Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003. In his home state, Collins has been recognized as a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library (1992) and selected as the New York State Poet for 2004. He was recently appointed Claire Berman Artist in Residence at The Roxbury Latin School, in West Roxbury, MA. He is a distinguished professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York.

One of my favorite poets is former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins. He is not a slam poet, just one of the most brilliant writers I've come across. He pisses me off in that he could write a poem about dog's toes or knackwurst and it would be more brilliant than half the poems out there. To me, he sounds like Kevin Spacey. I own a great recording of "Billy Collins Live: A Performance at the Peter Norton Symphony Space April 20, 2005" where he is introduced by actor Bill Murray.
If you enjoy reading really great poetry that doesn't take a lifetime to decipher but still knocks you on your ass with its brilliance, pick up one of his poetry books. I own copies of the highlighted titles and often pull a poem or two out of them when I'm hosting the Sedona Poetry Open Mic.
* Pokerface (1977)
* Video Poems (1980)
* The Apple That Astonished Paris (1988)
* Questions About Angels (1991)
* The Art of Drowning (1995)
* Picnic, Lightning (1998)
* Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems (2001)
* Nine Horses (2002)
* The Trouble with Poetry (2005)
* She Was Just Seventeen (2006)
* Ballistics (2008)

Forgetfulness
Billy Collins

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

Slam Tutorial: Stand-up Comic Poetry

Nothing says poetry needs to be rhymed meter and perfect symmetry. Some great slam poetry is essentially a scripted stand-up comedy routine with great punchlines, poetic turns of phrase, and a standard narrative structure. If you think you can't write poetry, try writing down a story that teaches a lesson, entertains, or concludes with a great punchline. Embellish the language with metaphors, rhetorical devices, turns of phrase, and
Most poems of this narrative style are essentially 5 to 10 second hooks, meaning each line or two has a natural rise, climax and fall involving a metaphoric image, a turn, a dash of humor, self-reflection, social commentary, etc., that all culminate in a grand finale by the time the poet reaches the end of the poem. For instance:
The rest of the class is made up of
seventh-grade celebrity impersonators.
Perfect examples to the power of product placement.
Decked out in rhinestone jeans and velour sweat suits
that cost more then I'm paid to teach their poetry workshop.
Jason is easily the most interesting one out 40
and if I could,
I would kick the rest of them out to watch "Elimidate" in the library.


"Ode To My Bathroom"
By Geoff Trenchard

Jason is white sneakers and black socks pulled up to his knees.
Jean shorts and a Hawaiian shirt
he can't for the life of him buttoned straight.
He is multiple decks of "Magic the Gathering" collectible playing cards
and a hair-to-gel ratio still in its experimental phase.

The rest of the class is made up of
seventh-grade celebrity impersonators.
Perfect examples to the power of product placement.
Decked out in rhinestone jeans and velour sweat suits
that cost more then I'm paid to teach their poetry workshop.
Jason is easily the most interesting one out 40
and if I could,
I would kick the rest of them out to watch "Elimidate"
in the library.
No one likes to admit it, but white trash does not grow on trees.
You can look at a 12-year-old
and sometimes see the obnoxious idiot they could one day become.
They aren't bad in that 'grow up
and sell crack to preschoolers' kind of way.
More of the type to drive a Hummer with a
'Save the Planet' bumper sticker.
I don't blame them completely.
Jeffrey McDaniel says
some people are doomed
just because their parents had boring sex.

But Jason is different,
a ball of nervous ticks and endless Monty Python quotes
that tell me
mom and dad got freaky.

He knows more about They Might Be Giants than any human needs to.
Has read Lord of the Rings so many times he speaks Elvish.
But not one of the assignments he has turned in had anything to do with
who Brittney kissed or who Ja Rule's got beef with.

So he's standing at the front of the room about to
read his poem.
Clenching his paper like it was god's autograph.
he says
"AHEM, Ode to my bathroom.
I am a roll of toilet paper
and my life is shitty."

Now, to the kids at Union Middle School,
"shit"
is not just second banana to "fuck."
It's own atomic bomb of profanity
that sends electromagnetic spasms of laughter rippling
through the room.

The 12-year-old J Lo in the front row
laughs so hard she snorts
like a vacuum with a mouse stuck in it.
Every day I watch him stare at her
with the unrequited longing you only have
when you're still a virgin.

He continues,
"I was born in a factory
and grew up in a plastic bag.
Now I hang next to the magazines and plunger
in the constant fear of ass."

In the back,
Eminem's biggest fan flaps his arm like palm leave
welcoming comic Jesus.
Last week, he spent the whole period flicking bits of eraser
and calling him a homo
'til he was about to cry.

Now, Jason's smiling so wide he can barley speak to
finish the poem.
"but today" he says "I am relieved,
because I can smell the three-bean chili the family I live with is cooking
and I know the end is near.
Thank you."

He sits down to a standing ovation.
I shake my head in an awe shucks pendulum.

Later, he asks me if I was pissed
I said,
"Jason don't let anyone tell you any different:
poetry exists
to give the socially awkward
a way to be finally applauded by their peers."

Slam Tutorial: Embrace Your Inner Nerd - Specifically

Your secret shame, be it Star Wars, the Lord of the Rings, or Harry Potty, audiences love it when you Embrace Your Inner Nerd. If you secretly love a nerdy topic, your audience likely does, too. Embrace it, milk it and push the limits.
If you can liken your nerd-love to real-world topics, either dramatic or humorous, you can greatly win over an audience. Half the fun is indulging in your nerdy passion, the other half is making it relevant to an audience who may only have a tangential relationship to the topic.

There are several subspecies, the less common of which is: Specific Nerd

Big Poppa E is known for his humor poems and his "Wussy Boy" Manifesto. This poem ostensibly tries to merge the two although the "wussy boy" on Harry Potter is a bit of a stretch, though it serves as vehicle for this poem.
It permitted BPE to embrace his knowledge of his specific topic, in this case the Harry Potter mythos.
The difficulty with specific nerd poems is going too deep. Unless the audience is steeped in nerd culture such as at the Nerd Slam at the National Poetry Slam - yes, there is one, I won at Gul Dukat action figure at the 2006 NPS - delve only deep enough that someone who has read the books, seen the movie, skimmed the comic book, or visited the Web site briefly will be able to grasp the concepts. Remember that your audience may be well versed, your judges, however, may not be.

This poem was performed at the 2005 Southwest Shootout in Albuquerque, N.M. The intro section is the way it is because BPE was in the midst of another signature poem of his and completely dropped the poem, forgetting it midway. He tried to recover, but after the second failure, and realizing that due to his eventual scores and time penalty, through the poem into the wind and performed this. If memory serves, I was standing with a few members of the Flagstaff Poetry Team about four feet to the left and about six feet behind the camera during BPE's collapse. Although he lost the round to other teams, this performance was worth remembering.

"Harry Potter Emo Love Song"
By Big Poppa E (aka Eirik Ott)
www.bigpoppae.com

i see you sitting there in the library
with your nose pressed into a book
and I'm sitting across from you crossing my fingers
hoping you'll stop and give me a look

when i hear your voice my face goes full flush
as red as Ron Weasley's hair
i want with all of my being to reach out
and take your hand, but i do not dare

i thought for a while that Cho Chang was the one
who was the object of my desire
but i was wrong, my dear, because you're the witch
who turns my heart into a Goblet of Fire

(CHORUS)
oh, Hermione Granger, my darling,
i can't keep you off of my mind
come climb on the back of my Nimbus 2000
and we'll leave Hogwarts far behind
far behind

sometimes i hide under my invisibility cloak
just so i can watch you from afar
and i don't care if your parents are Muggles
the lights in your eyes shine like stars

if i had a chance to go back to first year
i'll tell you just what i would do
i wouldn't take the sorting hat from the top my head
until it said i belonged to you

and sure i know you-know-who is out there somewhere
looking to kill me with his wicked dark art
but the mark he left on my forehead is nothing compared
to the lightening bolt shaped scar on my heart

(CHORUS)
oh, Hermione Granger, my darling,
I can't keep you off of my mind
come climb on the back of my nimbus 2000
and we'll leave Hogwarts far behind
far behind

I've written a note on a scroll, my dear,
and tied it to my owl Hedwig's leg
and I'm hoping my words will convince you to love me
so i don't have to fall to my knees and beg.

my note says, "if you love me half as much as i love you,
meet me at midnight behind Hagrid's shack,
and if you fail to show up I'll know that you don't
and I'll try very hard to go back...

to being your best friend

(CHORUS)
oh, Hermione Granger, my darling,
i can't keep you off of my mind
come climb on the back of my nimbus 2000
and we'll leave Hogwarts far behind
far behind

Slam Tutorial: Embrace Your Inner Nerd - Generally

Your secret shame, be it Star Wars, the Lord of the Rings, or Harry Potty, audiences love it when you Embrace Your Inner Nerd. If you secretly love a nerdy topic, your audience likely does, too. Embrace it, milk it and push the limits.
If you can liken your nerd-love to real-world topics, either dramatic or humorous, you can greatly win over an audience. Half the fun is indulging in your nerdy passion, the other half is making it relevant to an audience who may only have a tangential relationship to the topic.

There are several subspecies, the most common of which is: Stereotypical Nerd

Shappy Seasholtz's "I Am That Nerd" is not just a celebration of all that is nerdy - alluding to Star Wars, real world scientists Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking, E.T. and A.L.F. - but also great slam poems.
The poem touches on these topics to give reference but doesn't delve into them so deeply that the audience might get lost, for instance, "Han Solo hit / on Boba Fett that caused him to fall into the / Sarlac pit?" is perhaps the most obscure science fiction reference and even it isn't all that deep. He easily could have explored the metaphor into generally known Star Wars canon and even obscurely known fanon, yet keeps the poem flowing on the surface level so that those who have only seen the original Star Wars trilogy once can keep in touch.
On the poetic side, "I Am That Nerd" mimics Saul Williams' manifesto "Sha Clack Clack," one of the best-known poems in the national poetry slam scene, Williams' spiritualistic poem "Ohm," and Kayo's "Who Am I?"
Shappy's title "I Am That Nerd" is a direct allusion to Williams' hook line "I am that nigga," from "Sha Clack Clack."

"I Am That Nerd"
By Shappy Seasholtz

I am that nerd
I am that eternal nerd of spoken word
What can I say?
Spent all my rent money buying action figures on eBay!
I didn't come over to chit-chat
I came here to role-play!
I will smite thee with my 12-sided die
You better watch out
Cuz I'm coming atcha with my nerd eye!
I'm rocking you like Geddy Lee
I'd talk to more girls if they didn't make me
want to pee
myself
I'm a magical elf
Keep your hands off my Star Wars shelf
That's right bitch -- that's a Jawa with its
original plastic cape
Don't that flip your switch?
Like the switch Han Solo hit
on Boba Fett that caused him to fall into the
Sarlac pit?
Lest we forget!
I'm coming at you in 3-D
Keepin' it reel with two EE's, y'see?
And there's nothing you can do
Cuz I'm so much nerdier and smarter than you!
I had Stephen Hawking -- gawking and gasping
for air
Blew his mind with my knowledge and he fell
out of his chair!
I beat Matthew Broderick at war games with my Atari
I dug up Einstein's bones and made them say I'm sorry
for that weak-ass theory of relativity
Cuz MC Squared=Me, see?
I'm the plastic baby Jesus in your mind's nativity
I'll deprogram your mind with my Commodore 64
I'm so rich with nerd power
I make Bill Gates feel poor!
I will kidnap George Lucas from Skywalker ranch
and lock him in my basement until he removes
Jar-Jar Binks from every frame of Phantom Menace
and Attack of the Clones and replaces him with me!
For I am an ancient Jedi Knight; only Yoda could be older
I knocked Mork's space egg out of orbit and made it crash in Boulder
I'm the one who gave Darth Vader asthma
I liquefied Alf and E.T. and drank their plasma
Only I can unravel the mystery of the Sith
Cuz I knocked over the Black Monolith
with my boner!
Bet you didn't see that one cumming!
I'm a mystical nerd shaman who never stops
drumming on your stupid, stupid mind!
I'm the Original Star Trek and you are
Deep Space Nine!
I spin webs round your soul like Spidey on acid
Because my nerd rocket is taking off
And your shit be flaccid -- OHM!

Shappy attended Eastern Michigan University on a speech scholarship and went on to win two National Forensics titles in After Dinner speaking and Dramatic Duo. He also acted and directed several plays including Pop Manifesto (a one-act play Shappy wrote in which all of the dialogue was commercial jingles) which won Shappy an undergraduate Symposium Award.

After college, Shappy joined The Great Theatre Migration of 91 to Chicago. He formed several theatre companies with his college buddies and wrote and performed his own material. One show was a throwback to the Living Newspaper of the Great Depression era in which current events were acted out on stage called Every Speck Of Dust That Falls To Earth. Shappy also worked with members of the Neo-futurists for a musical about quantum physics.

Shappy eventually discovered the Poetry Slam at The Green Mill and wound up being taped (and bleeped twice) for CNN. He won a slam and ended up touring with Lollapalooza 1994, spreading the word of Nerd Power and making lots of friends along the way. The next year he "Shappy-roned" the first ever Austin slam team to the Nationals and has been an honorary Austin poet ever since, performing at nearly every South by Southwest the last 8 years.

Shappy then tried his schtick in the Chicago comedy scene. He hosted his own live talk show (Nite Cap with Shap) and appeared in the Chicago Comedy Festival 4 times including the Neil Hamburger Show. He also appeared regularly at Midnight Bible School at the legendary Second City.

Shappy has competed at a National Poetry Slam only once so far for the Mad Bar team in 2000. He made it as far as the Individual Semis and was asked to perform in Denmark with Beau Sia and Shayne Koyczan.

Shappy has had 2 books published by Kapow! Press including Little Book Of Ass which won a Firecracker Award for best poetry in 2000. He also has a CD called Poet/Comedian/Asshole available.

He now resides in NYC pursuing all things fun and poetic. In the 6 months he has been in New York he has performed at several colleges, slammed Soundheim lyrics at Joe's Pub, improved with the Upright Citizen's Brigade, auditioned for Mad TV and can be found bartending at Bob Holman's latest venture, The Bowery Poetry Club.

In his spare time Shappy plays Scrabble with his super-hot girlfriend Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz, reads lots of comic books and dreams of one day owning a crime-solving wiener dog named Wallingford.



"Sha Clack Clack"
By Saul Williams

If I could find the spot where truth echoes
I would stand there and whisper memories of my children's future
I would let their future dwell in my past
so that I might live a brighter now
Now is the essence of my domain and it contains
all that was and will be
And I am as I was and will be because I am and always will be
that nigga
I am that nigga
I am that nigga
I am that timeless nigga that swings on pendulums like vines
through mines of booby trapped minds that are enslaved by time
I am the life that supersedes lifetimes, I am
It was me with serpentine hair and a timeless stare
that with immortal glare turned mortal fear into stone time capsules
They still exist as the walking dead, as I do
The original sulphurhead, symbol of life and matriarchy
severed head Medusa, I am
I am that nigga
I am that nigga!
I am that nigga!!
I am a negro! Yes negro, negro from "necro" meaning death
I overcame it so they named me after it
And I be spitting at death from behind
and putting "Kick Me" signs on it's back
because I am not the son of Sha-Clack-Clack
I am before that,
I am before
I am before before
Before death is eternity,
after death is eternity
There is no death there's only eternity
And I be riding on the wings of eternity
like HYAH! HYAH! HYAH!
Sha-Clack-Clack
but my flight doesn't go undisturbed
Because time makes dreams defer
And all of my time fears are turning my days into daymares
And I live daymares reliving nightmares
of what taunted my past
Sha-Clack-Clack, time is beatin' my ass
And I be havin' dreams of chocolate covered watermelons
Filled with fried chickens like pinatas
With little pickaninny sons and daughters
standing up under them with big sticks and aluminum foil
Hittin' em, tryin' to catch pieces of fallin' fried chicken wings
And Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben are standing in the corners
with rifles pointed at the heads of the little children
"Don't shoot the children," I shout, "don't shoot the children!"
but they say it's too late
They've already been infected by time
But that shit is before my time
I need more time
I need more time
But it's too late
They start shooting at children and killing them!
One by one,
two by two,
three by three,
four by four
Five by five,
six by six, but
my spirit is growing seven by seven
Faster than the speed of light
Cause light only penetrates the darkness that's already there
and I'm already there
I'm here at the end of the road
which is the beginning of the road beyond time, but
where my niggaz at?

Oh shit, don't tell me my niggaz got lost in time
My niggaz are dying before their time
My niggaz are serving unjust time
My niggaz are dying because of.. time

Slam Tutorial: What's Worth Dying For?

One of the 12 Olympians of Slam, Marty McConnell is one of the best female voices in the national poetry slam scene.

I first saw her at the 2001 National Poetry Slam in Seattle, Wash., and had a odd, but fun moment at a party in one of the hotel rooms with Marty, Daphne Gottlieb and Taylor Mali -- a story I like to tell newbie slammers when they make their first slam team and are heading off to nationals ....
... In any case, I have a lifelong crush and we coincidentally share the same tattoo.

"Give Me One Good Reason to Die" asks "what would you die for?
The question in a simple one, and one that easily lends itself to the particulars of a political poem. I have seen variations of this poem range from leftist topics like equality, human rights, social revolution, rightist concepts like gods and countries and more mundane topics like love, world peace or one's art. Used humorously, this concept can extend to emo music, a good cup of coffee. I have also seen the idea used as an anti-conceit for ironic effect.


In this poem, Marty McConnell uses the conceit not to discuss what she in particular would die for but that our generation is so lackadaisical on creature comforts and devoid of purpose that we have little to fight for. Yet, at the crux of the poem, she points to the social injustices that would seemingly be worth dying for if members of our generation chose to fight for them.
Thus, the concept works both ways in eviscerating the conceit then criticizing those who accept her argument by reversing course.

"Give Me One Good Reason to Die"
By Marty McConnell
www.martyoutloud.com

at the millennial rolling-over point
baby boomer one-time-hippies
turned parents across these United States groan,
"when we said
'you can be anything' we meant
'you can be a brain surgeon or
district attorney or
genetic engineer' -- we
didn't mean you should become
a... poet."

But it was Dad who taught me that the call
of my wild heart rings as valid
as any voice of reason

And Mom who showed me that raging terror of where you're headed
is the surest sign you're traveling
in the right direction

This is a generation
beyond definition, unconvinced
the American dream isn't a fiction
of REM sleep; certain
gender matters less than love; determined
the apocalypse won't catch us napping.

Breast-fed on "how many roads must a man walk down,"
we watched our creators sacrifice their sharp edges
to stay within the lines; small wonder we race
to rant about wrongs or
find the edge of the planet
and lean at the lip of the void

We are the change generation,
fitted with the inconsistencies
of a millennium in flux; vagabond lot, we
skitter one city to the next
in seek of a home not in need of so much repair;
see, our inherited tools they fit fit like a Phillips-head
in a slot-top screw; we know that sit-ins
end in tear gas and tanks,
picket lines in promises
and compromises, lobbying
in backrooms and bullshit

I might believe in this Revolution
if one person proved he knew
what he was fighting for
and how

because the KKK still erects a cross in Cincinnati's Fountain Square every Christmas and

teenage girls have to weigh back alleys versus daddy's fists to secure
abortions and

Promise Keepers fill stadiums while poets play coffeehouses and

if I fucked a woman in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Texas, Virginia or Utah
I could get anywhere from 30 days to 20 years in jail

I don't own
enough rage for it all -- I am
ninety-five miles per hour on I-81, sprinting
to track the tirade vibrating
on the next stage

is Anybody Listening?

I live
in search of a cause worth dying for

We are a generation of screamers
silenced by the conspiracy of comfort
that cradles us voiceless
in our PC cities, where only the drunk
and the dangerous spill what seethes
in so many

I trade crusades like cards,
flip issues like channels

give me a god

give me a rallying cry

give me one
good reason to die