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Meeting the master
mid waves of chaotic aural overload, a jelly-roll-shaped white guy in tights and a lucha libre Mexican wrestling mask with thick-framed glasses holds up an individual slam championship belt heavv with fake gold plating as the Paramount crowd roars to see El Poeta (as this year's mascot is known) get down and dirty with the rest of the poets. Skimming camp humor from Mexicans rankles me a bit—especially since El Poeta's Boston accent mangles the pronunciation of his Spanish name—so I head out to the lobby, where rent-a-cops are watching the doors like attack dogs. I manage to convince them to let a few recognizable poets in without hassle.
Outside, faces are pressed with distortion against the glass doors, as rain falls over an impromptu poetry reading with poets holding up a banner that reads: "YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO BE LOUD!" The banner mixes with cardboard signs announcing the need for an extra ticket. And there's scalpers—people scalping tickets to see poetry!
Phil West emcees the first few rounds of the team competition, looking dead tired with the demands of keeping the slam running. After the first round, New York City lead, while Dallas follows, with LA in third and Cleveland trailing. The second round begins without missing a beat.
Dallas steps up with a group piece on phone sex, verbally and physically simulating spankings and masturbation: "I'll jerk you off with my words" In an interesting juxtaposition, New York's Lynne Procope follows with commanding presence and gravity in her words: "We be pretenders, pretenders to the position of prophet, we don the mask of poets late at night, and between the smokes of the lyrical jokes we slam up on this mike." Her serious tone plays off the hoots and hollers from the prior piece: "we forget that this shit goes beyond Gil Scott, it goes beyond that grand slam finals pot, this goes beyond all these half-ass rhymes you've long forgot everything we say must be the truth, because the innocents are listening, and it will all be held against us, which we do not hold for ourselves...do you know the definition of your revolution, or are you just pretending when you step up to this mike? One-two, one-two: this thing is on"
An intermission follows with poets pouring into the lobby for drinks our outside for smokes. Vancouver's swank Ms. Spelt, a pale skinny boy, shows much love in the lobby with his taffeta skirt, boa, and silky dinner gloves. Delirious embraces are exchanged, and hallucinatory sleep deprivation makes for an edgy vibe when poets file back in for the individual finals.
Marc Smith takes the stage to emcee, saying "My name is Marc Smith," greeted by a resounding "SO WHAT!" Patricia Smith joins him to handle the six indie finalists who will go two rounds each for the championship. Derrick Brown, from Laguna Beach, goes into an abstract absurdist piece that thrills the crowd with its suggestive rhythm: "I am the punk in your trunk and the if in your riff and the or in your gasm...I am the tears extracted by Johnson & Johnson, I am the cuts on the fists of Mr. Charlie Bronson...I am the last thing JFK tasted!' Brian Comiskey, a roofer from Boston, reads a softly compelling poem on stealing car stereos and how he became a poet—"the poet who once stole songs!" Reggie Gibson repeats his Hendrix poem to a standing ovation and shouts of"l0! 10! 10! 10!!!"
In an underrated performance, Vancouver's Cass King takes the stage and endures catcalls at her appearance: "Nice dress baby! "She opens with a rendition of "The Girl From Ipanema": "and when she passes, each one she passes goes: 'HEY MOMMA,YO MOMMA, COME ON, WHAT'S UP BAAABEEEE!" Strutting and dancing around, she explodes into a cabaret-style scat like she was expecting to get heckled and had her words ready to counter, with the crowd clapping along to her rhythm and rhyme.
In the second round, Roanoke's Patricia Johnson expresses the most volatile engagement of racial issues yet, bringing up the recent lynching incident in Jasper, Texas, and her own cousin's violent death, challenging the audience to right wrongs and be accountable. Her poem goes crushingly over time and dooms her to last place, but Patricia Smith notes: "Sometimes you got poems you just gotta do!" She also mentions that journalists Molly Ivins and Dan Rather are in the house. Cheers and cross-cheers fill the house, with the audience taking sides on who should win, but the championship ultimately goes to Reggie Gibson, with Derrick Brown in second, and Brian Comiskey in third.
"This is sadistic," says Marc Smith," we got these other teams backstage waiting to come out!" They've been waiting for over an hour, strategizing and deciding which pieces to throw at the crowd, anticipating the other teams' moves. Guy LeCharles Gonzalez brings another engaged poem from New York: "Mumia's plight is a hollow slogan to hook a poem on / as the revolution is compromised by wannabe rap stars disguised as slam poets / pandering to the crowd / telling them what they want to hear / instead of what they need to hear" It's an incredibly gutsy poem to read in a house full of slam poets, especially with randomly picked judges, since Gonzalez seems to take the whole slam to task for the art it produces: "You're not a poet, you just slam a lot / cram a lot of senseless rhyming / soulless pantomiming / saying shit like Tommy Kills-niggers / 'cause it's always fashionable to lay blame elsewhere / especially if it'll get a laugh and a couple of extra points!"
In the final round, Dallas comes back with a group poem: "Look, up in the sky! It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a bad motherf—SHUSH yo mouth! I'm just talking about my black superhero, baby!" As the piece progresses, they go through archetypes for a black, redneck, and gay superhero, as with the redneck: "I'll clothe myself in black, expose my butt crack, and walk with the swagger of Johnny Cash!" Rising euphoria in the crowd makes the house feel like everyone should jump on stage and join in the fun, and rumbles of "10! 10! 10!!!" delay scoring. Team Dallas's GNO rushes across backstage like he's flying during the cheering, which draws cries of "Team Dallas is trying to influence the score!" No matter: Dallas scores a perfect ten.
But it's not over yet: for New York City's final entry, Alix Olson rushes the microphone, not letting the chaos die down from the Dallas reading. Slightly hunched over and jabbing with her free hand, Olson snatches the mic as if she wants to catapult her poem off the vibe from the former piece, reading with furious energy: its a remote control America that's on sale 'cause standing up for justice can't compare to 'I can't do it from a lazy chair' we're closing out this country the way we began, so step up for the hottest selling commodity —that's right, no waiting lines for HIV—condoms and needle exchange, they're a hard-to-sell thing for the right wing, so if you're a junkie or a fag, rent to own your own body bag—now, while America's on sale...with buy one shmuck get one shmuck free in the capitalist party, and there's nothing left to get in the way, of a full blue-light blowout of the U-S-of-A, there's a know-nothing back guarantee, a zero-year warranty when you buy this land of the freetos, ruffles, lays — this home of the braves, the chiefs, the reds, the slaves, so call 1-800-I-DON'T-CARE-ABOUT-SHIT or www.fuckallofit to receive your credit for the fate of our nation…where the almighty dollars sparkle and shine in the Starbucks land, I'm proud to call it mine, but America's selling fast, shoppers—buy it all while you can, 'cause America's been downsized, citizens, and YOU'RE ALL FIRED!"
The scores pile in, and poets mob the stage when New York takes first place, with Dallas in second, Los Angeles in third, and Cleveland in fourth. Debates will continue to rage through the coming year about rules and definitions of poetry, and the conflicts will never entirely be resolved. But the question, as Cass King put it, remains: "I know it's entertainment, but is it A-R-T—is it AAAAAART?" That's the leap of faith. But in this auditorium, through the agony of defeat and the grandeur of victory, all of that has been put to the side. These slam poets—the new storytellers, shit talkers, neighborhood sages, and village idiots all—replay and relive the communal underpinnings of the spoken word. 
