I've gone and done it again.

I won the poetry slam tonight. I won again. Tonight. This makes two. I can't even believe it.

I slammed this piece first to great applause (phew!):

You are caught in the crossfire of the ones and zeros that cover this world in a green grid of financial lasers, binary talk between bank accounts of influence and wealth without measure.

It keeps the oil flowing, erases the ozone layer, cuts down the trees and most of all it funds the entertainment of the rapidly growing uneducated apathetic lethargic human race.

For those of you not listening to the money that falls from the sky, the coins and bills falling from the pockets and wallets of the billionaires, the gods that walk among us, the 460 men and 13 women that own the rest of us, I have this to say.
Turn your face up to the copper rain of pennies from heaven, the small change that's sprinkled from Lear jets to keep you complacent and catch those coins on your eyes for the journey.

I am one of the people that own you.

I am the latest billionaire. I am the product of thirty-six years of backstabbing, buck-passing and martini lunches. I was inside trading back before Czechoslovakia became the Czech Republic. My dividends diversify like cancer in a twelve-year-old. I have piles of blue chip stock shinier than platinum records.

Hope won’t let you travel the world and love don’t pay the payments.

North America has hit hypocritical mass. I bet almost none of you have even been to the countries that you want to save.

Wall Street is an oxymoron in case anyone paid attention. Wall. Street. It’s an architectural contradiction. Streets guide you places and walls get in the way. And it’s you that are the crash test dummies of that particular dead end.

Slaves were sold on Wall Street. That’s how it got its name. The walls were high, the slaves kept in. That’s how it got its fame.

Ain’t nothin’ free about a free market.

The term egghead comes from the Nazis who said that no matter how smart a person is, their head will still crush under a jackboot like an egg and I think they were just paraphrasing Darwin when they said that. For those of you who believe yourselves to be enlightened atheists, viva la evolution.

“Money is the root of all evil” isn’t true. What it actually says in the bible is “the LOVE of money is the root of all evil”.

Well, let me tell you, I love money.

Dollars wrap my dreams in cotton bills and Euros euthanize my guilt. My bonds don’t bind me and I am not held captive by my stocks. My common cents is precious metal, my labour is small hands in poor countries and my products are innumerable.

I want to glue typewriter keys of my initials to the heels of my shoes so that I can stamp my initials with every footstep deep into the gold bricks of the yellow road I’m following.
I think Wall Street should change its name to something more symbolic of the spirit of commerce that drives it.
I think Wall Street should change its name to Commercial Drive.





and this piece second:

The Breakup Poem

I could never live up to your expectations so I’ve decided to outlive my embarassments. I’m tied
to the post-traumatic stress, about to be burned at the stakes we were playing for. I’m no closer to
understanding the divine plan. I’m struck by deja voodoo.

They say that repetition is the secret to comedy. I hope so. I want to find this funny one day.
I spent so long trying to figure out how to act that I slipped out my own back door. I suppose
that’s why I feel I spent so much time talking out of my ass.

Hot air dances on my tongue, waiting to catch fire. I’m a Hindenberg looking for some humanity.
Trying to catch fish with an internet. If I was a campsite, I’d be two tents.

I feel like I’m forging my own signature half the time. I was in the same prison you were. That’s
why I wanted to know your cel number. I wanted to share my sentences with you. Playing spin the
bottle by myself is hard to do quietly and the suspense isn’t really the same. It’s always me and the bottle that end up kissing and both of us get so drunk we feel empty.

I wanted moth-wing dust, your eyes, my nose, and a secret. I wanted it baked at body temperature for
nine months until it rose. The only ring I wanted was the sound the phone made when you called
me for no reason.

I never went to church but when we were together, I’d say His name into your neck in a repetitive, monosyllabic litany of bliss that was the furthest thing from being taken in vain.

I must have been smothering you with kisses because after a while, you couldn’t breathe.
Every time you turned around, I ran my fingers over you like you were a tibetan prayer wheel.
And the wheels were spinning but we weren’t going anywhere. You leaned on the horn, I turned up the radio. I didn’t see the signs that sharp turns were ahead so I was left. And you were right. Looking back, there was only one way it could have stopped.

So the bed’s huge, movies and concerts are cheaper by exactly half and I’ve been thinking about getting a pet because I feel crazy when I talk to myself. I’m a strong man living through weak days walking a solitary path to a weak end. I’m only fronting because I want you back so much.

I’m lying at the bottom of a footprint made by something that’s extinct.

-------------

So YAY! The first win guaranteed me a place in the semi-finals. This win cements it. Wish me luck. Another month until finals.



tags

Haiku Death Match

I forgot to mention. I tied for first place with Lucia Misch last night and we had to have a haiku death match to decide the winner. I don't remember what hers was because I was too busy shitting my brain trying to come up with something but this is what I came up with.

War is a gun big
enough to fire tiny cof-
fins made for babies

to the best of my recollection. There's video that I'm waiting for. But there you go. We now return you to your regular LJ stuff.

tags

Early Days of Burning

They see me, cowering right there in front of them. I’m wearing camouflage that doesn’t work. Like I’m an ostrich trying to be human by dressing in a clown suit.

I bury the hair of the dead in rich soil to try to grow them back. It doesn’t work but I keep trying. Someone has to do something.

I tear a wet, red strip off of tomorrow and watch it glisten in the moonlight. The blood looks black.

Every shower is a baptism. Every bedtime is a death. Enthusiasm doesn’t look good on me.

We are foster cats. That decision she made without consulting me turned my brain into a monster truck challenge with live people in the crushed cars. It turned her womb into a mortar and pestle. We haven’t spoken since. We hang around orphanages and the SPCA with money in our pockets and not enough courage to cross the street and open the door.

Someone tie a sunset around my neck and push me into night. Make this a hanging day.

Keep the gaze and change the tactics. Mix levity with gravity to stay level.

I can round this side of a moment like a wet hand on spinning clay. I can chop this side of a moment off and leave it shocked and trembling. Allow me to navigate around the seconds.

These are the early days of burning.



tags