Slam this

There’s no way to write about slam poetry if you don’t know what it is,

don’t know what it means,

don’t know how it

feels.

I’d just as soon run naked through the streets or through a mall or through a prison or

through your house

As get up on a stage in a club and read

anything.

Then again, I am an exhibitionist.

But here it is late at night

and I gotta

get this thing done

gotta put down some words

gotta get the meaning across gotta do it right now.

Listened to poets slamming on CD,

read press releases,

browsed Web sites,

listened some more,

listened

some more.

And I can’t tell you much more

than I could last week.

I can tell you that slam is “fast, edgy narrative prose.”

At least that’s what

Clebo Rainey says.

And he should know — dude does so much of it he could probably do it in his sleep.

And in yours.

I especially agree with him on the “fast” part.

Acoupleofthemtalksofastyoucan’tunderstandwhatthey’resaying

And after listening awhile, the rhythm, the pace, the flow

Get stuck in your head, and you think that way, and you write that way, and you talk that way.

At least I think you would;

I’m not talking to anyone right now.

Rainey says slam should “draw people in” and be “audience-friendly.”

Detractors say slam’s not real poetry. But what is poetry?

(That’s a rhetorical question.)

Well, slam ain’t Shakespeare,

ain’t Browning,

ain’t her husband either.

But slam is entertaining,

fun to watch, and it can be

thought-provoking

at least when you get your mind caught up to their mouths, acclimated to the

pauses

able to digest the words fast enough.

Is it literature? Is it entertainment?

Is it both? Is it neither?

What? You want us to tell you

everything?

Decide for yourself.