the only two poems I ever bothered to memorize

I ran into Ari yesterday. She was on her bike heading for the 20khz open mic and she'd been given bad directions. When she went off in the right direction, I thought about heading out, but I didn't want to bring anything so I tried to remember if I could remember any of my old performance pieces. Amazingly, I did. Here are two old poems that at this point, I'm prouder of memorizing than I am for writing.

1. This one is dumb but it used to win teen slams when that's what I was all bout. It was never meant for the page, because a lot of it is humor derived from changing my tone, pace, and inflection. The way to make it work was to go up, talk really slow and awkwardly, play off my nerdiness so that when I got all oddball and slammy, it was a kick, and when I got to the rapid fire part at the end, it was a surprise.

I'm not Black Jesus/Chewing the Fat

I may be a bad mamma jamma
A grand master slammer
And a badmothershutyomouthI'mtalkinaboutSANTA ANNA, motherfucker
But no matter how hard I try
I will never be
BLACK JESUS

For most people, this wouldn't be much of a loss
But when you've...
Achieved
As much as I have
You just wanna reach for the stars
But it's no use

When I have a child
When the time is right
I will tell hm
Or her
Or them
Or it

"Son (or daughter or whathaveyou), THIS is AMERICA
And with a little hard work. you can be anything you want
Except BLACK JESUS
Don't even try cuz the world will pass you by, and call you a lotta things that ain't half as nice as BLACK HESUS"

So I see Flava Flav on VH1 the other day
And I don't cry
Because thugs don't
But I feel like I should shed a tear
For the world has passed him by
And I tip my bottle
And I tip my cup
And salute

It's the Flava
It's the Flava
you wifebeating cracksmoking motherfucker you
It's the Flava Boyeeee
and some girl says she don't wanna hear it, she says "My virgin ears"
My virgin ears (?!) would maje a Q-tip like a dildo
but this is too sophisticated a basis of metaphoric imagerey as situationist philosophy
so I sit back
watch Fox news
and sketch out a poem about Britney Spear's titties

a spurt in the shurt left hurt the fans with the plans to sing and to dance and romance like the idol she is til she became his a virgin to the surgeon who sees them to ease and to please like a sacrificial cow but just how did the best breasts in the west barter a martyr and how does it feel to be Generation Y

a little girl cries
but who cares
cuz pop music sucks anyway
amirite?


2. This one I wrote after one of my friends OD'd. I was really broken up about it because it happened at my house and I knew he had a problem and I was trying to get people to not give him drugs. I wanted to write something about it when I found out but I didn't have a pen or paper so I wrote something that rhymed so I would still have it in my head when I got home. The grammar in the beginning is fixable, and it would look less stupid on the page, but it sounds better when I read it this way:

[Never Titled]

He was the hostest
With the mostest
With the most voracious noses
Until an accidental overdose'd
Black him out on Sunday night
And he wouldn't see the light til Monday
Without the help of
Intravanous intervention
And how much prevention would've kept him out of the ICU
I dry my eyes because I knew
Because I knew and didn't bother
To take the time to tell his father, and
Sometimes even a junkie'll believe his own charm
When he left Sunday night on his friend Tim's arm
I told him to get home safe
Only six blocks away
From his own neighborhood
Perhaps the walk'd do him good
But
There's a demon that inhabits his alcoholic mother
That rides the double helix of the man that I call brother
And from or for this demon his whole life had given chase
And maybe he wasn't meant to make it back to his Dad's place









[currently listening to "Onward Christian Slater" by Bert Susanka]